Archive for the ‘Images Captured’ Category
Chillin’ Nearby
After spending most of the day on Monday working on the lawn tractor and getting the field mowed, I needed to spend some quality time in the paddocks yesterday, while it was still sunny. Today is predicted to be the beginning of a two-day soaking of rain, and those paddocks are miserable to clean when it is muddy.
As it was, they weren’t much better than miserable in the corner I was hoping to rake. There are still large areas where the ground remains saturated with water, which results in many deep hoof divots, the continued build up of manure from winter, and almost impossible footing for trying to do anything about it. The task involves trying to remove months worth of accumulated manure that is soaking wet and stuck into the mud, raking it across a terrain that is filled with pot holes that serve as perfectly frustrating traps.
I have to be mindful to avoid allowing that frustration to fill my thoughts, because I don’t want that to become the message our horses pick up from me. I have yet to master the art of literally “hearing” what they might want to communicate to me, but they definitely are conveying something by means of proximity. Legacy will walk towards me and pause, continually closing the distance if I neglect to stop what I’m doing to meet him. Eventually, he will come right up into my face, so that I can’t not stop what I’m doing.
Yesterday, I met his gaze and did my best to let him know what I was thinking, and we had a bit of a stare-down. Then we each “went back to grazing,” he, literally, and me, by getting on with raking.
Just as often, it seems, Hunter is my companion when I’m cleaning the paddock. While I was raking that same area yesterday, he wandered over and just stood next to where I was working. He wasn’t looking at me, but just standing beside me. After a short time, he decided to lay down, right there on that same spot. It is the closest I’ve ever been to a horse that was laying down, so I decided to take a picture.
It warms my heart to know he feels that comfortable with me, and that Legacy will behave respectfully when standing as close as he was. Obviously, we are communicating something.
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Remaining Cat
With daytime high temperatures this week hovering despicably close to winter levels, the urge to crawl back into bed and refuse to face the world is strong. Pequenita has no problem succumbing to the call of the nap, taking up a strategic position on the extra blanket that had been tossed in a bundle on our bed.
She has been highly visible since last Friday when we removed Mozyr from our home, and she seems to have picked up where he left off with regard to showing up anywhere I happen to be in the house. It’s hard to tell if she is happier having our attention all to herself, or if she is just showing up to question where the heck he is.
For the most part, she seems to be doing fine without Mozyr around. Even though it has left her as a solo cat in the house, it frees her from needing to navigate the sharing of food and litter boxes. I think she likes that.
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Not Funny
I wish I could laugh about it, but we are suddenly prisoners of our cat Mozyr. Whatever the heck his urinary tract problem is, the solution he seems to have selected is to pee on our bed. More specifically, Cyndie’s side of our bed. Could he be sending her a message? I don’t know.
Poor guy. We know he is not well. After a vet visit on Monday, we have special food to give him, and he was given fluids, and also something for pain. His response is to turn his nose up at the food, and to pee on our bed. Seriously, three times Monday night. The second time, while Cyndie was sleeping. That chased her out to the couch in the middle of the night. In the morning, while I was still in bed, sitting up with my computer, I suddenly realized he was sitting on the bed next to me. That can’t be good. Sure enough, he had peed, soaking through to the mattress. I guess the hydration at the vet worked.
It gave us a great excuse to do some serious spring cleaning. Too bad that we had already just done this over the previous weekend, due to the same problem.
I waited all day before putting the mattress back down, because I just didn’t want to give him another opportunity. When Cyndie got home, she pulled out a clean mattress pad and tossed it on the box springs that I had laid back into position.
I walked into the room to lay the mattress back on the box springs, and picked up the pad to move it. Mozyr had just peed on it. That pad hadn’t been there more than a few minutes. I’ve spoken to two people who told me that a cat would be out the door so darn fast if it had peed on their bed. I’m finding that I wish I had some of that in me.
On the bright side, it got me to dig out the clothesline for the first time this year.
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Up Late
Stayed up late. Watched men’s college basketball championship. Result: I’m tired. Tired just watching them play. But, also tired of Mozyr being sick and peeing on our bed. Tired of mud in the paddocks. Tired of dirt from Delilah covering our floor. Tired of sawdust covering everything in the garage, and dust from sanded drywall covering everything in the basement.
At the same time, Mozyr has been more forward and friendly lately than any other time since the day we brought him home from the rescue shelter. The horses are coping well with our muddy mess. Delilah has been a total charmer of late. We have a fantastic new storage room in our basement.
It’s not all bad, even when it sometimes feels that way when you stay up late.
Speaking of our little charmer, here’s a picture for you… We noticed that Delilah had laid down for a nap with her head against the “chew toy” deer antler she brought home from the woods. She looks a bit like the cute little doggie from the cartoon of Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Mozyr earned an expensive visit to the Vet yesterday. We have prescription food for him now. He turned it down. I sure could use some enhanced skills in communicating with our animals. I’d like to hear what he has to say about his situation lately.
I wouldn’t mind hearing a little of what Delilah and the horses think, either.
I tried a new trick with one of the newer, small hay bales last night. We usually roll a wheelbarrow of hay to the feeders in the paddock, but with the ground so incredibly muddy, that hasn’t been working so well for us. In the hay shed, I was looking at a net and a hanging bag that we have used to move hay on occasion. I noticed the net is almost the size of a small bale, so I put one in and then tied the net tight with some bale twine. I tossed the netted bale into their feeder and let them go to town on it.
I think they were thrilled to have an entire bale of the good hay. I’m guessing it didn’t occur to them that they could only munch on small bites at a time, through the netting. It slows them down just enough that the bale lasts longer and there is less hay wasted.
I’m tired of seeing how much hay they are able to waste.
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Lake Wintervale
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This time of year, there’s water, water, everywhere. Can you guess where this is?
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Go ahead, click on the image…
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Spring Arrives
Today is the first day of spring on the calendar, so that means only a few weeks, or maybe a month, more of days when we might experience significant snow events. Yesterdays’ little excitement is already melting fast. I did need to plow the driveway when I got home from work, but it was relatively easy and the remnants left behind on the pavement melted quickly, leaving the driveway mostly clean after minimal effort.
Unfortunately, I was doing some cleanup with a shovel and leaned into it, sliding the snow to the edge, when a disc in my back went kablooey. It’s impressive how quickly a person can go from standing upright, to flat on their back on the mucky wet ground. It’s also interesting how blissful it can seem to be laying down with no pain, regardless the fact it was on the wet pavement. I was feeling content to lay there for the rest of the night, but Cyndie happened along and inspired me to make my way back to my feet again with the enticement of Chinese takeout she brought home for dinner.
Today is not a day for whining, it’s spring! I’ll celebrate with a shot of Cayenne posing in the bright March sunshine. Green things won’t be far behind.
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Nature’s Course
There is no getting around the fact that we are at that time of year when the weather can flip from enticingly spring-like to “as winter as ever” in a single day. It can be a tough blow at the end of a harsh winter to be walloped by storms that give the impression the weather is headed in the wrong direction. Today is expected to be one of those tough blows, but it is not clear what the precise position of the storm will be. We are on the edge of a suspected path which could swing either to freezing rain or heavy, wet snow.
For the time being, I’m going to enjoy this image of our paddock from Saturday, when the snow had been cleared off the ground and the clouds were gone from the sky. We’ll have more of this type of enjoyment in the days ahead. We just need to tolerate a small setback to a winter storm for a few days.
That’s Dezirea munching hay, with Legacy standing by, on watch.
A couple of days later and it looked like this (although, in fairness, this one was taken with my phone looking through a dirty window from inside our sunroom):
At Delilah’s desperate urging, I let her outside to chase a squirrel, or squirrels, which had been tugging mercilessly at her predator instincts while she was trapped indoors. I followed her with my eyes as she sprinted deep into the neighbor’s woods to our north, much farther than she normally explores. The unconscious chase left her in new territory, and I would have been surprised if she just turned around and came back into our yard.
She disappeared for quite a while. When Delilah finally reappeared outside our windows, it wasn’t a squirrel she had as a prize, but the bottom portion of a deer leg. It is most likely that she happened upon a carcass that was left by some other predator(s), but she looked so much like a wolf out there, gnawing on that limb in the heavy falling snow, I felt a renewed appreciation for why our cats appear so wary of her.
She’s just doing what comes natural, but it can be almost scary seeing how incredibly proficient she is about it.
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Relative Something 