Cat Like
During a visit by our friend, Jane, over the weekend, she got a quick glimpse of Mozyr and asked us if he was a Russian Blue. I didn’t know anything about Russian Blue as a breed, so couldn’t say, one way or the other. It seems to me that he has an awful lot of hints of the classic tabby pattern, and is more likely just a domestic shorthair, but he does match a lot of the descriptions of the Russian Blue.
He is again showing signs of becoming increasingly bonded with me, after that brief recent spell when he had gotten out of sorts and didn’t appear to feel well. He’s behaving more like his old self now, but still is not warming up to the dog at all. He is shy around strangers and appears to have the double coat and green eyes. I think he has big feet, but I didn’t notice whether that fits a trait of any particular breed.
He has been sleeping on top of me at night, and in this photo, is lounging on me as I was reading on our bed.
Both cats are quick to approach me when I lay down on our bed. I often work on my laptop there, and that is a time when Pequenita likes to perch herself between me and the screen, totally blocking my view. It’s as if she is sending me a message that she would prefer to have my undivided attention.
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The is the view I usually end up with when I am trying to type.
Their behaviors are so cat-like sometimes. I guess that is why we like them.
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Rambling Randomly
Late Sunday afternoon we got the horses fed, ushered Delilah outside to her kennel and then set out toward the far side of the twin cities from us, to the far side of Lake Minnetonka, joining our friends Barb and Mike at their house for the Superbowl game. It seems like it should be too far to go for a short evening visit, but spending time with them proved more than worth the drive. Plus, it being a Sunday evening, there was minimal traffic on the road and we made excellent time. It inspires me to avoid letting the drive interfere with staying connected to friends.
It’s now well over a year since we moved from the suburbs to farm country and I have finally taken the steps of transferring to a local doctor and dentist. I scheduled appointments with both for checkups next week. The transformation is becoming ever more complete. Now, if I could just learn to recognize good horse hay when I see it.
We have a number of bales that are moldy. We have a lot to learn about hay. Right now we are dealing with the accumulation of bad hay that we can’t feed to the horses. Online searches haven’t easily revealed any brilliant descriptions of what to do if you discover your stored hay is moldy. I don’t know if we need to get the bad bales away from the good ones. The most common suggestion is to use moldy hay for mulch in gardens. Maybe I need to advertise that we have garden mulch for sale.
While I was outside moving firewood up on the deck and splitting logs by the wood shed yesterday, Delilah was freely romping in the snow and exploring our woods. Eventually, she appeared with a kill clenched in her jaw. I have no idea what kind of animal it is –or, was. It is interesting to witness her demeanor change when she gets possession of a dead animal. Instinct seems to take over and she slips into wild carnivore mode. When she comes back in the house, I get nervous about the way she looks at the cats.
Gutter and soffit replacement resumes on the house tomorrow. I have made their work a little easier by clearing the most recent snowfall off the eaves and away from the vents at the peak. It had gotten so deep that our vents were covered completely. I haven’t heard anything from the builder who ordered our replacement window, but that should be arriving sometime soon. As much as I want to see progress there, I think it would be best if gutter and window replacements don’t overlap.
I’m back at the day-job 3 days a week now. I think it has me rambling randomly to process Wintervale responsibilities in my head so there will be some room for work related thinking that needs to happen. Don’t know if it will help any, but I see the rambling as a valuable exercise, regardless.
Remember Winter?
This year reminds me of what winters were like when I was a kid. When the snow season arrived, it stayed all year. None of this melting to the point you could see grass in the middle of January or February, or one measly cold spell when it dipped below zero and that was it.
This morning we woke to teens below zero and it is no big deal. It’s funny how you get used to it. At first, it seems like serious cold, but after days and weeks of it, with times when it dips well into the twenties below and involves wind that drives the impact into danger zones for exposed flesh, well, you grow weary of focusing on how cold the temperature is and just deal with it. Life goes on.
Unfortunately, details of daily life activity that you are trying to just get on with start to get complicated after weeks of accumulating snow continues to pile up. Driving gets difficult because sight lines become obscured by mountains of plowed snow that get piled up where ever there is a place to pile it. Shoveling driveways and walkways become epic efforts, tossing the snow ever higher to get it over the mound created by the previous six times you just did this.
It took me until yesterday to finally finish clearing all the new accumulation that fell last Thursday. I had tried making my way out to the wood shed for a load of firewood and in one trip exhausted all my energy by trying to forge my way through the deep snow. I realized this passageway should be added to the queue of areas needing to be cleared after every snowfall. It is no longer sufficient to just trod the route to create a path.
It reminds me of what it was like as a kid. I thought maybe it just seemed like there was more snow back then because I had shorter legs, but with the return of a winter like days of old, with uninterrupted snow and cold, I’m finding it just as difficult with longer legs.
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Photo Essay
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winter snow sunlight afternoon shadows at Wintervale
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Special Day
This day used to just be January 31st on the calendar, but a year ago someone came along and claimed it for her birthday, and in doing so, made my friend Katie a Momma. Little Lilia achieves the milestone of her first birthday today. Everybody send her love!
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Delilah sends her love, too. (And a snowy-nose kiss.)
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Happy 1st Birthday, Lilia! …Yah.
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Winter Sunset
They’re all good, the sunsets, but on a crisp winter evening when you have a chance to be outside at the precise moment it drops below the horizon, it feels like it’s the best one ever seen. It was particularly nice having the tall grass soak up the low sunlight as it bent over in the wind. Fierce as this winter has been thus far, we haven’t gone completely without a few occasional precious days.
A pleasant day amid a rash of harsh weather becomes all the more precious.
It’s funny how our perspective changes when the reference point is shifted. Compared to the dramatic extremes of polar vortex winds and temperatures, a day in the 20s(F) without a lot of wind becomes a remarkably nice day.
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Cyndie’s Day
When I saw my wife coming up the driveway in our truck late yesterday afternoon, I steadied myself for what I anticipated would be a days-worth of angst. Her text to me was typically understated: “It’s been a really crummy day.”
Both Cyndie and I have come to see that there are often specific lessons for us in the challenges that unexpectedly entangle and derail our daily affairs. Sometimes we don’t know the impact or lessons these challenges offer for the other people involved in the events, but we believe each individual has something equally specific available to them, whether they recognize it or not. If nothing else, like getting results from taking a placebo, looking at it that way helps us to embrace the angst of our challenges as having purpose.
photo provided by Cyndie
When I came inside after clearing the drifted snow from our front steps and walkway, Cyndie was preparing comfort-food for dinner. I prepared myself to hear about her day. I was pleasantly surprised. On one of the most dangerous of cold days, her car suffered a flat tire –a shredded tire, really– miles from any commerce. It is the very reason travel is not recommended, and many schools around the state call off classes, in these weather conditions: you don’t want to get stuck while trying to travel to your destination. Yet, there she was, alone in the severe wind-chill with a tire that needed to be changed, and her car perched dangerously on the edge of traffic.
As I dove into the dinner she set before me, Cyndie began to describe the number of good things that seemed to come out of a situation that completely destroyed her plans for the day and will ultimately involve costly repairs. First, I heard about the number of people, citizens and law enforcement, who stopped to check on her welfare and offer help while she waited several hours for the tow truck to arrive. Then there was the tow truck driver who safely executed the near impossible task of changing that tire in the dangerously cold wind. Finally, her discovering the auto repair business I referred her to, that I had found in a hasty online search for something close to our home.
Courtesy Auto Repair is not only conveniently located, it sounds like it will be the perfect resource for us. The owner provided double the service, first guiding Cyndie through all the factors involved with her tire failure, (diagnosing brake issues that are likely contributing to the early failure of her tires –another tire was also splitting apart), then also helping get our truck fixed up, too.
Cyndie had first tried the truck in the morning before setting out in her car, but it failed to start. Later, when she got her car to the repair shop on a spare tire, he asked if she had other transportation. When he learned about the truck, he offered to have one of his employees give her a ride home, and then check the battery. They jump-started the truck and the driver followed Cyndie as she drove it back to the shop so they could give it a complete inspection.
photo provided by Cyndie
After she parked it at the shop, it already needed to be jumped again. The battery was shot. After doing a multi-point inspection, the technician mentioned the windshield washer nozzle was frozen up. The owner insisted that the tech flush the lines and drain all the questionable washer solution out, refilling it with a fresh solution. This guy is thorough.
Cyndie was able to leave with the truck in good working condition and with parts on order for her car. If she just focused on how the flat tire in dangerous conditions had wrecked her plan for the day, it would be a lot worse than just “crummy.” As it is, there were enough good things happening that we are almost glad for the hassles she experienced yesterday. We are extremely pleased that for all the undesirable outcomes that could have resulted from the risks of the ailing brakes and failing tires, she was able to pull over with the relatively minor incident of one flat.
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Rescue Effort
It is just a little cold here this morning. Minus 21°F on the thermometer, don’t know what the wind chill is. It actually looks pretty calm outside, compared to yesterday afternoon when we were experiencing some intense gusts and a heavy, steady wind. It created frequent mini-tornadoes of snow.
We stayed up later than usual last night to take in the Grammy Awards broadcast. For some reason, Delilah decided to wake us up earlier than usual. Nothing like a bad night’s sleep to make you feel less than your best self in the morning. On top of that, I spent the afternoon clearing snow –which felt like a bit of a doomed task with the wind beginning to blow and fill in everything I had just plowed– and once again I got the ATV stuck, which required extra shoveling effort to dig out, so most of the muscles and joints of my body are in ‘complain mode.’
Growing old is not for sissies. If it’s this tough for me now, what’s it going to be like when I get old?
At one point yesterday, when we were lounging around the warmth of the fireplace before I ventured outside to work, from my perch on the couch I spotted Delilah fix her gaze on some prize up the spiral staircase. It must be a cat, I thought, and off she went, seeking closer inspection. She seems to desperately want to make contact, probably as much as the cats would fervently prefer to have her not. As she headed up, I tried alerting Cyndie, who had disappeared into the basement in search of a cookbook, and I pondered aloud whether it was Pequenita or Mozyr up in the loft.
As the scrambling and hissing commenced up there, I spotted Pequenita emerge from the safe zone of our bedroom and start up the stairs. That meant it was Mozyr who Delilah was engaged with and had cornered up there.
Mozyr has been behaving more and more like his old self recently. On days last week when I was working, and Delilah would be out in the kennel, both cats were taking advantage of the dog’s absence when I got home, wandering around the house and snitching some dog food from her bowl. Mozyr has become our bathroom pal again, hopping up by the sink, and sitting on the edge of the bathtub when I shower. I take it as a good sign that he chose to venture out from the confines of the bedroom and climb the stairs to the loft when Delilah was around. It gave him a chance to act out toward her and express how he feels about having a dog sibling forced upon his world.
When the commotion settled down and we were able to bring Delilah back down the stairs, it occurred to me that Pequenita’s behavior could be interpreted as coming to Mozyr’s rescue. When she heard the confrontation, she came running and put herself in harms way by diverting Delilah’s attention, smartly doing so with a convenient escape route back to safety. In fact, that helped our effort to convince Delilah to leave Mozyr alone and come back down with us, as Pequenita sprinted her way down and to the other side of the gate.
The brave cat to the rescue, once again, and Moz seems no worse for the wear.
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