Oh Good

Last night I dreamed of kittens. There were eight of them in the litter, including a couple of black ones (I love black cats; they are so gorgeous), and one that was this lovely sort of solid roan shade, a color cats don't really come in. When I woke I was like oh no.

Tonight I made (well, I'm still making it) some chicken in my new crock pot what Tara got me for the recent holiday, and took the trimmings out to the feral cats. I wouldn't give the inside cats chicken fat, but I figure the feral ones are out in the freezing cold and need all the fuel they can get. So I took it out there to them, still on the cutting board.

The Grrls were out there, Spot Splotch and Smudge (who sometimes get called Splunge or Splot or Smotch when I get mixed up) as well as The Interloper.

The Interloper lives up to his/her name; The Grrls are not particularly welcoming to him/her, so while the three of them were on the floor by the chow dish waiting for me, The Interloper was up on the windowsill that I leave open so they can come and go and get a bit of shelter.

Now while The Interloper has been more friendly than usual, he/she is still not tame or anything, and so was shying away from me a bit.

But I had a cutting board full of tasty chicken scraps, and well that's one of the best cat magnets there is.

So I held out the board to intrigue him/her. Sure enough, he/she leaned forward, and his/her tail went up in delight at the smell.

And then I finally got a good look at the thing's butt, in decent light, fairly close up, and with my glasses on.

The verdict: The Interloper is very definitely male. Oh golly yes.

Wow am I relieved.

He is still pretty round in the belly though; I'm going to see what I can do about maybe getting an over-the-counter wormer into the poor thing, assuming that's possible. I imagine all of them could use some, so hopefully I can mix it in with their food somehow. Wish me luck.

The Treasury

We weren't even looking for it, you know; what we were trying to find last Friday was a little grey kitten who was late for her doctor's appointment. But when Tara removed a jumbled woodpile from the little hollow under the breezeway stairs and peered in, this is what she saw:



In Tara's* own words:

"At first I could see nothing, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the space within emerged slowly from the mist, strange shapes, metal, and rust—everywhere the glint of rust.

"For the moment—an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by—I was struck dumb with amazement, and when my sister, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, 'Can you see anything?' it was all I could do to get out the words, 'Yes, terrible things...'"

Yes, it was yet another jumbled pile of rusty hunks of rusty rust; this find, this treasure was made up of several metal drawers (quelle surprise) full to the brim with bolts (again, quelle surprise), with some copper and brass thrown in which we surmised had been left from when the pipes in the cellar got redone. Tara seemed to have a vague inkling of the stuff having been put there somewhere around 2003, though I didn't remember it; but given that that's just the kind of information I resent using up my precious brainspace, I can't say it particularly bothers me that I successfully repressed it.

And even though it didn't really look like a whole lot of stuff, it was really quite dense, and man, hauling that crap around on a hot day like today (though I hear tomorrow is supposed to be worse) sure worked up a sweat, oy. Here's the butt-end of Larry, per usual:



Doesn't look like all that much, does it?

All told though it came to a whopping 1180 pounds of scrap iron; with the brass, copper and aluminum bits added in, it weighed just over 1200 pounds. Poor Larry. He's a very good car, that Larry the Volvo station waggon.

So that was our thirty-sixth trip to the scrapyard; and our total of scrap iron removed from the property (since we've gotten receipts from the scrapyard, which isn't all of it, since we took numerous car loads before that just to the dump) now stands at 31,820 pounds, or 15.91 tons. And yes, of course, there is still more.

The little grey kitten, by the way, is healing quite well and is quite lively and vigorous. I've been bottle-feeding her and have begun weaning her (she's four weeks old even today). There is one thing, though—she may actually be a he. Hard to tell, still; s/he's just so teeny!

*Well, okay, maybe not Tara's words so much as Howard Carter's. Details.

Purring Like A Kitten

I know, I know, you're not supposed to feed stray cats.

But when three very tiny kittens showed up on my doorstep the first week of December, what was I supposed to do? They were born out of season at the beginning of a New England winter. I just didn't see them surviving. So I fed them.

And yes, I know that cat populations tend to increase exponentially, and what that means down the road. Still, I didn't see any options. Well, any moral options.

Two of the three are still here; one of them disappeared around the end of March, and I assume it was killed. The two that are left have been given the working titles of 'Smudge' and 'Splotch' because of their facial markings. Splotch, especially, has this funny face with what looks like a drip of India ink right down her nose.

See?



They aren't exactly tame, Smudge and Splotch, but they do sleep on the doorstep, just by the glass door, where I can see them at night. Splotch will even purr when I talk to her, though she runs away when I approach her outside.

In late March their mother of course had another litter; this time, though, either she only had one, or only one survived. This little guy (or girl; I can't tell yet) is probably just coming up on five weeks old right now, and is the fattest roundest roly-poliest chubbiest thing you will ever see. He is sublimely, ridiculously, outlandishly cute. I mean, I know, that's what kittens do for a living, is be so adorable that you simply cannot resist feeding them. Still, Holy Mother of the Gods, look at this:



So, you're asking, just what-all has this to do with hoarding? Well, because it always comes back to those rusty hunks of rusty rust, the junk cars of this place.

Now Splotch is a little odd. She's not even full grown, yet she's of a distinctly round shape. I figured she was just getting too much chow, and started to cut back (they will all eventually have to revert to catching the mouses all on their own anyhow, or, at least, that is The Plan). My mother, however, wondered if she might be pregnant herself. I have been watching her, with this in mind, but she didn't seem to be getting any bigger.

Last night around midnight when I put some food out in the downstairs breezeway the little grey and white chubby kitten came running up to me. He does this, as he quite likes the chow; and he lets me pat him while he stands there with all four feet in the bowl. He will, in fact, even purr as I pat him. But after he'd eaten a bit he wandered back into the downstairs garage and started mewing. It was strange. What? I asked him, What's wrong? But he kept mewing.

Thing was his mews sounded funny. They sounded, well, double. Like two kittens were mewing at the same time.

So I walked over to where he was. Sure enough, the extra mews were coming from the car, the yellowish MG Midget, one of my dad's junk hoarded cars.

There in the back, where there really isn't a back seat, in an area still filled with rusty junk, were three newborn kittens, fallen down behind the driver's-side seat. I could just about see them.

Splotch not only was pregnant, she'd gone and had her kittens. In the back of a junk car. Of course!

I folded the driver's seat forward a little and fished them out. If I hadn't been able to pull the seat forward I don't know that I would have been able to get to them; as it was there wasn't room for a mother cat to get herself in there to rescue them. They were wet-looking, very squirmy, and still had their umbilical cords. As far as I could tell there were three, and once I put them in a box lined with a blanket they quieted right down.

I couldn't see Splotch anywhere, but I could hear someone growling. So I put the box in the front seat of the MG, not far from where she'd had them, and assumed she would find them once I left.

I then went and looked up everything I could find about newborn kittens. I know that if they are not fed within the first twenty-four hours they won't live, and I was worried. I researched emergency formula, and what it takes (a lot!) to bottle-feed newborn abandoned kittens, just in case it came to that.

When I went out an hour later one of the kittens was gone. I assumed that Splotch had found it and taken it somewhere she thought more suitable. They never like the nice nests humans make for them.

But when I came back just before going to bed the two kittens were still there, and hadn't been moved. Ai yi. And while I figured she wasn't far, how on earth was I to find her amid all the junk that is still there? We've made some inroads in cleaning out the downstairs garage, but there are still corners that are inaccessible. Well, inaccessible to humans.

So I stepped over by the other car, the Citroën by the front of the MG, and just listened.

And there it was. A loud purring. A very loud purring, the kind a mother cat makes when nursing.

It was coming from under the hood of the MG.

You know, where the engine is.

I had no idea how that was even possible, as an engine is not exactly enclosed, and has all these tangled bits and air pockets and just what the Hell? But I went and got a flashlight anyway. Now the front end of that car is missing some bits, having been in an accident; so I could shine some light in there from the front, without opening the hood. I couldn't see anything, but when I aimed the flashlight at certain areas the purr changed to a warning growl.

Eventually I had no choice but to open the hood, though I didn't want to disturb her.

And there she was, up by the dashboard, in what amounted to a little metal box; Tara tells me it is actually the battery compartment, though there is no battery in there now.

I was afraid that she'd take off; but she seemed willing to stay put despite the growling.

So I picked up one of the other newborns, and brought it to her. She growled some more at me, but seemed very interested in the kitten. I wasn't sure quite what to do with it; I thought she might take it herself but apparently she didn't want to get too close to me, so in the end I dropped it next to her. (Turns out it wasn't far at all, just a few inches, though at the time I had no idea where she even was or what it looked like). I did the same with the second kitten, and soon heard little mews and slurping noises.

So, crisis averted.

I'm guessing though that Splotch is not the brightest bulb. For one thing, apparently she can only count as high as one. For another, really, inside the engine compartment of a rusty old hunk of rusty rust is an appropriate nest? What?

We tried to get some pictures, but I didn't want to disturb her by opening the hood again. I'm afraid she'll relocate and only take one of the kittens with her if I do, to some place I really can't get to. But we did get some video:

Crazy thing. I wish them well.

Catch-Up

We got so much stuff done Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday that I am frankly still playing catch-up with reporting on it here at Tetanus Burger. So, in addition to getting the south end of the cellar cleaned up on Monday, on Tuesday after the iron and metal run we went back in and starting going after the bench along the west wall too. We got a good start to sorting all the stuff there, and actually got down in large part to the bare counter top, which, holy moly, I was then actually able to wash. Like with soap. Though looking at the pictures I can see that we've still got more to do, especially in those shelves/cabinets which are missing the doors.

The before and after:





It's odd, though. When I look in the pictures I can see how much more there is still to do; but when I'm down in the cellar, down in the reality of it, it looks so much better than it was. I'd think it would be the other way around for some reason.

At any rate, even if there is still more to do (and there is, boy howdy, there is), getting that bench cleared is important for another reason: it actually makes the place functional. We now have a clear, well-lit space to sort things, like, say, tools, which are being put aside for later sorting. For example, we're throwing away the obviously broken or hopelessly rusty and useless tools of course. But there are still useful ones, too. So for now we are setting them aside (well except for all those damned hand saws; those were just an abomination unto the eyes of the Gods) so that later we can look at the forty or fifty screwdrivers and pick out a set or two, because I can see having, say, a decent set in the house, and another in the garage/woodshop.

So: functionality is also a very worthy goal.

On Wednesday we did another iron run, but we were kind of tired of it all and so were planning on taking a break from it; but stuff came up. Namely, the furnace decided to not work Monday night, as in, when I turned the thermostat up—nothing. Now I figured it probably wasn't anything major, since the fool thing is only four years old; but the next day my mother actually took the initiative and called the furnace guy, who walked her through resetting it, after which it has been working just fine. I don't know if kicking up all that dust in the cellar had anything to do with it, like, say, clogging something up, or if it's all just a coincidence. Anyhow, the furnace guy is supposed to come over to 'service' the thing to make sure it's okay.

But he also wanted to get to the tank.

The tank is in the downstairs breezeway. Remember this?



There is an oil tank in that space, believe it or not, though it is completely hidden in the picture by the stuff in front of it. So all that had to move, even though we, really, were kind of done with the cleaning stuff thing for that day.

But there wasn't anything for it. The thing, though, was that what appears to be a table over there on the right is actually an old Bolens tractor, which actually still works and may prove useful for pushing dirt around, since one of the other things my father hoarded was piles of rocks and even, get this, piles of sand the town had cleaned off the roads. So there is a bit of landscaping and smoothing that it might come in handy for, though we are not, at present, at that stage of things. Anyway, the thing that looks like a table is the old Bolens with stuff piled on top of it, and with a hunk of plywood thrown over it so that more junk could be put on that. Here's a better look at it:



Can you see the top edge of the oil tank lurking there behind all the junk? Not really? Don't worry if you can't.

But of course first the Bolens had to have a place to go. So, while there was as always quite a bit of the usual sorting of various grades of trash, there was also some additional shuffling that had to be done. For example, to move the Bolens the old Honda motorcycle had to find a new home, since it was in the way; but to do that meant Tara had to first clean out a corner full of junk, which she did quite nicely, and which involved some of the ever-cathartic smashy-smashing of crappy old cabinets. Here's the corner before and after, with the motorcycle moved into it:





And the corner the Bolens was going into had to be rearranged a bit, too (though I didn't get a picture of that).

So we sorted and rearranged (and in the process filled up some more bins with iron for another iron run), and eventually got down to the Bolens itself.

Now the problem with that was that one of the tires was blown out. Not just flat, but wouldn't hold air. And the thing was damned heavy, let me tell you. But we got it moved (again, when Tara decides something is going to happen or an immovable object will move, seriously, the Universe hups-to, yes ma'am) and finally got it over where it needed to go. Here's the before again, with the after following:





Oy. That was a lot of work. So, when we were kind of toying with the idea of doing another iron run today (Friday), we both just kind of looked at each other and said, Nah.