Lilly the Silly Cat

I'm not sure why kitties squeeze themselves into small spaces and actually sleep there for hours at a time or how they sleep with their heads in the air but they sure are cute when they're doing it!

 This is a little bed I frugally made up for her, John Deere blanket and all.  Nothing but the best for Lilly and do you think she'd lay in it?  Of course not!  She prefers the following...

A box full of newspaper ready for the fire.

 The same box now covered with baler twine that DH brought in from the barn to be added to the fire starting supply box, complete with straw!

Asleep on DH's desk in a small basket about 5" across.  Not only do I wonder how she fits in there but how is it comfortable?!  It's wicker, after all.  (My first attempt at photo shop.)

I can promise you that no cat was injured in the taking of this photo but I know that if Lilly were a human, she would not be impressed with a photo of her licking her own nose being put online!

3 Cute Kitties in the Window

3 cuties waiting at the window! 

 
The cat in the middle we call "The Green-Eyed Monster", shortened recently to Monster.  He and his 2 yellow-eyed brothers were given to us as 6-8 week olds, about 2 years ago.  These kittens looked after each other so amazingly well, licking and cleaning, just as their mother had done.  That is, until they all matured about a year later.  Then 2 of them 'disappeared', dead or run off by the dominant Monster, we don't know which but it was a real shame.  There's room on this farm for all of them and more but apparently adult males don't think so. 

Of the 3 kittens, Monster was the best at jumping onto countertops, the kitchen table, getting into food so quickly before you could stop him but over time he has stopped most of that.  He will sit patiently on the floor like a dog and wait for his piece of food.  He's not a house cat kicked to the barn.  He's a barn cat rescued to the house.  The 3 kitties were so tiny when they came and it was early enough in the spring that there was still snow on the ground and since they no longer had their mother and with both racoons and skunks taking up residence in the barn,  I couldn't leave them in the barn at night.  I would step outside at night and call them and they would come running to sleep in the porch in a warm, blanket-filled box, then return to the barn in the morning to get their fill of mice.  Now, Monster comes to the house in the daytime and sits patiently by the door later to be let out.  He returns to the barn at night to chase his favourite dinner and to keep all his girlfriends company!

The other 2 kitties in the photo are barn cats that were given to us last year.  They came later in the spring, there were 4 of them and my daughter started going to see them everyday and feed them so I had no qualms about leaving them in the barn permanently.  The day of this photo, daughter could not make it to the barn at all but had left extra food the night before.  I guess they missed her cuddling and petting so they came to the house to find her.

 I think I've found me a spot to rest awhile.

 First, let me sniff it...

 ...look for enemies...

 ...take a quick bath before bed...

 ...and that's all.  You can leave me alone now.

 Ahh!!!  Peace and quiet at last! 
And that's the life of our house kitty, Lilly (new name, last name!), found here sleeping in her owner's laundry hamper!

Second Farmhouse - Bats and Renos

Hubby had hoped to leave renovating this house for some time in the future - the distant future, like maybe NEVER!  There was too much work in the barn and the fields to be spending time on the house.  The fields and the barns are where the money is made so it would be like a store owner or manufacturing plant owner saying that he would put off opening the store for a year or getting the plant up and running a year from now while he instead gets his house fixed up.  He would still be needing to make rent or mortgage payments, not have any income and any and all investors would be slightly pissed.  For generations, it seems that ALL of the money went to the farming aspect and none to the house.  Just look at the farmouses of the past century - the wives considered it a big deal to FINALLY get a washroom!

The upstairs bathroom and my toddler son's bedroom were definite must-do's but unfortunately, we had to add a third room.  Something flew past my head one night and scared the crap out of me and my screaming scared the crap out of the poor kids (ages 8 and down).  Hubby was in the barn and there was no way that I was doing anything to get in the way of that bat.  That bat was free to fly anywhere he (she) wanted.  Far be it from me to interfere!  Until hubby got in from the barn, that is -- and then he was even more scared the rest of us!  But being the man of the house and all that - ah forget that.  If he could have left that bat hanging somewhere, he would have but he didn't want to get woken up in the night from one of the kids screaming (or me!) and he didn't want to find it in our room in the night so he got brave and went after it. 

Like lots of people, he'd heard that a badminton racquet would work well.  Wrong!  After trying that method for a while, he gave up and grabbed a towel, swung it and brought the bat down quite easily.  Flushed him down the toilet and that was that -- so we thought.  Over the next few weeks, we got 10 bats and our housecat got 1.  The kids and I were hiding down behind the kitchen peninsula while yet another bat flew back and forth overhead and hubby was, of course, in the barn again.  We were down there praying that bats like to fly high only and never along the ground.  There was no use trying to hide in another room because bats can squeeze into any tiny space and besides, we wanted to know where the bat was when hubby came in because they can be hard to find if they land.   We would peek around the corner of the kitchen cupboards occasionally to keep an eye on his flying progress.  We found him on the floor being eaten by the cat (one good reason to run right out and adopt a cat from a shelter, as if eating all the mice in your house wasn't already a good enough reason!).  There's no way that the cat jumped into the air and caught him so we figured that the bat must have flown into the ceiling fan in the dining room and been knocked to the floor.  I still give full credit to the cat because if he hadn't been there, I would have had to do the dirty work and no thanks! 

I don't believe the old story that bats try to avoid people.  I'm quite convinced that 'our' bats loved to dive-bomb us outside, expecially if we were on the trampoline.  The kids didn't pay much notice to the bats outside but the first time that I got brave enough to jump on the trampoline near dark was also my last and no one can convince me that they were not after me!  Anyway, after 5 or 6 bats, we got to be old hats at bats flying around, we had stopped screaming every time we saw one and we learned to walk around with our heads held high (meaning we were looking up!) while scanning the ceiling and top halves of every wall.  I still get squeamish to this day however, if I hear anything resembling the sound that they make.  If you make 'fish lips' with your lips then make a smacking sound or put your lips and your hand and make a slight sucking sound (I know, I know - that sounds weird!), that's how bats sounded to me.  And I still hate them. 

It took us a while to trace their entrance hole into the house.  We knew by then that there were plenty of them living up in the attic but there were so many places in this old house where the lath and plaster was broken or missing that it was impossible to tell just where they were coming in.  The mystery was solved when hubby saw one actually come through one of many holes in the bedroom adjacent to the upstairs bathroom.  This entire wall had been covered by nice enough looking floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall cupboards and it was only when this bat came out from behind these cupboards that we found the holes (and the beautiful orange and green 60's wallpaper).  So this room also had to be redone at the same time as the other two so in the end, I guess I have to say thank goodness for the bats because now we were renovating a third room!

Sorry, no photos this time.  I figured that you could find your own repulsive photos of bats if you wish.  I just don't have the desire to look at them right now.  They still have that 'ew' factor for me!  I might have stopped screaming every time one flew by but...