Sheila spends her 9 lives wisely

It is said that cats have 9 lives. That refers to the cat’s characteristically reckless behaviour, stemming from its innate curiosity and thrill-seeking instincts. These tendencies for adventure tend to get cats into one mess after another, but they usually, somehow miraculously, escape. At least that’s the way the story goes. They spend one life after another, until one day their fate catches up with them. That may be the typical pattern of a stray or feral cat. But what of the pampered domestic cat? How long does it take them to spend their 9 lives?

Sheila, our rather grouchy barncat-turned-housecat, is 9 years old. She is a rather diminutive little beast, with a tiny head and paws on a rather plump body. Sheila has always hated being picked up. I found her in the bottom of a barrel in the barn one day in the spring of 2010, where she had obviously fallen while her mother was attempting to transport her kittens from one spot to another. Even then, when I scooped her up into my arms, rescuing her from the depths of darkness, she squawked at me, ungratefully.

Every day I went out to the barn to check on the kittens. Tiny little Sheila, the smallest kitten of them all, would march right up to me and growl accusingly. The kittens had runny eyes, so I had to give them eye drops. Most of them were pretty docile but I think I still have the scars around my wrists where Sheila tried to skin me alive. https://theaccidentalfarmwife.blogspot.com/2019/03/a-dog-dictionary-has-300-words.html

When she was old enough to leave her mother, Sheila decided she would use her sharp little claws to pull herself up the steps to the back porch. The next time the patio door slid open, in she went. And she has been our self-proclaimed housecat ever since. She isn’t very friendly, but if you sit really still she will come and sit on the chair or couch beside you. Occasionally she will even venture onto a lap but that doesn’t last for long. The human lap is not to her liking. She prefers the comfort of an overstuffed chair or pillow.

Sheila has always had a bit of a fussy stomach – if you give her too many treats you will see them again. I took her to the vet to get her stomach examined, thinking that might be why she hates being picked up – because her belly hurts. After a thorough examination, the vet confirmed that Sheila is perfectly healthy and does not suffer any particular intestinal disorder. She just tends to overindulge in cat treats, and she is just a grumpy cat.

We have come to know and love Sheila and her negative attitude. It’s just who she is. Which is why I am a bit concerned by her recent behaviour. Often I will be standing at the kitchen counter, preparing something to eat, and the sound and smell attracts the cat. Sheila will then sidle up to me and squawk. If I don’t immediately give her a bite of whatever I am preparing, she will give my calf a little nip and then pounce away to hide. Lately, however, Sheila has been acting in a way that is most unusual and out of character for the grouchiest of cats. Sheila has been coming around, looking for cuddles.

I picked her up and gave her a quick examination. Sure enough, she had a bit of a leaky ear. She was trying to get my attention so that I would help her. I gave her a few doses of antibiotic ear drops and fixed her right up. The next week, she had a runny eye. Maybe she had a cold virus. Again, eye drops seemed to help.

Then the weirdest thing happened. I was sitting on the couch and Sheila jumped up onto my lap. Instead of turning away from me, she put her head on my chest, as if she wanted to be petted. It suddenly occurred to me that our grouchy little cat is entering her senior years. Maybe her personality is undergoing a bit of a softening as a result.

 

A dog dictionary has 300 words

The Farmer read somewhere that a dog can remember and understand up to 300 words. Our trainer told us it is best to group them in no more than two or three words at a time, for better understanding. For example, I can point and say “out” and Fergus immediately backs his caboose up and out of the kitchen or whatever forbidden area he has ventured into. The Farmer insists on using full sentences: “Fergus Fisher. Would you please get out of my kitchen…” and wonders why the dog just sits there drooling.

Since he was a pup I have taught the Ferg to sit and wait until I am finished filling his food bowl, before he can eat. I hold up one finger and say: “Waaaaaaait…..” and then I point at the food and say, “Ok.” I use the same command when I get him to lie down and wait for a treat. He is very good at following this direction. So much so that when I took him for our first leashed walk in ages (normally he just runs off leash in the yard), I tried the “wait…ok” command to get him to slow down and stop pulling me and it worked. Which is a good thing because he is so strong now he can pull me along the ice and off my feet in one yank of the lead.

Fergus knows all the basic words to do with eating, playing and….bathing, which he has actually come to enjoy. It took us a few months to figure out that he is nervous getting in and out of the tub because it is slippery. He also doesn’t like the water running while he is in the tub. He isn’t much for the shower nozzle either. Like a toddler, he prefers to have his shampoo rinsed with the bucket-over-the-head method. Followed immediately by a dog treat. If you use this process, he doesn’t run and hide when he hears the word, “bath.” He actually tried to get in the tub himself the other day.

Fergus also seems to know the names of his favourite humans. You only have to say “Paulina” once and he’s up off his bed, nose pressed to the window or asking to be let outside so he can sit and wait in the driveway for her car. He can hear her car coming from a good 2k down the road, the noise of the tires crunching over the icy gravel much clearer to his ears than to ours. She is the one who gets down on the floor with him and lets him play-fight and wrestle with her until he is exhausted. He thinks she is awesome.

Perhaps Fergus’ most wonderful word in the dog dictionary is “ball.” This is the only toy he has been unable to destroy. Every other chew toy or stuffie has been de-squeaked, decapitated and de-fluffed within ten minutes of presentation. Much as I would like my four-legged child to have toys to play with, I’m tired of throwing money away. The “chuck-it” hard rubber ball is the only thing worth my dollars.

So we have a closet full of hard rubber chuck-it balls in orange, blue and glow-in-the-dark (but lose in the snow) white. I have a plastic throwing arm that I use to pitch the ball much farther than I could with my own weak, uncoordinated limbs. This is how I exercise my dog when I don’t have time to go for a walk and the weather is inhospitable for a hike in the back 40. Ferg knows the meaning of “go get it!”

I work from home one day a week, and Fergus makes sure that I give my eyes a break from the screen every hour to throw the ball for him. As a result, he has also learned, “no, Fergus. Mama is WORKING.” Not his favourite word. To Fergus, it means go away and find something to play with on your own because I am too busy to play with you. Unfortunately if he feels slighted by this brushing off, he often goes and takes his frustration out on the nearest potted plant, lawn chair or snow shovel, depending on the season.

Approaching two years of age, Fergus likely has a few dozen words left before we fill up his dictionary. We shall choose wisely, and perhaps throw a few funny ones in there, for our own entertainment.

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Just a girl from South Porcupine, Ontario.

Mabel was born in 1923. In the year of her birth, a number of newsworthy events took place. Insulin was introduced, changing the world for diabetics. The first issue of Time Magazine was published in March, and Warner Brothers’ film studio opened. Yankee Stadium hosted its first ball game later that spring, and someone in Sweden got the first home refrigerator. The Civil War ended in Ireland, where Mabel’s family history originates. In a foreshadowing of things to come, Adolf Hitler led the Nazi party in a failed coup attempt in Germany.

On the home front, folks were crowding movie theatres to watch “The Ten Commandments” with Theodore Roberts and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” with Lon Chaney. Women were wearing drop-waist dresses with straight lines and they rarely left the house without a tilted hat on their heads. For a night on the town, men wore something called a Broadway hat with a three-piece suit under a moleskin coat.

The first portable radio was released in 1923 but in South Porcupine, Ontario, where Mabel was born, her parents likely first heard the musical magic of jazz great Louis Armstrong on the family Victrola. The community was home to a gold mine, and most families in the area were very familiar with the mining way of life. It was hard work, in a climate that was hard living. People from this northern town are known to have character, and a sense of humour.

At the age of 18, Mabel met a young railway worker by the name of Garnet. They were a handsome couple, and far more mature than the teens of today. They got married and moved to Ottawa, where they settled down to raise two sons.

An administrator with a skill for numbers, Mabel worked her way up the corporate ladder in finance. Her strong will and belief in herself enabled her to thrive in a male-dominated environment that was not exactly supportive of women. A natural leader and problem solver, she thought carefully before speaking with confidence. The men who might otherwise try to take credit for her work had no choice but to get the heck out of Mabel’s way. At the peak of her career, she was head of Finance for the Federal Court of Canada.

Mabel is my grandmother. I always thought of her as slightly intimidating, the matriarch of the Leeson family. You certainly didn’t want to let her down. But as the years went on, I realized what my Dad said was true: “do not underestimate your Grandmother.”

Full disclosure: I had no idea what he meant by this, at first. But as I went through a number of dramatic and difficult stages in my own life, I always found Grandma to be that constant, reassuring presence that I could turn to. And believe it or not, she never passed judgement. She was never shocked or disappointed, much to my surprise.

When I was having trouble in my first marriage, Grandma showed up at the door to remind me that we Leesons don’t just give up when times get tough. But a few months later when I had to admit all the counselling in the world couldn’t solve my prolems and I called it quits, she simply said, “Meh. I’m surprised you stayed as long as you did. You certainly tried.”

It also amazes me that Grandma knows exactly what is going on in the world. She has always been a traveller, so she has been exposed to other cultures and races her whole life. She has a very practical and fair world view, unlike many of her generation. And I think it helps that she does not get her updates on world events from Fox News. Mabel sees the world through the eyes of her 7 grandchildren, and 15 grandchildren. She is up to date on the popular culture of today, but she can also easily tell us about the way things were because, unlike many people at the age of 96, she has not lost her ability to bring forth her memories.

I’m looking forward to spending an afternoon with Grandma someday soon. We will have a lunch of peameal bacon and tomatoes on toast with mustard, potato chips and gingerale. We will get out the box of photos and I will listen to the stories that each one brings forward from Mabel’s memory bank. I have my favourites. Maybe this time she will tell me some of hers.

Happy Birthday, Mabel. May your 97^th year be happy, healthy and full of beautiful surprises.

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Mabel with Paulina at her wedding - photo by Elenora Luberto

Valentine, be mine...

“…And I will make thee beds of roses and a thousand fragrant posies.” ~ from The Passionate Shepherd to his Love. Christopher Marlowe (1564 – 1593).

My Shepherd is just as romantic, in his own way. He buys me flowers on our anniversary, although I prefer the wildflowers he picks for me when he’s out patrolling the property on his ATV. He writes me poetry, but his compositions are closer to a dirty limerick than a soulful sonnet. My Shepherd knows what I like and what I don’t like, and he takes both categories into consideration when trying to show me that he cares.

I don’t like paying way too much money to sit in a restaurant on Valentine’s Day, crowded with too many other people who have been likewise pressured into practicing this silly tradition. I don’t like being rushed through a meal, no matter how delicious, so that the next sitting of couples can have our table. My Shepherd knows this, so we normally take off to the sunny south during the week of February 14^th. We usually celebrate Valentine’s Day, coincidentally, with a glass of wine on a beach somewhere. But not this year.

This year we are home for Valentine’s Day, so we are doing something a little different. This year we are taking note of this romantic occasion by ordering food from our favourite caterer and enjoying it at home, with our own selection of music and candles, followed by a sappy movie of my choosing. But we don’t really feel pressured to do the whole commercialized Valentine’s Day thing. I don’t want him spending money on gifts and flowers. Lucky for me, he is my Valentine all year long.

Take a lesson from my Shepherd. Here’s how you show your sweetheart that you care, when you live on a farm:

-          Take your boots off outside - and your clothes too, if they are smelling of manure or carry half the soil of the garden on them.

-          You might have to hose yourself off before coming in the house too, or jump in the pool. You work in the barn; you don’t want to live in one.

-          Fend for yourself at times. You don’t have to do all your own cooking but everyone appreciates someone who can make their own meals instead of marching into the house and announcing that they are starving to death, therefore making it the other person’s problem.

-          Entertain yourself! There’s nothing more exhausting than being made to feel responsible for another person’s quality of life. Get yourself a healthy hobby.

-          When your mate is going to be late, start dinner without being asked. They’re late. Chances are they will also be hungry.

-          Start the laundry, pick up the (grand)kids’ toys, run the vacuum and do the dishes once in a while. Every person in the household has their own set of responsibilities but if you turn the tables occasionally and do more than your usual share, you will get noticed.

-          Listen to your partner. We don’t need you to fix all our problems, but we do need you to hear them. You would be surprised how much money we save on therapy – and alcohol – if you learn to practice active listening.

-          Surprise your mate. It doesn’t have to be a cruise or a new car – unless she needs one. It could be tickets to a rock concert, or a day at the spa. Think of what she really likes and do it. For no reason except that you want to see her smile.

-          Did she wake you up early again with her crashing around in the dark, trying to get ready for work? Pull a robe and some boots on and go out to start her car for her. Brush the snow off it while you’re out there. You’re up anyway.

-          Try something new, just because your partner wants to do it. This doesn’t have to be bungee jumping or skydiving. It might be ballroom dancing though. Love means moving outside your comfort zone for the other person.

-          Make concessions, break your own rules, look the other way when others are breaking them, and pick your battles wisely. Put up with her annoying friends and family members (not that she has any!) and go along to that event that would not be your first choice, just because she asked you. These are all ways to show your partner that you love them.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours – all year long.

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Surviving Snowmageddon on the farm

I’ve just finished shovelling a foot of snow off the front step, and I pitched Ferg’s beloved ball for him a few times to give him some exercise. The dog will spend the rest of the afternoon curled up on a sheepskin rug in front of the wood stove, while I putter around the house, preparing for Sunday dinner. It’s Snowmaggedon on the farm.

We may not get too many guests venturing out to our remote farm today, even if the snowplows have cleared the road, because it’s just too cold. The weather man says this is the coldest snowstorm we have had in 100 years, at an average -23 degrees. Normally we get that kind of cold on a sunny winter day – not a snowy one.

It is nice to finally see the snow this winter. It forms a barrier of insulation around the house, blocking the wind and sealing drafts. It has the same effect on a barn. You pray for lots of snow when you have animals giving birth in winter, for this reason. There’s nothing worse than a bitter, biting wind blasting across the pasture and through the cracks in the barn walls, freezing the baby animals inside.

The trick to a creating a warm barn is to pack the animals in closely together. They warm up the place with their body heat. Cows don’t mind the cold, and they give off plenty of heat so if you can host your goats or sheep in pens surrounded by cows, you’ve got it made. It will be warm as a sauna in there.

One day several winters past I went to check on my baby lambs and the blanket that we hang outside that room in the barn had frozen to the wall. I hurried to pull it loose, worried that my newborns had frozen to death in their sleep. But as I opened the door to the lambing room, a wall of damp heat hit me in the face. It felt like a steam room in there.

In every pen, a fat ewe lay comfortably chewing her cud, her babies tucked in beside her. That was a very snowy winter. The snow had formed a solid blanket around the barn, and we had a really good lambing season with a low mortality rate.

One of the worst lambing seasons we had began during a winter of very little snow and very low temperatures. When it did snow, it blew right through the cracks in the barn walls, forming small drifts in the lambing pens. We hung blankets on windows and doors and stapled feed bags to the walls but without the barrier of snow outside to insulate the barn, we just couldn’t keep it warm enough.

That year I was constantly bundling wet newborn baby lambs up in towels and running them to the house, tucked inside my barn coat. There I carried them down to the basement, where the Farmer had set up a playpen with a heat lamp over it. I rubbed their little bodies dry and thawed out their frozen feet before carrying them back to the barn to meet their exhausted and overwhelmed mothers.

We had to put heat lamps in the pens, to keep the lambs alive. We turned them off at night, though, because the Farmer was afraid that one of the ewes might pull the hot lamp down into the hay, setting it alight. Hopefully someone has invented a cool-touch heat lamp since our lambing days – or a better way to keep animals warm in a drafty barn.

Ideally if you are raising animals in a Canadian winter, you will erect a coverall barn or Quonset that you can heat if necessary. Big Sky Ranch, our local animal sanctuary, used donations to build a closed barn for their rescue animals. This winter, however, they have to turn on the heat to keep their 100 shelter animals alive. It will be a costly season, so if you can spare a few dollars, send it their way. Or if you just want to look around the house or barn and see what items you can spare for donation, head to their webpage for their wish list.

On our own farm, we got smart and locked up the ram until December so the babies wouldn’t be born until April. He wasn’t pleased but we had a lot more healthy lambs born in springtime.

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This winter is for the birds

                                                                  

Maybe the birds know what’s coming better than we do. They seem to be more voracious than usual, at the bird feeder. I have a rather large lantern-style feeding station, and my troupe of chickadees and blue jays can empty that thing in just about forty-eight hours. I think that’s supposed to mean it’s going to be a long, cold winter. The birds know these things.

I have one feeder hanging on the side porch where the cats can watch from the window. I cleared them a spot on the side table where they sit and comment on the proceedings outside. The cats make a weird clucking noise when they see the birds. Sammy fell off the table today, startled by a jay that appeared to be flying straight for him. He gave me a dirty look as I laughed at him.

The other feeder is outside my kitchen window so I can watch the birds while I do dishes. On the window sill I have two small books: Peterson’s Field Guide of Eastern Birds, and the Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Familiar Birds of North America. When a new feathered friend pops up, I try to find them in the books.

I’m not much of a bird-watcher. I don’t go on bird-watching hikes or excursions or anything. I just like to know what is visiting my feeder. It used to be mostly blue jays and chickadees. Now I get the occasional rose-breasted grosbeak. It’s amazing how the sudden sight of an unfamiliar bird can take your breath away. Especially when it’s uniquely coloured, like the grosbeak, which appears to have received a splat of red paint on its chest by a painter’s wet brush.

A few weeks ago we had a family of yellow birds at the feeder. I’m going to suggest that they were some kind of warbler. I guess the next step in my bird-watching is to listen for the individual birdcall so that I can confirm my identifications.

This morning we had special guests, when a couple of cardinals stopped by the feeder. Their red feathers make a beautiful sight against the white backdrop of snow. When you see cardinals it’s supposed to mean you are being visited by the spirit of someone you lost. I’m not sure who came up with that idea but I think it’s a lovely sentiment. And we only see the red birds once or twice a season.

We seem to get different birds every year. That makes it interesting. I get tired of watching the blue jays bully the chickadees away from the feeder. And that idiot woodpecker is getting on my nerves. He has pecked open the side of the feeder so that the seeds leak out. Then he takes them and shoves them in a crack that he created in the wood trim under our bedroom window. Just make yourself at home, bird.

As the winter wears on and the birds come to rely on my feeders, I notice they are staking out their territory. The bigger birds are at the lantern feeder outside my kitchen window. The smaller chickadees are at the long tube feeder outside the cats’ window. This is undoubtedly the safer of the two feeders for the birds (despite the voyeuristic cats), because the other feeder is on the back porch. The neighbour’s cat, unlike my own pampered felines, doesn’t mind the cold. He leaps up onto the porch railing and sits rock still under the feeder, waiting for a feathered snack. As far as I can tell, he hasn’t fooled one yet. They keep their distance, squawking at him from the cedar tree until he gets bored or hungry and goes home.

The Farmer has a live trap for squirrels on the back porch. It’s right beside the feeder, where they are often spotted hanging out, stealing a snack. The other day I was working in the kitchen when I heard a rhythmic banging noise. I looked out the window and saw a blue jay, stuck in the live trap. I had to move quickly to save him before he damaged one of his wings. He was panicking, thrashing around in there.

The Farmer wasn’t very happy to see that I dismantled his live traps, but I can’t take the chance of a bird getting caught in there again. The long, cold Eastern Ontario winter is hard enough for them. I’m trying to make them as comfortable as possible.

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Shall We Dance?

Multiple messages were piling up, unread, in my Messenger inbox. I rarely check that file, so by the time I finally saw them, they were at least two weeks old. I almost missed my chance to be part of something really fun.

I was a little put off by the first message I read: “Hi Diana. Our mutual friend (Samantha!) suggested I contact you regarding an event for the Volunteer Centre of St. Lawrence-Rideau. Can you please call my cell when you have a moment?”

Hmm. How ominous. The second message was not much better: “Hi Diana…I know I am trying to reach you at a busy time of year; we all have so much on the go. I was wondering if you might find a few minutes to call my cell this weekend…?”

I’m lucky the poor woman didn’t give up on me. She was only trying to recruit volunteers to take part in the 8^th Annual Dancing Stars of Leeds Grenville. I guess our friend Samantha told her I rarely turn down an opportunity to dance – or to help out a local charity, when asked. And my mother always said, if someone gets up the courage to ask you to dance, you say yes! But of course this isn’t exactly what she was referring to.

I have always been a dancer, in my own mind. When I was a little girl growing up on George Street in Kemptville, my sister and I (and a handful of neighbourhood kids) used to put on front lawn ‘shows’ for the grownups and any passing cars. These were mostly our own version of freestyle interpretive dance, set to whatever song happened to be blaring from my father’s radio. We had to be good, and fast, putting all of our best moves in a short 3-minute song, in order to keep the adult audience’s attention. Dad would laugh, shake his head after a few minutes, butt out his Export Plain and head back into the house.

As a young teenager, my best friend Stephanie and I choreographed elaborate dances to mix tapes that we created by running to the radio and pressing the ‘record’ button as soon as we heard the first strains of our favourite songs. Each tune was missing the first few bars, sometimes more, depending on the distance we had to run to get to the radio. Occasionally we actually got to perform some of these dances for a ‘real’ audience, at a summer camp talent night or a school variety show. I seem to remember playing the part of one of the Pointer Sisters (Neutron Dance), along with a shoulder-padded Janet Jackson (Yes, I did “Nasty Boy.” Not my finest hour).

As the years went on and I had children of my own, I hosted a “daily dance hour” where we would turn up the radio and rock out to our own reflections in the big bay window. Again I suspect we entertained neighbours who were out walking their dogs, my 3 little girls and I. It was a great way to tire them out before bed, while waiting for Daddy to come home.

Throughout my life, I rarely missed an opportunity to dance. I would be first on the floor and last to leave when the ugly lights came on.  

On two separate occasions, I had organized dance lessons. At the age of eight, I was a ballet student at a class held in the old Leslie Hall. I just remember feeling extremely awkward, eternally inflexible, and completely intimidated by the instructor, who seemed to really hate her job. I didn’t last long.

Flash forward to 2016, and I was a dance student again – this time at The Workshop Dance Studio in Kemptville. I walked in wanting to learn some sort of clogging or step dancing – but Nancy talked me into trying tap. Lemme tell ya – it’s harder than it looks! Life got busy and I didn’t get to continue with those classes either, but it would appear that I have been given another chance.

I have been paired up with Robert Noseworthy of Westerra Homes (and the Kemptville District Hospital Foundation) to ‘compete’ in this light-hearted dance contest. The audience will cast their votes with loonies (because let’s face it, we’re all a little loony), and the Volunteer Centre will benefit from the fundraising and exposure.

We will be rehearsing once or twice a week for the next two months, with our performance on March 1^st. At the very least, it should be a heck of a lot of fun.

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