After our brief outbreak of sub-zero temperatures a few days ago, we're back in the 20s during the day … and yesterday morning was bright and sunny, adding to the warmth. Alayne got this shot of two of our barn cats, Smoke and his sister Skitter, soaking in the sun on the hay. I'm not sure where their sister Smudge was … most likely still on their heated bed in the igloo inside the barn.
We purchased this winter's hay supply from our next-door neighbor, and we're storing it in his hay barn just down the road. So every couple of days, Kate drives over, loads anywhere from 45 to 60 bales on the truck, and then we pick the bales off the truck as we need them. And in the meantime, as you can see, the cats make great use of it for sunning themselves!
Now, some people keep asking why we don't have more blog posts on cats. That's because we only have two disabled cats left … blind Cinder and wobbly Mink. The other cats have either all been adopted in the past year, like Herbie and Molly, or we've lost them to medical causes (we lost Tibby last fall to a similar sudden death like her brother Fibby). We had been down to just a handful in recent years in any case, so it didn't take much to get to two remaining ones. At this point we probably won't be taking any more cats, for a couple of reasons.
One is Alayne's allergies to cats have become worse in the past few years, making it more difficult for her to step in and take over cat care in my absence, or even to help me with medicating. The gloves and mask aren't always sufficient anymore.
The other reason is that we rarely get requests to take disabled cats — we don't know if that's because many shelters are so overrun with healthy, adoptable cats that the disabled cats don't get that extra effort at placement, or because there are places dedicated to disabled cats already and they're the ones who get contacted first, or whether more people hold on to their cats once they become disabled. Probably a combination of all three. The requests we do get are generally for the behavior problems — the spraying cat, for example — or incontinence issues (unable to control bladder and bowels).
For both those reasons, we've decided not to take in any more cats at this stage. So Cinder and Mink are it, along with the sunning barn cats!
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