Blog: Reflections from Rural Route 2

 

Thursday, November 27, 2008, 07:37

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! It is nearly 1 a.m. Wednesday night/Thursday morning as I am writing this. And I am waiting for peach pie and pecan pie to come out of the oven to take to Thanksgiving dinner at my niece's house. Randy and I went to Thanksgiving Eve service at our little white country church just down the road Wednesday evening. Then I went to work baking pies after we got home and ate some supper and I got various kitties squared away for antibiotic (my spay and neuter patients in the basement) and subcutaneous fluid.

The last of my older cats, a cute little calico named Billie, who turned 14 this month and was the Thanksgiving Kitten, has been dehydrated and not eating very well. I don't know if her kidneys are failing or if something else is wrong with her. It has been difficult to get her rehydrated. Of course, Billie is not a very willing patient, either. The other cats who have needed subcutaneous fluid have been more cooperative. Randy has to hold onto her very tightly while I administer the fluids. And that is proving difficult right about now because Randy smashed his little finger Tuesday changing the valve stem on the tractor tire. He ended up going to the clinic on Wednesday morning. X-rays did not show any break in the finger, but it is swollen and purple and now he's supposed to wear a splint on it for the next two weeks.

I suppose I ought to take Billie into the vet clinic but I'm a little short on funds right now after paying for the spay and neuter surgery and the vaccinations for the five barn kittens. If it's her kidneys, they won't tell me to do anything more than what I am doing now by giving her subcutaneous Lactated Ringers. If there is some more drastically wrong with her, a cancer of some sort, there wouldn't be much they could do for her anyway, I suppose. She doesn't have any obvious signs of illness other than a lack of appetite and becoming dehydrated. She was always an exceptionally healthy cat before this.

Anyway, after I eat Thanksgiving dinner, I suppose I had better plan on going for twice as long a walk on Friday. And maybe Saturday, too. I wonder what it is that makes people think they have to eat so much on Thanksgiving? Maybe it's because we have such abundance and much to be grateful for. We really do you know. Compared to many other countries in the world, even the poorest here in this country have quite a bit. . .

LeAnn R. Ralph

 

Tuesday, November 25, 2008, 19:26

Nervous Nelly

By Monday morning, my old Morgan-Arab cross had calmed down somewhat. He still wasn't very comfortable but felt better than he did over the weekend. Gun deer season started here in Wisconsin Saturday morning, and the gunshots and people walking around in blaze orange always makes Kajun very nervous. Not that I blame him. Gunshots make me nervous, too.

I fed the horses Saturday morning and then had to be in town by 8 a.m. I went to a craft sale at the local senior citizen center as a vendor. The craft sale is a fund-raiser for the senior citizen's group. The building is a former restaurant that was donated to the group by one of the elderly residents of the village. After her husband died, she said it was what he would have wanted her to do with the money. She's in the nursing home now. She's a sweet lady, the mother of one of my classmates in high school. She still recognizes me. I talked to her when our church choir sang at the nursing home a few weeks ago.

Anyway, I got home from the craft sale in the afternoon and then went out to check on the horses. Isabelle seemed fine. Kajun had not ate any of his hay and had not drank any of his water. He was far too nervous. I knew he was extremely nervous because there was horse manure scattered everywhere around his little pasture. Usually he is quite fastidious about piling it in two or three different designated spots.

By later in the afternoon, my old horse still had not eaten his hay and had not drank any of his water. Since I was not home all morning and for part of the afternoon, I have no idea how much shooting went on around the house, but it must have been quite a bit for Kajun to be so nervous. While I was out feeding the horses in the afternoon, a deer came running across our hayfield. That really sent Kajun for a loop. It probably was not the first deer he had seen running during the day. I held my breath as the deer streaked across the hayfield, headed for the neighbor's pines to the west. I thought, "Don't go in there. They hunt, too!" I was hoping I wouldn't hear a gunshot. And I did not. So with any luck at all, the poor thing made it to safety where it could rest and calm down.

When I went out to check on the horses before I went to bed Saturday night, I was relieved to see Kajun had eaten his hay and had drank almost a whole bucket of water. Horses, despite their size and strength, have delicate digestive systems, and something like not eating or drinking for a day, combined with being nervous, could cause colic. And Kajun doesn't need to go through a bad colic right now. Not at his age.

I am happy to say my barn kittens seem to be doing pretty well after their surgery. Rosie and Petunia are still coughing somewhat. They are all getting antibiotic twice a day, so I'm hoping that will clear up the pneumonia soon. For whatever it's worth, they appear to be doing all right in Charlie's kennel. They were a little freaked out Tuesday morning when Randy dragged the cloth bags with the tractor chains out of the basement so he could put the chains on the tractor tires. Bags of chains that weigh about 200 pounds make a lot of noise sliding across the concrete floor. I know they were freaked out because they were hiding in the kitty carriers instead of coming out to get something to eat.

I suppose the air compressor did not make them feel anymore comfortable, either. It is noisy. And Randy needed to pump up the tractor tires.

Speaking of tractor tires, you know how one thing always seems to lead to another? At least that's the way it is around here. You start one thing, you see something else that needs to be done, or else something happens so that something else needs to be done, and then, by the time you get all done with it, the day is gone, but the thing you started out doing still isn't done yet.

Well, when Randy pumped up the tractor tires, he discovered the valve stem was broken on one of the back tires. He fiddled around with the valve stem and ended up getting tractor tire fluid all over his pants and shoes. So then it was a matter of changing his clothes and shoes before he could get back to the tractor tire. When he tried to jack up the tire, he discovered the jack wasn't going to do it. He banged the heck out of his little finger in the process. After that, it was a trip to town to get a different jack and to get new valve stems. By early afternoon, he was home again and starting to change the stem.

The tractor is useful for moving large amounts of snow from the driveway, so we want it in good working condition. So far, it does not look as if we are going to get large amounts of snow, but I suppose that could change after a while. The weather pattern has been too dry, though, so I am predicting we will not get much for snow until March, maybe, which is typically a big snow month. It snowed Sunday night, was sunny for a few hours Monday morning and then snowed off and on during the day Monday. But all we got out of it was just a dusting of snow. Usually when Alberta Clippers move through like that, in years when there's more moisture around, we get three or four inches of snow, sometimes more.

LeAnn R. Ralph


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