Flying Blind

A few days ago, I heard a commotion in the kitchen, and went to investigate. As expected, one of our cats had caught something and brought it in through the cat door to play with it in the house. There was a wild bird trembling on the windowsill, and one of my cats poised to jump up after it.

I shooed the cat away and reached gently for the bird. To my surprise, it did not even duck away as my hand approached. I picked the poor thing up and examined it more closely.

Although it didn't appear badly injured, its beak was clogged with mud and blood. Its left eye was covered in a droplet of blood, and its right eye was plastered shut with a mat of mud and feathers. Presumably, when the cat had pounced on it, the bird's face had been driven into the mud, leaving it completely blinded and helpless.

I scraped the mud off the beak so the bird could breath properly again. Then I tried to wipe the eyes clean with a damp paper towel, with not very much luck. I tried gently rinsing the eyes with water. Still no avail.

At this point, I was starting to wonder whether the eyes were glued shut because the eyeballs beneath the muck had been punctured. Not a pretty thought to imagine!

But I figured that a blind bird was doomed for sure, so I couldn't make matters worse by at least attempting to help. I finally got the blood cleaned out of the left eye, and was happy to see that the only injury there was a tiny rip in the lower eyelid. Nothing serious.

So then I started working on the right eye. It was absolutely glued shut and plastered over with something that I hoped wasn't goo from a pierced eyeball. One tiny piece at a time, I picked off the bits of feather/mud/hay that had formed a solid layer over the bird's eye, hoping I was not going to be looking into an empty, oozing socket when I was done.

Luckily, the bird stayed still, and I got all the gross stuff off its face. And there, underneath, was an uninjured eye!

Nothing else seemed to be wrong with the bird, except for a mild case of shock. So I put it outside (in a place where the cats could not possibly get to it) to recover in private. When I went back a little while later, it was gone, so I guess it recovered and flew away!

Separation Anxiety

I finally got around to splitting up the horse herd today. The two older fillies and the two yearlings by my stallion all have their basic manners learned, but the two Art Deco yearlings are still not even what I would consider fully halter-trained.

In part, that's because I knew I wasn't going to sell them, so I worked with all the sales horses first. But in part, it's just because they have much more challenging temperaments.

Even with patience and persistence, they have not been making progress while living loose with the rest of the herd. So today I lured them into separate paddocks, where they will be in a more confined and manageable space---apart from the influence of the herd---so that I can work with them properly.

It was like weaning day all over again. Once they realized that they were alone, both Grace and Glory, started hollering, and all the other horses were running around in the field calling back. Lots of neighing and galloping for much of the afternoon. A little separation anxiety can be a useful tool to adjust a horse's attitude.

Deliberately choosing a non-confrontational task that would put me in their vicinity for a good stretch of time, I spent a couple of hours out there, scrubbing all the water troughs and rearranging them so that they were in the right places for all the newly rearranged animals. While I was in their paddocks, both Grace and Glory immediately began acting much more anxious to be near me, now that their other companions were gone.

This is the change of attitude I was hoping for, the start of a willingness to acknowledge ME as their "boss mare" instead of constantly flaunting away, saying "I don't have to. You're not the boss of me! I go where the herd goes, not where you go."

I spent a lot of time petting them, scratching their itchy spots, and generally being their buddy. Tomorrow will be time enough to start the actual lessons. Today I just wanted them to think about how nice it is to have me around.

Meanwhile, the sheep are still enjoying their new pasture. Because the grass is tall, higher than the sheep's heads, the two big manure piles left over from last summer are prime real estate for standing on to get a better view of the pasture. Most of the time, they are occupied by hordes of lambs playing King of the Hill, but today the grownup rams were doing the same thing.

I saw Preston butt Taj right off the side of the hill, so that he rolled right over as he tumbled down to the ground and landed on top of a very surprised lamb. Proud of himself for his obvious victory, Preston then gave Nicholai a little nudge. Nicholai whacked him in the ribs with the pointy end of one of his horns and chased him off the pile. Doesn't matter how big you are, you don't mess with the King!

Nicholai is such a wonderful ram. He insists on being the boss, but as soon as the other rams acknowledge his dominance, he is kind and friendly. If any of the other rams get in a squabble with each other, Nicholai gets between them and puts a stop to it. He's definitely a benevolent king.

As I was standing out there in the tall grass, checking out the sheep, my cat Oliver was prowling around making a pest of himself, as usual, so I indulged in a little entertaining kitty torture. Whenever he wasn't looking, I would toss a pebble to land next to him. He would jump sky-high, but couldn't see what made that noise. Then I would toss a pebble on the other side, and he would jump again. I think I almost got him convinced that the pasture is haunted! :-)

Predator/Prey

My cats are skilled, enthusiastic hunters. Ken's Pomeranian, Leeloo, loves to chase, wrestle, and play rough with cats and other animals that are about her size.

So I was a little nervous about how our littlest lambs would hold up to any unwanted attention they might get, now that I've let the sheep out to graze in the yard. Leeloo is no longer let out unsupervised, and I always keep my ears open for any cries from distressed lambs.

But it turns out I've got the whole thing backwards. The lambs have made a great game out of cat chasing. Even the tiniest ones will go out of their way to gleefully attack the cats and chase them all over the yard. When the whole stampeding herd of lambs gets chasing a cat, you can hear the thundering hooves from the other side of the yard.

Leeloo, being about the same size as a large cat, holds about as much intimidation for the lambs. She would dearly love to play chase-and-wrestle with them, but only on her terms. When they come after her she gets scared and runs with her tail tucked under.

And rightly so, because while the grown ewes humor the lambs in the cat chasing, they get quite angry at Leeloo being near their lambs. They surround her and make every effort to beat the crap out of her.

The poor dog can't even go out to go potty in peace anymore. Someone has to go with her, partially as a chaperon so she doesn't chase the lambs, and partially as a body guard, so the ewes don't stomp her into a pancake.

After seeing all this, somehow, I'm not so worried about foxes coming into the pasture and stealing young lambs anymore. I get the impression that any fox that tried would end up being sorry.

Of course, the sheep still couldn't stand up to a large dog or a coyote, but I like it that they're fierce, self-sufficient Viking sheep, who---within reason---are able to look out for themselves.

Good Thing I'm Getting a Livestock Guardian Dog

After a night of unbridled gluttony, grazing on the lawn, the rams take a break to relax and digest this morning.

Nicholai:
Taj:
Preston & Freyr:

As you can see, it's hard to relax. The rams lead a life of constant peril, and always have to be on the lookout for dangerous predators like mountain lions:

And wolves:

The Human Trampoline

So, it's 3:00 a.m. I'm out in my barn bed, sound asleep because once again NO LAMBS ARE BEING BORN, when all of a sudden my cat Sterling decides to give me a surprise Heimlich maneuver by leaping down from the ceiling and landing with all four paws right smack on my solar plexus!

I gotta say, that was NOT my favorite way to wake up ever! I shoved him onto the floor and cussed him out in cat language (GROWL! HISS!!!). He got the message and exited the barn back up the wall the way he had come.

My lamb envy is getting pretty intense now. Not only has Monica at Smallmeadow Farm had yet another lamb born today, but Carol and Andy at Loafkeeper Farm have had 4 lambs born in the past two days, out of ewes and rams they bought from me.

Everybody's lambing but me!

Ingleside Farm Maternity Ward

Two days of cold, constant rain have turned the paddocks into soupy, slippery muck.

Although I don't know her due date, my big white ewe Phoebe is starting to look kind of close to lambing, and I didn't want to take a chance on having her decide to lamb out in a sloshy, cold mud puddle somewhere, so I decided it was time that the Ingleside Farm Maternity Ward was open for business.

It's not fancy, but on a gray, drizzly day, it's kind of snug and pleasant, with the sound of the rain pattering on the roof overhead.

All I had to do was open the barn door, and half the flock poured inside. I just shoved the two I wanted into the pens, and then pushed everybody else back outside. I put two ewes inside because they are more relaxed if they have a companion. The ones I put inside are Phoebe and Mona, because they are the two who are looking closest to lambing.

I don't know if they will really lamb very soon. It could still be a week off, for all I know. But for now they seem happy to have dry, clean, private beds and no competition for their supper, so they're happy to play along.

Here's Phoebe in her pen, with my bed, chair, and my snuggly barn cat, Madrigal, in the foreground:


There are three lambing pens. The middle one is a bit bigger, so I can fit two or three ewes in there to wait, if several are due soon and I'm not sure who will go first. Thanks to my creative configuration of work lights and extension cords, the whole area is well lit, even though the barn itself doesn't have electricity.


Here's Mona in the third pen. Because the pens are so open and airy, with mesh walls, I can see into all three pens from my bed, without having to get up and check on the ewes separately.


And here's the waiting area, where I'll be spending a lot of my nights very soon. The bed is actually very comfortable. It's made from 4 hay bales laid side-by-side. Then an old wool blanket to cover up the prickly hay. Then a camping mattress, two sleeping bags, and an old satin comforter (the satin is good because it repels dirt and hay chaff and can be shaken out easily). I'll bring pillows, books, and snacks with me when I come out to actually sleep here.

Maddy the cat spends most of her time here now. She loves the barn bed! She can get in and out of this room even when the doors are shut, by climbing up the wall and squeezing in the gap next to the ceiling that leads to the 2nd story of the barn. It's surprising to be sitting there, quietly listening to the sheep chewing their hay, only to have a cat suddenly drop from the ceiling!

Above and Below

Everybody is feeling frisky now that spring is here. One of our Maine Coon cats, Lugh, was showing off this morning, racing up and down trees:


While his buddy, our 13-year old Maine Coon, Eoghan, waited to pounce on him when he came back down:
Spring has sprung!

Spooky!

A little over a year ago, my very favorite cat of all time, an orange Maine Coon named Riley, got hit by a car and killed. When we found his body, we brought it home and buried it under a tree not far from our back porch.

Tonight, I was sitting in the house working at the computer, when our dogs kept barking. I opened the back door to see what was wrong and heard a cat howling really mournfully.

I assumed a couple of our cats were having an argument and were about to start fighting, as they sometimes do, so I went to get my shoes and a flashlight to go break it up. Oddly, as I walked through the house, all of my cats seemed to be inside already.

When I got outside, I followed the sound of the awful howling... right to the site of Riley's grave. There, in the dark, were two cats I didn't recognize, sitting on Riley's grave and wailing!

They ran away when I pointed the flashlight at them. Why they were there, I don't know. We don't keep any cat food outside, and all of my own cats were in the house at the time, so the strangers weren't there to fight. All of my cats are neutered, so I know there's no mating going on. And out of the whole farm, the strange cats chose to come sit right on Riley's grave. Creepy!

What Heating Vents Are For

In case you were wondering, heating vents are not for heating your house.

This is what they're really for:


All of our heating vents in the downstairs of our house are at floor level.

We have eight cats with very warm bellies. :-)

The Woodpecker Hunt

Today my cats Henry and Aspen decided that they would try to catch a woodpecker. Mighty hunters that they are, they thought the best way to go about this was to climb as quickly as possible up the tree the woodpecker was pecking.

Obviously, the woodpecker had nothing to worry about!


I haven't been putting many photos on the blog lately, so just for a treat, here's a sunset I photographed last week. Our spectacular sunrise and sunset views are one of the things I treasure about living here on this farm:

Cat-A-Clysms

I don't know what's up with my cats lately. Just as Henry's latest mysterious leg wound was finally healed up, he came inside yesterday with a huge bite mark on his face and one side of his head all swollen up. I put some antibiotic ointment on it, and within minutes the wound started draining. Of course, he felt that he needed to be sitting on my lap for this process, so... yuck!

Today the swelling is gone, but there's still a big hole through the skin in the side of his face. I keep putting ointment on it twice a day, and he has cheered up and no longer seems to be in a lot of pain, so I guess now it's just a matter of waiting for it to heal and hoping he doesn't get some new wound before that.

Aspen has been getting into deathly fights with Maddy, hunting her down in the yard or in the barn, chasing her across the yard and viciously attacking her whenever she tries to come in the house to eat.

Twice today the two of them had big screechy cat fights with Aspen attacking and poor Maddy running for her life. Of course, now Maddy is so used to being attacked that now whenever another cat even looks at her she puffs up and starts growling, which of course only offends the other cats and starts more fights.

To top it all off, Aspen is still peeing on stuff in the house every now and then. Tonight she came in from outside, came into the living room where we were sitting, and deliberately peed on Ken's canvas bag. Either she's really mad at us for scolding her when she tries to kill Maddy, or she's got a urinary tract infection, we're not sure which. I have to order her some medicine in case her bad behavior is actually a medical symptom. I've just been so busy I haven't gotten around to it yet. Guess it needs to become a priority now!

Sterling was out walking around under the horses' feet tonight while I was filling water troughs. I was worried that he was going to get stepped on, so I picked him up. Then I thought it would be fun to put him on one of the horses' backs.

He absolutely refused to be put on Callisto's back, but when I put him on Boo's very wide back, Sterling got really happy, turned upside down and started rubbing on her back and knitting her side with his claws. Lucky for him, Boo is very gentle and just turned her head to investigate what was going on back there.

He was quite at home on her back until Callisto, all curiosity, came up and started sniffing him with nostrils almost as big as his head. He grabbed at her nose with his claws and she ducked away. I finally had to take him off Boo so that he wouldn't end up jumping in the wrong direction and getting squooshed.

It was cute in the meantime, though.

A Swarm of Complications

I'm learning that sometimes it's not the really big problems that bring you down. Sometimes its the multitudes of insignificant complications and disappointments that swarm around you like biting insects that end up being the things that break through your composure and sap your fortitude.

The past couple of days, that swarm has been hard at work here.

My computer still isn't fixed, so I'm still using Ken's computer, while Ken is stuck doing his work sitting on the living room couch with his laptop.

Now our truck has broken down again too---the same problem it's had a dozen or more times before: it's fine one day, and then the next day you go to start it and nothing happens. Sometimes it cures itself the following day without our doing anything to it. Sometimes Ken fixes it by jiggling some of the fuses. Sometimes we tow it to the repair shop, only to have it start up fine for the mechanic. Sometimes the mechanic replaces something that seems to solve the problem, only to have the problem reappear the next day or the next month. Most recently, we replaced the ignition, which seemed to solve the whole problem, until yesterday, when the issue reappeared just as it always has.

So now, without any immediate funds to fix the truck (not that anything ever seems to fix it permanently), we can't continue our project of mucking out all the horse paddocks. So, when potential horse buyers come to look at horses, the place literally looks like crap. Plus, we have to move each day's supply of hay up the hill in several wheelbarrow loads instead of one truckload. And we no longer have the option of going to pick up a couple of days' worth of hay ourselves if our hay supplier can't deliver on time. In other words, many of our farm tasks are crippled.

Although we got the vet out here in plenty of time to do the Coggin's tests on the various sales horses, one of the vials of blood broke in transit to the lab, so now the vet has to come back out again on Friday and take the blood again. We don't have to pay for this second trip, but it still delays the paperwork for that particular horse. Lucky for us, it's one of the horses that isn't leaving until next month, or we'd be in trouble!

Ken got paid yesterday, including his Xmas bonus, which was a relief. I had been getting stir crazy here, since I had not even left the farm for the past month. So we decided to drive into Charlottesville and do a bit of minor shopping. We have no money for real Xmas shopping this year, but we thought we'd get a few things we needed at the pet supplies store and it would at least give me the chance to get out for a few hours.

Because we were mainly going to the pet supply store, we thought it would be fun to take our Pomeranian Leeloo with us. And it would have been fun, except that on the way there in the car, she got carsick all over me!

After driving to three stores and still not finding the item I was looking for, we gave up, picked up dinner at the Burger King drive through and headed home.

When we got back, we found that our electricity had been shut off. Ken knew it was overdue, but his paycheck had arrived and he knew we had money to pay it now. Unfortunately, he didn't think to call the electric company to pay it before we left for the afternoon. So when we got home, Ken phoned in our payment---plus a hefty fine---and we had to sit around by candlelight waiting for the guy to come reconnect the power. Kind of put a damper on my "big" afternoon on the town!

While we were waiting for the guy to come turn the power back on, we moved my big, room-divider sized candle stand downstairs next to the couch. Because it holds 39 candles inside individual glass cups, it produces quite a lot of light, so we could see while we waited.

But this morning, our Pomeranian Leeloo and one of our cats, Echo, got scuffling in the living room and upset a couple of our other cats, who crashed into the candle stand and knocked it over, breaking two of the glass cups and scattering shards all over the floor.

Another cat peed on Senter's horse blanket that was lying in the laundry room, waiting to be washed. This is only about ten feet from the cat door through which the cat could have gone, to pee outside, but apparently that would have been too much trouble.

Then, what was supposed to be good news today turned out to be another series of complications. The payment check arrived from the person who is buying our mare Bonnie. Only the person made the check out to our farm name instead of my name. Since our bank account is in Ken's name and mine, we can't deposit a check made out to the farm.

At first we thought we would just go to the bank and change our bank account to include the farm name too, so if this kind of thing happens again in the future, it won't be a problem. But it turns out we can't add the farm name to a personal account, so we would have to open a business account, and we can't open an account in the business's name unless we go to the county office to fill out a "doing business as" form.

So we went to the county office. They gave us a form, but said that we had to fill it out online. So we went back home to fill it out. I don't know what happened to the "doing business as" form since last time I filled it out, but what I remember as being a very simple, one page form that took only a couple minutes to fill out, today was this endless, convoluted array of contradictory web pages that asked for the same information over and over in slightly different ways until I had no idea whether I was even answering any of the questions correctly.

Finally, some of the definitions on the questionnaire were so vague and confusing that Ken called the "help" number for clarification. Of course, there was no one there. He left a message, but no one ever called us back.

By this time the day was pretty much over, so we just gave up on the whole stupid process, and I emailed Bonnie's buyer to ask her to send another check, this time made out correctly. So it'll probably be another week before we can get this much needed money.

Oh... and here's another irritating complication: What the heck happened to my blog header? For months it has been perfect, showing the full photo of my horses in the field, with the pale sky over their backs being the backdrop for the blog title. But suddenly a few days ago, with no editing from me, the whole header is a different size, the photo no longer fits, and the blog title is illegibly squished down onto the horses' backs.

I suppose I'll have to figure out how to fix it eventually, but sheesh, it took me long enough to get it right in the first place. What's the point if Blogger is just going to randomly rearrange stuff without my permission?

All these stupid problems are not so overwhelming individually, but when they all just keep piling up like this, it saps my drive and energy. I get so frustrated and tired. I'm just trying to do a simple, decent job. I'm not asking for the world. But some days it just seems like it's impossible for anything to go right.

Stopping the Draft

Yesterday the wind roared across the farm all day like a river in flood---a constant, turbulent force pouring over us, straight from the Blue Ridge Mountains. Branches fell from trees, fallen leaves rushed in swarms to the southern side of all the paddocks, anything left unattended outside tended to take flight and blow away.

Unfortunately, our cat door faces directly north, where the wind comes from. The house was freezing all day, with a terrible draft, until we noticed that the wind was blowing so hard that it was blowing the flap of the cat door open, and letting a stream of cold air blow directly up the house's long central hallway.

We closed it right away, to stop the draft, and the house warmed up again, somewhat. Unfortunately, it had been so many months since the cat door had been closed, our cats had apparently forgotten what litterboxes are for.

They also were not observant enough to notice that we opened the cat door again after the wind died down.

We didn't realize that the cats were trying to be polite and hold in the call of nature until around bedtime, when Echo came upstairs into the bedroom where we were, scratched around in the corner where we used to keep a litterbox (but don't anymore), and finally peed a HUGE puddle of urine onto the floor.

I grabbed her and carried her downstairs and shoved her out the cat door, so she could see that it was open again. Then I came back up to mop up the accident. While doing so, I noticed that Oliver was slinking around the room, looking anxious and guilty, so I grabbed him too. As I carried him to the cat door as well, I could tell that his bladder was VERY full. I think I averted a second accident by mere moments.

Poor kitties, they didn't remember that we do have litterboxes, and once they saw that the cat door was shut, it didn't occur to them to check whether it might have been opened again.

Leeloo and the Sheep Crook

One thing I can't abide, is a barking dog.

My two big dogs are pretty good. Mostly they remember to be quiet. And when they forget, I tell them, "Quiet!" and they shut up.

Of course, it wasn't always that easy. For a certain period of their lives, I'm sure they were convinced that their name was "RUBYJESSEBEQUIETNOBARKING!" But, like I said, now they're pretty good.

It's another challenge altogether to try to teach a Pomeranian not to bark!

Leeloo is a spoiled princess who doesn't actually believe that humans are the dominant species in the house. She humors us because we're the ones who can reach the fried chicken, the macaroni and cheese, and the popsicles. But she doesn't actually think we're the boss of her.

She has a private doggie run outside, which she hates. She's not in it that much, but for the time she is there, she usually runs back and forth nonstop, waiting to be freed. We call this place "Puppy Jail."

She knows we disapprove of her yapping constantly while she's in puppy jail. She knows that if she's barking, we won't let her out until she's quiet. All this means is if she thinks we're looking, she'll be quiet. If we don't hasten to immediately let her out, she proceeds to curse us out: "Yarp! Yarp! Yarp!"

Scolding her merely convinces her that she's succeeded in getting our attention. Spanking her has no effect. Neither does ignoring her---she'll persist in barking all day long if we let her.

But, quite by accident, we discovered a secret weapon: the sheep crook we recently bought to assist us in catching our sheep. You know, the classic Little Bo Peep tool with the long handle and the hook at one end.

When we first got the crook, we played around with it for a while getting used to how it handled before we tried catching sheep with it. During this experimental phase, we tried gently hooking a few cats with it. We were amused to discover that we could hook it under a cat's belly and hoist up a little, and the cat couldn't get away. The cats, while disgusted with our antics, were relatively tolerant.

When we playfully tried it on Leeloo, however, she was horrified beyond words. Scolding and punishing have no impact, but apparently EMBARRASSING her makes a huge impression. Now if she ever sees us brandish the sheep crook at all, she slinks into a corner and makes herself small and humble---and most of all, QUIET---for a while.

It's become something like a visual exclamation point between us---a canine hearing aid, if you will. If we tell her "Quiet" and she still keeps barking, we go out and wave the sheep crook at her. Suddenly, she can hear and understand our commands again---and we can enjoy a few blissful hours of peace!

A Farmer's Prerogative

Sorry, but I'm going to have to invoke one of the unwritten prerogatives to which all farmers are officially entitled:

I'm going to grumble about the weather.

I know, I know, three days of rain is exactly what we've all been yearning for around here as our fields shriveled to a crisp and our topsoil turned to talcum powder and blew away on every breeze.

Three days of rain is exactly what the land needed. That doesn't make it any less of a pain in the butt to deal with. In other words, I'm really, REALLY glad it's here, but I'm exercising my right to whine about it anyway.

As I write this, rain is still falling. Water is standing in pools all over the yard. Paddocks are turning to soup. All the animals are wet and dejected. The sheep's feed dishes have been brimming full of rain each of the past two days, which means that at least 8 inches of rain has fallen in that amount of time.

The horses are muddy. The sheep are bedraggled. The cats keep going outside, getting drenched and filthy, and then coming back in, dragging wet leaves and grass behind them, leaving muddy pawprints everywhere, and expecting to be allowed to sit on my lap until they are warm and dry again. At which point, they go back outside and begin the cycle again.

I wish this could have fallen a month ago, when there still would have been some hay crops to save.

I'm glad it's here. I really am. If only it didn't have to be so darned WET!

The Pet-Lovers Diet

It seems like everyone nowadays is worried about their weight. And capitalizing on that, everyone else is making a fortune selling diet plans and books specialized according to everything from your body shape to blood type to astrological sign.

I figured hey, I could stand to lose some weight---AND earn some money---why not come up with a diet plan for people like me?

So here's why my diet plan is the best plan ever:

You don't need to change what you eat. You don't need to change how you exercise. It's all about portion control---and you don't even need your own willpower to take care of that.

You just need to enlist the help of my highly trained four-legged diet consultants, available to you for a reasonable monthly fee. For best results, you need approximately one cat or dog per 10 lbs. you need to lose. If more than one family member needs to lose weight, they need to hire their own additional diet consultants.

Here's how it goes:

You sit down in front of the TV with a big, heaping plate of fried chicken or lasagna or prime rib, or whatever other high-fat, caloric nightmare is responsible for inflating your waistline. You turn on the TV. You pick up your fork.

But before you can take your first, delicious, calorie-laden bite, your four-legged coaches appear as if by magic to remind you about the importance of portion control.

A fluffy red Pomeranian hops up beside you, puts her paws on your leg, and tilts her head in an adorable, heart-melting pose. You can't help yourself. You give her a bite of your food. SNARF! It vanishes, never to add a single point to your BMI.

You pick up your fork again. A large, gray Maine Coon cat appears on the arm of the couch, purring loudly. As you lift your food toward your mouth, he reaches out one large, fuzzy paw and pats you gently on the shoulder.

You can't disappoint a creature full of such pleased self-confidence, so you hand over another bite of your food. As positive reinforcement for your good behavior, the purring in your ear increases by a few decibels.

Determined to finally taste some of your own dinner, you pick up that fork one more time. Just as the food is about to enter your open mouth, a brown tabby cat perched on the couch back bats at your hand. With five razor-sharp claws.

While you're examining your hand to determine whether you need stitches, your team of four-legged coaches spring into action to ensure your continued dedication to portion control.

The tabby cat leaps down beside you and parades back and forth, dragging his generously furred, plume-like tail across your plate. You push him away just as the gray cat sneezes in your direction. You can feel the spray on your hand---who knows where else it's landed?

Fed up (and yet underfed!), you chase the cats out of the room, only to return and discover the Pomeranian energetically licking your plate. Sure, they say a dog's saliva is actually cleaner than a human's, but her breath smells suspiciously like horse manure.

See how easy it is to lose (er---I mean, "control") your appetite, when you have the right team of highly trained diet coaches? It doesn't take any willpower at all.

Before long, you'll be abandoning the high-cholesterol evils of fried chicken and filling your plate with waistline-friendly broccoli, celery, and lettuce, just to be able to eat something that is not immediately confiscated by your pests (umm, I mean, "consultants").

Of course, there is a catch.

Scientific study (by which I mean, several months of testing by Ken and myself) has proven that---like most of the other diet gurus' plans---the Pet Lover's Diet doesn't really work in the long run.

Sad to say, but the inborn human desire for greasy, unhealthy foods outweighs (pun intended) the ingenuity of the cleverest diet guru. Pet Lovers find it easy to stick to this diet, but gradually compensate for the calories confiscated by the "coaches" by simply over-inflating the serving sizes at the beginning of the meal and learning to joke about the health benefits of a little extra "fiber" added to each meal in the form of cat hair.

Then again, the fact that their plans don't actually work never stopped any of the other diet gurus from making a fortune. All it would take would be for my plan to become trendy, and I could be rich and famous. Face it, if you're going to be overweight either way, at least my plan is more fun than theirs!

Now I just have to come up with a diet plan for overweight, overfed PETS!

Sleeping With Cats

Fall is truly here now. Days are pleasantly mild, some nights are getting downright chilly. My basic daily attire has switched from tank tops and shorts to sweat jackets and "where the heck did I pack my jeans away last May anyway?"

And the cats have started wanting to sleep on the bed again. I can judge how cold it is outside by how many of our eight cats try to sleep with me at once.

Last night, there were only two, and they only stayed part of the night before heading off to prowl outside again. Later in the winter, when it's truly cold outside, there'll be mornings when I wake up with five of them piled all around me.

They all have different personalities on the bed. My oldest cat, Eoghan, prefers to sleep on the upper corner of the bed, next to my pillow. Sterling likes to pounce on any toes that wiggle under the blankets. Echo, if you let her, would literally drape herself across your face to sleep, that's how close she wants to be.

The funniest cat of all is Aspen, our long haired calico. She is very dainty and polite, but she really, REALLY likes a warm place to sleep. On cold nights, she'll climb up on the bed and walk around, trying to get me to open up the covers so she can crawl under the blankets with me. If I happen to be asleep and don't get her hint immediately, she climbs up by my head, grabs a mouthful of my hair in her teeth, and pulls on it---hard!---until I wake up and let her in where she wants to be.

Many years ago when we lived in Illinois, we had another cat, an orange Maine Coon named Aesun, who was a wonderful pet, but kind of high strung. He liked to lie on the bed with us, but he would never relax enough to actually sleep there.

Except one night, he must have accidentally dozed off at the foot of the bed, because sometime in the middle of the night, I twitched my foot a little bit and it bumped into Aesun. Startled awake, and clearly thinking he was under attack, he fled the rooms so fast, I think his paws barely touched the floor.

Ken and I woke to hear him crash into a bedpost, hit the bedroom door, and ricochet---twice---off the walls of the hallway before coming to a halt in the living room. A single thought filled both of our surprised, drowsy minds:

"Oh no. The cat's exploded!"

Summer's End

Summer's End

Parched leaves sway and lift.
Mockingbird’s sweet, liquid song:
Long-awaited rain.

By Nancy Chase

As cleanly as tearing off a calendar page, summer ended today. As soon as I stepped outside this morning, I felt it. The texture of the air against my skin was different, the flavor of it in my nostrils.

The humidity was gone. The sky---a crisp, pleasant blue---seemed farther away than it had yesterday, as if summer had lifted the lid off the pressure cooker that has enclosed us for the past 4 months.

It was a perfect day for working outside, which was good. After rearranging a few portable fence panels to make a catch pen, Ken and I gathered up the sheep and administered their worming medicine and vitamin drench, a task that neither the sheep nor the humans particularly enjoy.

We usually do this about once a month throughout the summer. Since one month from today will be October, this may be the last time we have to do this chore until next spring. Hurray!

Another end-of summer event happened today as well: the separating of the rams from the ewes. Icelandic sheep are seasonal breeders, and will not breed until late October. So the rams get to go out in the pasture with the ewes all summer.

Then, in early September, we separate the rams into their own paddock away from the ewes. From now until breeding season, the ewes will get extra feed to bring them into optimum condition for breeding. On the same diet, the rams would just get fat---after all, they've done no work all summer to put any strain on their bodies, unlike the ewes who have been nursing babies all this time.

The other reason we separate the sheep at this time of year is because of something known as the "ram effect." If the ewes are separated from the rams for a significant amount of time, and then placed back with them at the start of breeding season, it supposedly triggers the ewes' hormones and encourages them to all come into heat and breed right away.

The advantage of this is that the lambs are born earlier and lambing season is not spread out over as many weeks (which makes it a lot easier on the shepherd). Personally, I haven't noticed a lot of "ram effect" happening in my own flock, but who knows? It doesn't hurt to try.

The day the rams get separated also marks the time when I need to start planning the sheep's breeding groups for the winter. Which ewes will I breed to which rams for the best combination of traits? Which combinations will give me the best meat conformation without sacrificing fleece quality? The most salable colors without sacrificing heat and parasite resistance?

Choosing the breeding groups is a complicated, detail-oriented process that involves long lists of records and bloodlines and several rounds of charts showing possible choices and likely results. But it is a joyful task because it turns my mind to the lambs-to-be that will be created based on my decisions.

We are blessed to own our senior ram, Nicholai, who has fantastic heat and parasite resistance, and passes it on to his offspring. He has not needed any worming for two years now, which for this climate is extremely good.

A magnificent fellow with huge curling horns and a gentlemanly temperament, he is the last son of the ewe Solee, who was in the very first group of Icelandic sheep ever to be imported to the United States.

Our finances are really scraping bottom again. Or perhaps I should say, "still." Ken's brother generously paid our overdue electric bill to help us out. My sister Donna---who runs her own small farm in northern Maine and really doesn't have any money to spare---sent some money too. I had intended to put that in my stash that I'm saving to finish paying for the two new ram lambs I'm purchasing this fall, but it ended up having to go to make the car payment instead.

We have just a couple days' worth of hay left, and we've been putting off buying groceries as long as we can. Even the cats, who have been raised on Iams brand cat food their entire lives, have now been switched to Friskies to save money.

So it was particularly welcome news today when a very nice couple who'd put a deposit on one of our ram lambs earlier this year came to pick him up today, and paid the remainder of his sale price. That money will help us buy groceries this week!

I've been very grateful that our lambs have sold so well this year, and that Icelandics command such high prices compared to many other breeds of sheep. My lambs generally sell for about $500-$600 each. Of course, some of the breeding stock I bring in from other states costs me in the $800-$1,000 range, so I'm not even charging top prices for my lambs.

I only have a few lambs left for sale now, and a few potential buyers still thinking about buying. If only the horses would sell this easily, I'd be all set!

Carnage in the Bathroom, Carnage in the Hall

Don't you just love it when you come downstairs in the morning and are welcomed by the sight of a baseball-sized pile of rabbit guts in the front hallway?

Or when you step into the bathroom first thing after you wake up, and see blood and feathers spattered all over the white tiles and woodwork?

That's what's happened to me these past two mornings. Just one of the many joys of living in the country and owning eight cats!

Actually, I'm pretty sure I know who the culprit is. The other cats will catch an occasional cicada, moth, or vole. But when it comes to the "big game" of rabbits and birds, it's almost always the work of our Maine Coon cat Lugh.

He's an active, athletic cat, and I don't mind the fact that he hunts. I just wish he didn't feel the need to drag his kills in through the cat door and disassemble them in the middle of the floor.

Ken says if either of us ever disappears under mysterious circumstances, the other one is going to be in big trouble, because when the police come to search the place, their Luminol is going to show traces of blood EVERYWHERE.

Yeah, just try to explain to the nice policeman that all that blood came from 487 different mice, birds, rabbits, and voles our cats brought in over the course of years!