It’s been a while. AGAIN. So let’s do some quick bullet points to catch you guys up.

1.) Our garden = major suckage this year. We didn’t keep up with it and the weeds took over. Very sad. We did get 3 rows of potatoes, so that’s something.

2.) Another kitten showed up at our house. So we are up to 5 cats (3 inside, 2 outside).

3.) We bought a (used) pontoon boat. Our other boat (which we still have) only had an 8-person capacity. And if my family comes to visit, that #8 gets surpassed very quickly. So we bought it and I LOVE IT. I would so much rather have a pontoon than a speed boat. (I think)

4.) We bought a (used) 2006 F150 truck. MrC’s truck was a V6 and we’ve been having problems with it for over a year. MrC replaced all the external engine components, then took it to 2 different dealers and we still couldn’t find the issue. So we bought a truck off of one of his friends for a good discount and now I don’t panic every time we have to pull the boat out of the water. We’re still trying to get his old truck fixed so we can sell it.

5.) I recently accepted a new job. And we have to move. AHH!! We’ve never had to move with our entire farmily (5 cats, 3 dogs, 14 chickens, and 1 turtle) so house hunting is going to be very interesting. We’ll only be moving 40 or so miles away, so nothing major, but still! It’s time to house hunt!

6.) A SKUNK got stuck in our chicken coop! MrC had to free it with a chainsaw and a pry bar. And OF COURSE I got pictures b/c I knew it would probably be a ‘never again’ moment!

On February 15, 2010, our garden looked like this:

The snow was deep. So deep that MrC and I couldn’t get to work the next day. We actually got stuck in front of our house in his 4-wheel-drive truck. Ridiculous!

Fast forward a month and four days later: (aka March 19, 2010)

and MrC and I were outside burning off the rest of the garden. There was 3 back-to-back days of no rain which allowed the ground to dry up just enough for us to till.

We managed to get three passes done with the tiller before we ran out of gas. That was plenty for the chickens though. They thought it was Christmas morning!

We got a small area fenced off and got 2.5 rows of onions planted. This is the earliest we’ve gotten onions planted. Normally we procrastinate or hum and haw about what day we should till and then suddenly it’s May and we’re finally getting our onions planted.

And a little over a week later, we started to see onions sprouting up:

I’m really excited for our garden this year. Of course I probably say that ever year, but this year it’s ME pushing MrC to get things planted instead of him saying “We should probably plant these soon.”

In other not-so-good news:

This cute little thing is the kitten that someone dropped off months ago. We actually caught it once and put it in a cage and it was FURIOUS. And I knew that if we took it to the humane society they would put it down for being unadoptable. So we freed it,  started feeding it and I attempted to get it just a little more friendly. It doesn’t run away when we get close to it, but it won’t let us touch it. It did, however, prove to be a great hunter. Even with an unlimited amount of food available, MrC and I are constantly finding moles and mice laying around the yard.

Let me stop here and say that I KNOW how important it is to spay/neuter your pets. Four of our 5 animals are adopted! I’ve volunteered at humane societies and animal shelters. I see what happens to unwanted pets and it breaks my heart.

So my goal was to get to the point where it was used to us touching it and get it taken to the vet and get neutered. Because from the close encounters I had with it, I could tell it was a male.

Then one day, two other cats showed up. “Odd,” I thought. But just chalked it up to them wanting to get something to eat. Then two days later, I looked out my window and one of the wandering cats was mating with our cat.

I’ll admit I cussed at this point.

B/c I’m pretty sure that the female is always on bottom. Which is exactly where our cat was.

So the cute little cat you see in the above picture? Is now pregnant. She’s actually a couple weeks pregnant and her belly is starting to get big.

Sigh.

I feel HORRIBLE. I should’ve known! I should’ve thrown her in the cage and trucked her to the vet AS SOON AS WE FOUND HER. But she is still so young! I had no idea how limited my time was.

Keeping the kittens is not something we can do. We’re renting our house and with 3 cats, 3 dogs, and 15 chickens, we’re already pushing our limits. But I’m hoping that she has them in the garage and maybe I can handle them enough to where they are friendly and find good homes for them. Don’t get me wrong, if I can’t find homes, they’ll stay with us (over the protests of MrC, of course) but that’s not the ideal situation!

Argh!

SPAY AND NEUTER YOUR PETS! And if you want a kitten and you’re in the Southern Indiana area, let me know!

Note: No turtles were injured during taking of this picture. Also, no cats got wet.

Rose (at Cottage Rose) has been asking me for pictures of my turtles and I finally got a couple of good pictures of them.

I’ve had these turtles since a day after they hatched. They hatched in a classmate’s sock drawer and he gave them away to people at school. Truth be told, I only got one of them, but years later, a friend didn’t want hers anymore, thus I wound up with two turtles. I was probably around 13 or so when I got these turtles, so they are about 12 years old now.

You can see how big they are. Their size is determined by their cage size. So they’ve pretty much quit growing until I get them a bigger aquarium.

My cousin and I used to transfer the turtles back and forth. My mom and my aunt called them the “Time share turtles”. Since the first transfer of the turtles was on Christmas, we named them Holly and Noel. The names didn’t really stick, but I haven’t named them any thing else- so maybe they stuck more than what I thought.

They are both females, you can tell by the size of their back claws. Their back claws are small whereas a male has long, large claws to climb on the female’s back.

This one is more shy and stays in her shell more.

A few tidbits about my turtles:

• They don’t bite. You can hold a turtle stick in between your fingertips and they will snatch it out of your hand- although sometimes they snatch a little too far and scare the crap out of you.
• I have a filter in with them that I change at least weekly in the summer (when they’re eating a lot) and as needed in the winter (they’re more lethargic and don’t eat).
• The turtles scare the CRAP out of Jolee. She thinks they are mean, green, fighting machines.
• If you’re looking to get your kids (or yourself!)  a low maintenance pet, this is it.
• Being young, I kept them in water (nothing to climb out of the water on) for the first 8 years or so of their life. Their skin started turning pink. I figured something was wrong and added in some rocks for them to climb out of the water on. One turtle’s skin is still a little pink, but they look a lot better. And I learned my lesson.
• One day when Mr. C and I buy a house, I’d love to put a big tank in the wall for these guys to live in. It would be a turtle paradise.

Sometimes they team up and try to escape.

So- does anyone out there have any turtles for pets?

A couple months ago, my cat Jayda got hit by a car and killed. I had adopted her from an animal shelter when I was on co-op so she’d been with me for quite a while. (5 years or so) After she died, I still kept expecting her to jump on the counter while I was opening her food, or curl up in my lap while I was watching TV.

After a while, I realized that I had given her a good home for the 5 short years she was with me and that she had been happy living out in the country. I also realized (maybe it was just in my head) that our dog missed having something else running around the house.

So, Mr. C agreed that we could get two cats. I had intentions of picking out a kitten (b/c they’re so cute!) and also an older cat, because they are usually harder to adopt out. I went to the Humane Society where I walk dogs on my lunch break and went through all of the cats they have. The woman was really helpful and pointed out personalities of most of the cats that I held. (”This one is shy at first, but warms up. This one just likes to hang out by himself” etc)

She also said that a lot of people come looking for older cats, so that they aren’t usually the last ones to be adopted.

So, I picked out two. One was a kitten (the HS named her Elthspah, but we renamed her Mocha) who had a bit of a cold and the other was a 5-month-old male (Winslow) who didn’t care when I picked him up and petted him. Honestly, it was a hard decision. I almost threw my hands up and told the Cat Lady to pick two out for me.

Sometimes cats are funny about new environments, so I wasn’t sure how the two cats would get along. I also wasn’t sure how they’d react to our dog, Jolee.

Well, three days after I brought them home, they looked like this:

Winslow is trying to take a nap and Mocha is attacking him. In kitten speak, that means they love each other.

It was soon obvious that everyone would get along fabulously. Even Mr. C has grown to love the cats and how they lay all over him.

They’re all three there!

One thing about Winslow is that he likes to sleep in funny ways. Even in the above picture he had his neck thrown back like he was sleeping on his back.

Here’s another one of him playing ’scarf’ for Mr. C:

He was conked out.

But THIS is the best one of him. He was sleeping like this. I should’ve gotten a picture of him from the side- he was all hunched over. I think all he needs is a beer in his left paw to look hungover. hee hee.

Where iz my beer? Did you take my beer?

Here’s Mocha all stretched out. I guess it’s a good sign that they’re floppin’ all over the place… it means they’re comfortable!

I iz tired.

Here’s a (blurry) close-up of her face. You can see she’s sort of two-faced. (I thought about calling her Cruella or something, but it didn’t have a good ring to it!)

I iz cute.

So, those are the two newest additions to J & J Acres. Please make them feel welcome.