[dogpatch]

Not to rub it in @SteadyOn , but we are having about three days of drop dead gorgeous weather! It got to 67 yesterday. It's now 57, expected to get somewhere above 60 today and tomorrow. And SUNSHINE! (Cue song...there's a bright golden haze on the meadow...). The wee froggies are finally singing. The feral daffodils are struggling to bloom a month late. I feel like I've shed ten years, even though I gained one yesterday! LOL!

In celebration, today is Tail Washing Day. At least for Dixie. Laddie might have to wait, but Dixie has a lavish, wavy and positively disgusting tail. I've been loath to touch it for months. I filled the barn water heater and plugged it in. Got the barn cleaned and felt spry enough to rake up and remove one of the manure piles that has accumulated behind the barn in the bad weather.

The mud in the horse tracks and the garden became dry and tolerably solid with yesterday's warmth and breeze.

A bit later we'll continue dismantling the wrecked greenhouse in the garden.

Sunshine...the staff of life.

I have reassembled Dixie's "kit" and transferred it to the tack locker in the barn, bringing Laddie's saddle and bridle in and putting his boots away. I donated my brand new merino fleece seat saver to a "good claws"...Fiona the house kitty thinks it's very posh! But right now she's soaking up a sunbeam.

Barney, the feral cat, is making fairly regular appearances and no longer pays me any mind when he's curled up on the hay in the loft and I climb up to drop hay down to the horses.

I won't be riding Dixie for awhile, but I hope to begin ground work with her again tomorrow. I feel she needs a period of unmounted exercise before I get on her. I need some of that too!

 

[dogpatch]

Haaa, that's okay, I can rub something else in. 😂

Heated barn, with wash stall that has hot water, means bath time came extra early this year. Elle had her full body warm bath a week ago! The water was running dark rusty brown off of her. 🤢


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Yes I know I already shared this pic in my journal, but just lookit those suds and the airplane ears 😘 Guess there's an Elle pic this week after all.

Happy belated, @dogpatch !!

Such a little diva!

 

[dogpatch]

Haaa, that's okay, I can rub something else in. 😂

Heated barn, with wash stall that has hot water, means bath time came extra early this year. Elle had her full body warm bath a week ago! The water was running dark rusty brown off of her. 🤢

View attachment 1147173

Yes I know I already shared this pic in my journal, but just lookit those suds and the airplane ears 😘 Guess there's an Elle pic this week after all.

Happy belated, @dogpatch !!

Oh darn, @SteadyOn the tradeoffs are so hard! LOL!

 

[dogpatch]

@dogpatch: That's a picture postcard for sure!

Gotta clean up that storm blowdown and get those spindly blacklocust trees leafed out and blooming! An' a li'l horse and buggy.

 

[dogpatch]

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😭

grumble

I know it will be beautiful when the weather warms up!!

 

[dogpatch]

Laddie has been shedding well at his normal pace. He doesn't have that thick a coat to begin with. Dixie's Cushing's coat isn't budging, but it's not crazy long. I noticed in this mild weather (it's 68Fnow) her chest was sweaty when I brought her out to wash her tail. Temps will dip again after tomorrow, but when it gets a little more reliably warm, I guess the clippers will have to come out. I had to clip her two years ago. Last year, she was pretty well shed by June, about the time the weather turned from cold and wet to hot and dry.

 

[dogpatch]

1. @dogpatch is the kitty picture Barney The Barn Cat? That cat is either part Himalayan or Siamese - it is beautiful 😍😍 I’ll bet with that Tri colored nose it’s a female.

I agree with your comment awhile back that the cat belongs to someone. Years ago a good friend had her female (spayed) cat disappear. Three YEARS later it returned😳😳. She was gobsmacked when she was heading to feed the horses one morning and Kitty met her at the porch door. Kitty stayed “home” for a few more years, until her end time arrived and my friend had to have her PTS’d.

Cats do the darndest and I think dumbest things sometimes👽👽

2. It was 60-something degrees yesterday, stayed in the 50’s all night. Wind came up with gusts in the 20 MPH, and pretty soon the rain let loose - it poured, the wind blew, it got cold, Duncan said “to Hay with this dog crap” and went to the barn”.

We will be down in the 20’s for the next three nights - never fear it will allegedly be 77 by Thursday🙄🙄
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@walkinthewalk the kitty in the picture is Fiona, our house elf. 🥰 We adopted her from a cat rescue as an aged cat, said to be 10 years old. That was about 5 years ago and she still has jet-propelled fits of playfulness. She is super affectionate but scared to death of strangers. Supposedly her lady owner died of cancer and the husband just threw the two house cats out of the house. A neighbor called the rescue to come collect them.

Barney is a very sleek and handsome solid gray cat with a very large white bib and white feet. I think he's got yellow eyes. There's another rescue that tries to place feral cats as "barn cats". A neighbor acquired a couple of cats that way to supposedly help with a rat problem, but I think the cats quickly dispersed. Barney could have easily come from that situation. That would be good as such cats would have been sterilized. But they clip the tip of an ear when they do that, and I haven't seen a clipped ear on Barney.

Our spring/summer is over after tomorrow and we're back into the 40s and rain. Supposed to be cold and wet at least through April 5th. We have made good use of the brief break!

 

[dogpatch]

Further groaning and grumbling over here:

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Oh dear, I think fog and snow is about the dreariest!

 

[dogpatch]

That fog IS the snow. I think that makes it even worse! 😭

Oh no!!! SNOG!

 

[dogpatch]

Ooh, a tortie point! I’m new to Siamese-related cats; this summer my sister talked me into taking a cat who moved in to her place, and he is a lynx point. I did a bunch of reading on the genetics and decided it’s most likely he has two copies of the recessive point gene because the local cat population is probably quite inbred. My other cats are not amused as he will be as aggressive as he can get away with, but stopping short of an actual fight. He was probably 1 last summer, the two who can hold their own will turn five tomorrow, and my old “gentle soul” that we have to protect from him is some years older than that. Here Sméagol is in a rare moment of peacefulness. (He was named by my niece.)

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What a beauty!! Very unique! What's interesting about Fiona's color is that her body coloring is very mottled, light and darker brown. You'd think her points would be seal colored but they are black with the tortie splashes. I haven't a clue what gene soup she comes from! LOL!

We had two Balinese cats in the distant past. They were so darn much fun! If I ever got another cat, it would be a male, with a splash of Siamese in it somewhere. I had hoped to buy a Balinese kitten a few years ago, but four figures for a cat, nuh-uh, and the breeder was a lunatic! LOL! She would sell her kittens to the person who sent her the most emails, and they had better be on the worshipful (to her) side!

Fiona gets a little over-affectionate sometimes and gets a little bitey, and she doesn't seem to know her claws are retractable. LOL! I have to armor up when she takes a notion to sit on me. But she is a wonderful, hilarious kitty!