I have been enjoying time out on the small deck in the mornings, watching the world wake up. Being that I cannot get Magoo-goo to reset his alarm clock (he goes off without fail every morning at 4:00 a.m.) I go out at the time to feed the outdoor cats and check on the damage done by the wildlife the night before. The racoons love to throw the food trays off in the distance once they are emptied. I no longer leave any dry food out overnight, but have found that at 4:00 even the coons are not around.

By the time I am finished, I am wide awake. so I start my coffee and go out on the deck to watch the morning develop. If I sit there long enough, one of the cats will venture over and either lie next to Kota on his blanket, or jump on my lap. I also have a blanket for protection against claws and sometimes even teeth.

This morning, Bentley decided to join me. I know from experience that if I pet him even just a bit, he will become extremely aggressive. I keep my hands completely off of him. He has landed me in Urgent Care in the past “showing” me how much he loves me.

Here he is, enjoying a moment on my lap.

Please don’t let this peaceful moment fool you. If you notice, his claws are dug deeply into my leg. I had my fleece sweatshirt on as it was quite cold at 6:00 a.m. You can see that my arms aren’t even around him and not because i am holding the camera. I know better. His looks are very deceiving, that does not however defray me from loving him any less. We have traveled a very long road together. He gets plenty of attention when I am outside and he comes to me. If I remain standing up and pet him for a bit, he will tolerate that. He might decided to attack my ankles, I always wear shoes and socks. I know from past experiences that open-toed sandals do not protect sensitive toes.

However, it was nice to share this morning moment with him. A good start to the day.

A friend of mine stopped by later to see the progress on the house. Haley has helped me a lot around here to accomplish projects. We always joke that we may not do it the correct way, but it does get done. Her smile when she drove up to see the new paint on the house was a joy to behold. I gave her an outside tour and then told her that this one wall (which is actually the back wall of the carport- was crying out to me to paint a mural on it. I decided to do cats on a fence and call them “My Gatekeepers” since the wall is between two gates. I’ve never done an outside mural- only murals inside so I have to figure out if I use my own paints then put on a finish to seal it  or exterior house paint? I will have to look into that aspect. The mural will take shape next year as we are getting into rainy season now. To me, it is not a painted wall, it is a blank canvas.

We are just a few days away from the first day of Fall. This morning, there is a steady downpour so the painting will cease until the weather clears. But there is still much to do. It has been decided that the old fence will be placed around the base of the main enclosure. This will allow the cats to be protected both in the summer by providing a bit of shade, as well as the winter to stop some of the bite of the wind. The contractor has been building small cat platforms that will be elevated on the sides of the house and also inside my new observation porch. This way, when I am working inside or just watching the storms, my kitties can hang around up above me. He is so in-tune with cats, he has actually been able to make friends with PITA. She will come to the wire now while he is working, and rub up and down the wire. I have warned him to beware, her looks are deceiving. She bites and she bites hard. So far, he has kept all his fingers outside the wire. But I can see, he really wants to pet her. She bit me just yesterday after I flea-treated her. I have had her for years and I know her MO.

My house has gone from looking gloomy blue to a vibrant green with yellow gables and white trim. One of my friends texted yesterday as she drove by and said my house looks like a lime slurpee! I replied, I love lime slurpees! Maybe you can be the judge? All I know is my house used to look like it was in mourning, now it makes me smile. As you can see by the photos, even Nature approves of the color change. I am so glad for this government program. Without it, nothing would be changed here.

Once this is all finished and I plant lavender in my yard, my front yard is going to pop!

I get paid tomorrow. After the bills are met, I will have just under $200.00 to run me a month. This is first used for cat food/litter. I have a preliminary order with Chewy for $72.00 hopefully that will last the kitties until my next check. It’s always a juggling match.That puts my cushion for a month to $90.00 for my food and gas. Thankfully, the gas prices are creeping down slowly. It does not allow me to hit the vet debt or put any aside for emergencies.

That’s how we are doing it now. We are able to keep our doors open for rescue based on the help from you to meet our renewal fee for next year. We thank you for that! So this new color helps to cheer me up when I feel overwhelmed at times. I can go out and sit on my mini-deck and be joined by my rescues. I look at the trees and my pastures and feel at peace with the world. I don’t know how we keep it going, but we find a way.

I sent a picture of my new face-lifted house to my older sister. She lives in Florida. I was almost certain Gwen was going to harass me about the color choice. To my surprise, she loved it! She said it looked “Very Key-Westy!” I’ve never been to Key West but if they have vibrant colored neighborhoods, perhaps I will add it to my bucket list? Not that I ever go anywhere, to many cats need me. But it is nice to dream. At least she didn’t tell me it looked “Vey Key-Limey Pie!” LOL  I believe Mike would approve- he might groan a bit, he was pulled in by darker tones, but I think, in the end, I would win him over.

Well, the crew is pulling up, so I need to go move my truck. As much as I like the colors of my new house, I don’t want my truck to be the same!  Take care all of you who still swing by from time to time. Be safe, be loved, be cherished. That is the best place to be right now.

A few days ago, my cell phone kept pinging. We were getting alerted to high fire damage, gusty winds up to 65 miles an hour. There is a active fire and 58 miles from where I live. This morning the sky was pink and swirly and gray and smelly. The sun was blood red. We lost power for two days. It was turned on finally this afternoon at 4 o’clock. I was getting called, emailed and texted with all of these dire fire warnings and Highwinds. Knock on wood so far the winds haven’t gusted as high as predicted. It is quite warm outside.  I just got back from filling the kitties water bowls with fresh clean water and putting out their food. They seem a bit depressed, the smoke was pretty thick and some ash was falling out of the sky.

Both Ashley and Magoo have been glued to the windows since the warnings started  it does make me wonder if perhaps the smell of the smoke reminds them of their mom? Perhaps that is what’s drawing them out? I don’t know but just like on the Fourth of July it seems like smoke and fire and ash is highly attractive to them.

The wasp nest is still active. I am not feeding out by the creek yet. I have another pest control expert coming on Monday  let’s hope he’s a bit more honest than the last. I really need to start feeding out by the creek because Bristol has been coming in and starting fights with the other cats. He is really beating the pound out of Goblin  so far it hasn’t gotten to the stage where abscesses are showing up, but cat bites are hard to find until it’s almost too late. Although goblin did let me pet him the other day, his trust isn’t such that I can pick him up and explore him for heat sources on his body. I’m just praying that by Monday the problem will be taken care of and I can again start feeding by the creek to avoid these confrontations.

It’s still insufferably  hot here, but at least with the power restored the house is cooler. I wish we had more canned food but we ran out this morning. We still have dry food but during this intense heat wet food is better for all. At least we didn’t have any fires starting close to town. That’s why they shut down the power grid. As long as I’ve lived here I have never seen McDonald’s close until this weekend. When I went to Safeway to do some shopping you would’ve thought it was a zombie apocalypse! There were so many people in the parking lot, the water, the ice, most of it was gone. So I stopped at the dollar store and bought ice cube trays and made my own ice to keep my freezer and my refrigerator cold once the power was going to be shut off. At least I was ahead of the game. With the work crew being here there was an outhouse in my front yard. So that came in handy. LOL! Good timing

My contractor just made two beautiful perches for the ferals  He attached them to the side of the house near the patio enclosure and they absolutely love it. The way they are designed, they will help the cats get into the enclosure and keep the raccoons away. It’s pretty cool to have a contractor who loves cats working on my house right now.

Last Saturday, due to the high fire warnings, I decided it was high time to attack the long grasses in my orchard line. I leave these long grasses for several reasons. It invites in the local wildlife, deer and the like to bed down in the shade of the trees. It also provides protection for the free-roaming strays and ferals from the hot sun in the summer and the rain in the wintertime.

Although this year, the grasses were quite higher than ever before, due to a malfunctioning lawnmower. So I pulled out my trimmer mower and went to work. The DR Trimmer mower is a godsend. Especially in regards to getting rid of thick grass and blackberry bushes. I always wear protective gear because it is known to fling up small rocks and sticks as it eats its way through the weeds etc.

I was making good time with it, when suddenly I felt this burning sensation on my neck. Initially, I thought it was small rocks that had flung up from the ground. Boy was I wrong. I looked around and that’s when I saw these small white flying insects swirling out of the ground. I had inadvertently run over a massive nest! I could feel several sensations in my neck that were not pleasant. I am grateful now, that I had put Kota on a down stay in the backyard. Had he been there, I am sure he would have jumped immediately into the nest to protect me. Cupping my hand to my throat, I fled to the house.

This is the first time in my life that I have been attacked by wasps. Turns out Sunday after having to go to Urgent Care due to the pain and swelling, I was not stung. The doctor said I was bitten. He explained that wasps have teeth with venom inside their mouth as potent as what is carried in their stinger. I was bitten five times.

They gave me a pain shot, a shot of steroids, some anit-nausea pills and sent me home with  additional steroids to take the next day. The pain was incredible. I have a high threshold for pain, but this was so different. Right after the attack, I started getting this nasty taste in my mouth. I could feel it as it dripped down my esophagus and it burned. That turned out to be the toxin the bites delivered.

Yesterday, the pain was still so intense I called my PC and went in. She told me I am suffering from extended reactions to the bites and gave me some lidocaine cream.This morning, thankfully, I was able to keep down water and crackers. The swelling is gone, the redness is gone and as the pain was traveling from my neck down to my chest, the chest pains are gone as well.

Now, I have a massive underground nest of stinging biting white wasps?  I dumped two large cans of RAID (something I would never ordinarily use on insects outside.0 But these buggers are fast, they come in hard and leave a lot of damage behind. God knows what they would do to Twist or Goblin my two high-prey cats. Much less to Kota because i have seen this goofy dog snapping and eating yellow jackets when he is getting pestered by them. I had called several pest control companies after the incident, but it was on the holiday so only yesterday did one arrive.

Turns out, these were yellow jackets and why they were white (according to this man) is because the nest was being attacked and they were diving down into the nursery to carry the larvae to another location. The nursery is protected by this white powder, and they tuck their stinger underneath the babies to protect them. This is why they bit me and did not sting me. The price he gave me to not remove the nest, but to dust it with what turns out to be something I already have on hand- diatomaceous earth (I use it to control fleas in the backyard) was way overpriced( in my mind anyway.) I have another guy coming on Friday. I want to see what he says. I don’t know about you guys, but $500.00 to kill these insects seems a bit steep? That could buy a lot of cat food, cat litter and hit the vet debt. We will see what this second man has to say.

So for now, I have to stop feeding Bristol by the creek. I am not even going into my back pasture with the entrance to this nest being so exposed. The RAID did not even faze these buggers! I just want them gone. I don’t want my cats stung or bit either. I am going to ask the pest expert if he can find anymore nests in the long grasses that remain. I don’t know if that is even possible? But it never hurts to ask. I do know, it will hurt if I find another nest when I try to continue attacking the grasses before they decide to fight back!

This morning when I went to feed, God blessed me with my first contact with Goblin! I was able to actually run my hand quickly down his back as he was eating! He will have been here one year ago on this approaching Halloween. This is a good sign that he is finally trusting in my presence.

My thanks to those of you who contributed recently to keep my non-profit going. So appreciated that you gave of your hearts. Stay safe everyone. Love the ones you’re with and let them know or show them   how important they are to you.