Meet Mugsy

Mugsy showed up in the backyard one day, about a month ago. There are a half dozen cats who show up in the yard from time to time; most of them live in the cow barn down the street. Most of them don’t like to be petted, spoken to, or pursued in any way, thank you very much.

Mugsy, however, came limping right up when I called him. He was extremely hungry and was more than happy to devour a plate full of Purina Cat Chow. He was also willing to be petted, right off the bat. You might even say he was needy. Desparate.

We fed Mugsy and gave him a week or so to return home, if he had one. He didn’t seem to have one though. He had earmites and worms and a number of wounds from fighting, and he hadn’t been neutered. We surrounded an old doghouse with hay bales and he agreed to sleep there.

It should be noted that before Mugsy had a name, we called him “Cat Cat”. He has one of those nicks in his ear that fighting tomcats often have. Here’s a blurry photo of it, because Mugsy doesn’t sit still and prefers head-butting to being photographed.

Mugsy's Ear

When we met him, Mugsy also had a puncture wound near his ear and these two scrapes on his back legs upon which there was no fur:

Scrapes and Scratches

These looked way worse a few weeks ago and were part of the impetous of getting him to the vet. When we got there, though, the vet said these scratches weren’t so bad. It was the hidden bite on his front leg, the one that was making him limp, that was abscessed and nasty.

So the vet gave him another bald spot:

A Bald Leg.

Since Mugsy was already going under anesthetic so the vet could drain his abscess, it was good time to get him neutered as well.

Fourth bald spot acquired.

The Bald Backside.

Sorry.

Mugsy also got antibiotics, Mita-Clear, de-wormer, and all his vaccines.

He looks like hell, though, for a cat so well taken care of. A photo of all his scrapes and scratches in one frame is in order, but he won’t sit still for it.

Whether he comes inside or remains an outdoor cat remains to be seen. We have a number of things to consider: the fact that he wants in, the fact that our other cat Does Not want him in, the Country Mouse’s allergy to him, the need for booster shots, the possibility that he still marks his territory, and the fact that someday we’ll want outdoor cats to chase away barn mice. He’s so comfortable at our home and wants in so badly that we theorize that he actually lived in our house long ago, before it sat abandoned for a couple of years and we came along and bought it last Spring.

We still call him Cat Cat sometimes out of habit. He’s super sweet and gracefully endures the application of ear mite medicine and other indignities. He likes to follow us around the yard and he loves to be held and carried. One day I went out and got into my car, and he followed me and jumped in before I could shut the door. We love him.

A Great Big Wagon

I cannot overstate the importance of having a large wagon if you have any land at all.

Our wagon (technically a “garden cart“) is hardly the red wagon I had as a kid. We bought it to help clear the Huge Pile of Trash from the old barn, and it has already been a big help cleaning up the fallen limbs from around the yard. And although three acres isn’t massive for a homestead, one gets tired of carrying piles of stuff back and forth. This wagon makes that easy, and even kind of fun. I know people (even some neighbors) who use fancy ATVs with cargo beds for lugging almost anything around their yard, but that seems like overkill for our little homestead.

The sides of the wagon can be lowered for handling large or unwieldy loads.

Our wagon is large – large enough that a couple of adults could sit cross-legged inside it. It has heavy duty, inflatable tires, and sits high enough to handle most reasonable terrain. The draw bar can be be attached to our tractor hitch. The bed is made of heavy-gauge aluminum mesh, and the sides are hinged so that they can be lowered (for carrying larger items. One of these days I’m going to rig up an adjustible wooden brace so that the sides will lay flat to make one very large bed.

In Search of a Place to Sit

The fact that patio chairs started at a hundred dollars each, everywhere I looked, wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d actually liked any of them. Instead they were all boxy with factory-distressed hunter green frames and discount mustard-yellow fake brocade on the seats, plastic umbrella table optional.

But every time there was a strong wind, which was about twice a day, our little canvas camping chairs blew right off the deck and beyond into the tall, tangled grass (the Country Mouse does his best to keep up with mowing the three acres). Sitting on our porch and staring at the cows had to be preceded by a trek around the lawn, looking for the chairs.

So I started scouring the junk shops, and I found this nifty set of wrought-iron chairs for $25. They were begging for a little TLC and they promised to stay put.

The chairs, before

I knew right away that I wanted to paint them red, but wasn’t sure what to do with the seats. Then we stopped by a fabric outlet store on our way home from Myrtle Beach, where I found this lovely retro strawberry vinyl and enough foam to freshen them up.

Strawberry fields

My front porch is like an ice cream parlor now. Pardon me while I go and make a caramel sundae.

The chairs, all finished!

Simple Tools

Well, it was supposed to be an "arty" photo...

I am not immune to the pleasures of browsing catalogs and magazines full of ads for shiny and impractical tools. Huge tractors with air conditioned cabs, automatic log splitters, dremel sets, etc.

Obviously, this is one area where I have a real danger of slipping into a consumerist mentality and throw money at a task rather than roll up my sleeves and make do with what I have.

This is a disease that infects homeowners in general, and homesteaders in particular. Sometimes you really do need a certain tool. And it’s so often a tool that you would never have imagined needing – back when the building superintendent took care of things. After you’ve experienced the joy of really having the right tool to get a job done, you begin to think of every new job in terms of what tool you need to really do it right this time.

Walk into a Lowes (or the big-box hardware store of your choice), and you will see an incredible (some might say ridiculous) diversity of hand and power tools. The variety of cordless drills alone: in different sizes, colors, materials, and optional attachments will boggle your mind. Hand tools of every description, and some that defy it.

Perhaps someday I will need a rockery trowel. When that day comes, I know that Lowes will be there for me.

Over time, my favorite tools have always been simple tools that can do many things. Since moving onto the homestead, I’ve acquired a few more favorites. With one notable exception (our little garden tractor) most of them are hand tools that don’t require power. All are tools that can be used for many different job – this is key. I hate having something that I only use once a year. Or once a decade.

In the next post, the first of my favorites: A Great Big Wagon

After the winds came…

The insurance company doesn’t like our moldering outbuildings – so we dismantled one and much of the other this past weekend with the help of friends and family.

And then the winds scattered our neat stacks of old wood and metal over the soybean field behind our yard. These were special winds, the remnants of hurricane Ike or so I’m told. They reached somewhere between 70 and 80mph, and were quite sustained. We sat and watched the trees bend, and prayed that our house would remain undamaged.

Goodbye Old Shed! We hardly knew ye!

It was quite beautiful, but it shut off the lights for a few days. We got lucky, our power came back on Tuesday. I hear that many people might not have any power until next week. We lost a fridge full of food, a little bit of siding got pulled out of place, and that’s about it. It could have been worse: the ancient beech trees in our front yard are still standing, and there was no major damage at all.

We’re considering a generator of some kind, but since this was a freak weather event we aren’t making a priority out of it. In the meantime, there are downed trees to cleanup, lumber piles to sort, old junk to salvage, and trash to truck to the landfill.

Barn Deconstruction - in medias res

Our barn (like many ancient barns) came complete with a huge pile of trash from the previous residents, much of it very dangerous looking. I hate to contribute much to the size of a landfill, but I simply don’t want a backyard that looks like a warzone.

We are salvaging a lot of great lumber from the old barn. I easily have enough to build a new shed for the lawnmower, and maybe even enough for the carport.

A poignant moment: humankind has always been both builder and destroyer.

Unexpected bonus: All these fallen branches everywhere mean we get to have a big bonfire almost every night!