Out to Pasture: Polar Vortex, Birthday Boy, Barnies

Winter was late, but finally arrived –

with a vengeance.

After a warm, mostly brown December, we got our white Christmas several days AFTER the 25th.

We enjoyed the picturesque snow for awhile

until it came thundering off the metal roof onto the newly shoveled driveway,

blocking the garage with a wall that would have made Donald Trump proud.

The avalanche threatened to become permanent ice, trapping the Yaris in the garage till June,

until it was laboriously chipped and shoveled out of the way.

Vigilant Cat remains up to his chest in a drift.

Temperatures plunged at the end of the month as a polar vortex swirled down from the north.

We’re closing out January with air temps down to the minus 30s

(the “high” on Jan 29 was -17; the low on Jan 31 was -36)

and dangerous wind chills reaching -60. Schools and many businesses were closed; mail delivery was cancelled.

In the barn the large heated buckets were rimmed with frost but remained accessible

while the smaller electric bucket froze solid.

Alpines that they are, the goats laugh in the teeth of the brutal cold.

Actually, they survive the dangerous weather by snuggling down into their deep beds of waste hay

and by stoking their internal furnaces.

Zippy threatens to disappear entirely into the hay feeder.

Muzzles are frosty and some of the goats are shivering, but they distract themselves by paging through the Aruba travel guides they ordered.

Barb continues to make cheeses

and turn out gorgeous soaps (ordering info will be included on future blog updates)

including a special batch for Valentine’s day.

Momma Kitty continues to put up with challenges to her demesne

as Intruder Cat and the army of shrews help themselves to her feeding dishes and heated water bowl.

Tufts of yellow-orange fur near the dishes suggest that Momma may have had an animated discussion with Intruder Cat about sharing.

Intruder remains fairly blasé about the shrews:

while Momma is getting a little testy and requests that the shrews get off her lawn:

Survivor that she is, Momma waits out the cold spell in her snug hideaway atop the bales and warms herself in the sunny east window.

Meanwhile, Dustin shows no concern about the Deep Freeze as he naps the winter away.

We celebrated his birthday on Jan 28, the day we brought him home from the late, lamented Friends of Animals in 2014. The staff had no idea of his actual birthday, or even how old he was; they guessed 5-6 years.

We paid a reduced adoption fee of $25.00 because he was an older cat and had been at the shelter for 8 long months without finding a new home.

He spent that time alone in his own small pen because he was terrified of other cats who didn’t look like him.

We thought he was a bargain – until we took him to the vet for a checkup a few days later and discovered that he was suffering from tooth resorption.