Goings-on

First off, can I have some good thoughts for poor Lionel?

His former owners took this lovely pic of him. Wednesday night, we had to take Lionel to the emergency vet (aka our friend Dr. Dave.) He started stumbling around and having trouble walking, and he had lost his appetite. He was clearly in distress and uncomfortable.

He's still there and doing okay. He's had a whole bunch of tests and so far it has been narrowed down to a possible diagnosis of either toxoplasmosis or FIP (feline infectious peritonitis). We are hoping for toxoplasmosis which is at least treatable and offers a better outcome. Right now they are treating him as if he has toxoplasmosis, while they wait for the results of bloodwork sent to Toronto (they can't diagnosis FIP from bloodwork at our veterinary clinic.) He would be home already but Dr. Dave is concerned about Lionel's lack of appetite. They have been giving him appetite stimulants along with other medications. We may be able to bring Lionel home tomorrow if he's doing a bit more eating!

Of course we're already attached to him and I've been keeping his former guardians, our friends, in the loop as well. Lionel is a sensitive soul and I'm wondering if the stress of moving to a new place triggered something in him. Anyway, we miss him and want him home.

His buddy Missy misses him too!

We're trying to give her a bit of extra attention while Lionel is gone.

She is just the sweetest!

And look who's sleeping off an all-night bender...

Emerson did a runner and spent the night outside cavorting with Redford. We could not catch him so we left him to it. Redford, of course, comes any time I call him. I think the wrong cat is the barn cat!!

And much work is going on around here. We are having four box stalls built in the lower barn. The old concrete floor has been jackhammered apart and taken out, and replaced with stonedust. New concrete footings and support posts are going in, then the stalls are being built!

The fenceposts are all in for the pasture but we are just waiting on the delivery of rolls of horse fencing. 

It's for the two ponies on the right!  We are adopting them through the OSPCA. We were originally just taking the blind-in-one-eye gal on the right, but we were finally convinced to take the young man on the left, who was just gelded the other day. 

Owing to the fact that I know ZIP about training ponies, I'm going to get some help to make sure the young man grow up with nice manners.

If I'm not mistaken, I think both of these ponies came from the same barn as Ophelia, our pig!

We want to get some horses at some point too.

In the meantime, the manager of our OSPCA shelter sent me a Facebook message the other day, asking if we wanted a couple of quail. Oh sure, why not? What's two more.

They are apparently Coturnix quail. They said they were girls, but from what I've seen on the internet, I think the one on the left (currently named Stephanie) is a boy. The one on the right is Amanda. We could change that to Stephan and Aman, ha ha ha.

What do you think? Is that one on the bottom a girl or boy?

Whatever, they are very sweet!

They were turned in to the shelter by a woman who saw someone trying to feed the quail to a dog (!!!!) at a park in Cornwall. Yes, really. She intervened and saved the quail.

So now we are figuring out some winter housing for them. We could perhaps put them in the garage, which is heated, but I don't want them getting carbon monoxide poisoning from the cars. We do have an air exchanger in there. We'll figure something out.

So right now we're up to, ahem, two quails, two turkeys, three guinea hens, 15 ducks, 37 chickens (don't ask me how THAT happened), a dog, eight pigs and, um.... nine cats.

Nineteen of those animals came via the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry OSPCA! And soon we'll be adding the two ponies.

Missy approves!

Please send good thoughts for dear Lionel, and have a great weekend!