Helping with the recent fence rebuild

Rascal "helped" at times when I did the fence rebuild last week.  (https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2021/09/fence-rebuild-between-two-buildings.html)

Checking to see that I dug the post hole deep enough.

Sitting in a tree

I'm working on a fence rebuild.  Rascal has joined me and sits nearby.  Here he climbed the tree and sat there watching me, and watching for birds.

I am thinking about the Cheshire cat from "Alice in Wonderland", and also, for some reason, of Garfield.

Rascal is happy I'm back home

I'm back home after my surgery.  Rascal is very happy I am back home.  Instead of sleeping on his blanket alot (as seen in the photo), he now wants to sleep on my lap, or right next to me when I sleep in bed.  And since I am recuperating, Rascal gets to spend more time with me.

Helping with the hay cart

Rascal is going outside more and more, especially if I go outside.   Earlier this week when I had to fix the hay cart Rascal came over to supervise me.  Just like Daisy used to do.

Time to take a break.

Sitting on a tree

Rascal now likes to go outside in the morning for a while, and then in the evening after the sun sets.   Yesterday morning I got a photo of Rascal sitting on part of a tree looking out at the hayfield.  Probably listening for mice in the hayfield.  Today it rained off and on so we spent much of the day inside the house.

I took the second photo so you can see where Rascal was sitting earlier.

Norwegian Forest Cat info

Recently I read an article listing the top ten cat breeds.  I don't remember if it was the 'top 10 long hair cat breeds', or what.  Anyway, I captured info about Norwegian Forest cats.

Rascal is doing fine.  He is taking the heat better than I expected considering he has long thick hair.  He spends the day inside the house where it is cooler.  He goes out more often at night and in the early morning.  He still quite often goes in and out of the house in the early morning causing me to wake up over and over.  Early this morning I left one house door ajar so he can go in and out of the house without waking me up.  Still he meowed and woke me up repeatedly.  This time he would sit outside my bedroom and meow.  I don't know... was he doing that to let me know he was in the house and planned on going back outside?

Out early routine

Rascal is getting braver to go outside the house.  But only during the nighttime or early morning.  Once in a great while he will go outside before midnight.   However he usually waits until I go to bed, which is around 2 am.  Often for not a long time.  But sometimes it can be for 2 hours.  My bedroom window is near the backdoor and Rascal figured out that is how to get back in the house.  He will sit on the doorstep and meow to the window to wake me up.  It works for him.

Lately he has gotten into the routine of going in-and-out during the time from around 5 am to 7 am.  By in-and-out I mean, by waking me up.  Usually it is a half dozen times over roughly an hour period of time.  Daisy would eat a few big meals a day.  Rascal eats small meals, but often.  So he wants in the house to get a quick bite to eat or a drink or water.  Sometimes 3 minutes later he asks to go back outside.  Fortunately I can fall asleep fast.  Still, up and down six or seven times in an hour early in the morning can get tiring to me.

Donna says I should make a cat door so Rascal can go in-and-out on his own.  That may be an option if Rascal doesn't change his routine.

Here is a photo I took of Rascal after he went back outside early one morning a few days ago.  Daisy isn't the only cat who would climb to the top of the fence and walk along it.  By the time I got my camera to take this photo Rascal walked back and was jumping down from the fence.

Helping with tree stump work

Last week I worked on removing some ground level side roots on a tree stump in the front yard.

https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2021/06/tree-stump-17-for-year.html

Rascal came out to "help" me.  It was hard to get a decent photo as he kept moving around.

He Came In Through The Kitchen Window

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVv7IzEVf3M

Well... Daisy never did this.

Earlier this week I thought Rascal was outside when I was.  It was that I got sidetracked doing something and was gone longer than I expected.  When I got back to the house I called for Rascal.  No Rascal.  When I opened the house door there he was inside the house waiting for me at the door.  Oh.  I guess I remembered wrong.  You were inside the whole time.

Later I noticed by kitchen window screen was loose and cockeyed.  Odd.  But okay.

Last night Rascal would go out briefly.  Then wanted back in to get a quick bite to eat.  Rascal doesn't eat a lot at one time, but quite often he will eat a quick bite.  Then he wanted back outside.  Okay.  A short time later I was on my computer and I heard a sound from the kitchen.  What? Something fall or break?

I went to look and then saw Rascal standing in the narrow window sill and he was pushing on the screen to try to get inside.

What?!  How did you get up there?!

I opened the door and he jumped down and came inside the house.  So, the previous time I was right.  He was outside and then he figured out how to jump up and push on the screen to get inside the house.

So now if Rascal is outside and I'm not around I will have to only have the window open a crack so he can't jump up and push his way inside the house.

This morning after 6 am Rascal was interested in going outside.  I usually fall right back asleep.  But this time I didn't as I knew he would want back in the house after a short time.  I closed the kitchen window to a crack.  Rascal came around to the other door by my bedroom window and meowed.  I let him back in the house then went back to bed.  He ate and then he wanted back outside again.  Really?  Okay.

So again I didn't fall back asleep as I knew he would want back inside after a short time outside.  After a while he again came to the other door and meowed.  This time he wanted to stay in the house and jumped up on my bed to sleep next to me.  After at 7 am I was able to go back to sleep.

This evening Rascal was outside with me when I did some grass removal from around a fruit tree.  After an hour or so he headed back to the house.  I then headed that way to do something.  I looked over and Rascal was standing at the house door but he was also looking up at the window.  I didn't have it open.  Whew.

What a cat.

The window doesn't open that wide.  The distance up is quite a bit.  The window sill is not that large.  Who would have thought.

You talking about me?

"Stop reading", said Rascal

Today Rascal sat on the couch and talked to the birds as I ate my lunch.

Then after eating lunch - yes, the clock is correct.  My schedule is late and my lunch is around 5 pm.  Anyway, after eating lunch today I didn't go sit on the couch to finish reading.  When I did that after breakfast today Rascal then laid on my lap and got lots of petting and brushing and before I could finish reading I fell asleep for 45 minutes.  So this time I planned to finish reading my article at the table.  Well, you can see what happened.  I never got to finish reading the article.  So I had to get up and go outside to do more work.  Later Rascal joined me outside as I removed grass and weeds from around a fruit tree.

Rascal is still here

It's been a long time since I posted about my new cat, Rascal.  He is not Daisy, but we are getting along fine.

Rascal no longer hides under my bed.  He is comfortable now in the entire house.  His favorite spot is on his blanket on my loveseat.  At night he usually sleeps on the bed when I do.  Daisy had his spot and he had to lay right against me at all times. If I moved over in bed, Daisy would then move over to continue to be right against me.   Rascal lays near, but not against me at the start of the night, but by morning he lays closer.  He likes his neck rubbed and when he is active at 7 or 8 am often he wakes me and I have to pet him around the neck or side of his head for a bit until I fall back asleep.  Later he goes back to sleep and will then sleep closer to me.  If I have my arm stretched out on top of the covers he will lay against my wrist and hand.  Since my accident in 2019 I sleep more.  Over nine hours.  Now that I have Rascal I sleep even more.  Often 10 hours.  Rascal would prefer if I kept sleeping and laying next to him.  He would be fine with all day.  It seems when I try to get up in the morning Rascal will move around and on top of me to try to keep me laying there.

Rascal now has gotten my routine down a little bit.  Initially he wanted attention almost all the time I was around. Now he will give me a break when I eat a meal. He will go and sit on the floor watching me or go lay on his blanket and watch me.  When I am done eating he will come back to me for more petting..

Daisy would lay on my lap and go to sleep when I was on the computer.  Rascal will jump up on my lap a number of times when I am on the computer.  If I rub his neck he will stay.  When I stop and start retyping he will then jump off my lap and go elsewhere.

Rascal has started to go outside the past few weeks.  For the most part only if I go outside also.  Initially it was only on the porch and near the door.  Now that he would like to occasionally eat grass he will go around the house.  And a time or two last week he started to go around the yard a little bit and check out a few buildings.  He even went to the barn.  So I left open a side door on the barn so he could go inside.  I want him to catch the mice in the barn.  I think he will be a good mouser.  He just need to be comfortable with where he is.

Rascal prefers to have his neck rubbed or the side of his face rubbed.  Not so much back past his front legs and shoulders.  I have to watch that he doesn't bite my hand if I pet too far back.  About the only time I can pet him back behind his front legs is when I am standing and using both hands, starting from under his neck and then go back along each of his sides.  He will turn his head looking up at me or else turn his head side to side watching my hands.

Sometimes I think Rascal has AHAD.  He doesn't keep too still when I pet him.  He changes positions often.

Now that it is hot outside I would like to trim some of his neck fur.  But he doesn't sit still, or like to have his fur cut.

He does like to play with his toys.

Another day with Rascal

Earlier I had mentioned that Rascal was caught in a junkyard.  No one is sure how long he lived there.  A person placed a trap to catch other cats she had seen in the junkyard since it was the beginning of December and getting cold, and after the trap was out for only one day also caught Rascal.  The former owner of Rascal also owned a motel in Columbia Falls and said Rascal lived there.  But she said that Rascal liked to roam around.

Rascal likes to lay under the bed in my bedroom.  He comes out when I go to bed so I can pet him.  I don't think he spends the night on the bed as he isn't there when I wake up.  But when Rascal hears I am awake in the morning he jumps up on the bed.  Other times of the day when I enter the bedroom and sit on the bed he will come out from under the bed so I can pet him. This afternoon when it was time for me to go and do some work, Rascal put his claws into my flannel shirt and tried to stop me from leaving him.  Some times he seems to hear something I can't hear as he looks to be hearing something, and then he will go back under the bed.

Rascal will only go out of the bedroom to eat and use the litter box.  This evening I tried to coax him out of the bedroom to join me by the woodstove in the hallway area.  He would come to the door but not out of the room.  So I picked him up.  As soon as I exited the bedroom Rascal panicked and squirmed out of my hands scratching one of my fingers.  As soon as he hit the ground he took off.  Since I had closed the bedroom door he took off to another room.  I waited and waited and called for him but he wouldn't come.  Later when I looked for him I saw him run back to my bedroom as I had now left the bedroom door open.

Patti, a friend of mine, said Rascal looks like a Norwegian Forest cat. 

"He is a more little like a “normal” long hair around the face, but the cat sites on the internet say that one way to distinguish the Norwegian Forest cat from other long hairs is that they have a mane."

I looked at photos of Norwegian Forest cats, and Rascal does look like one.   Especially when he sits.  His fur around his neck looks like a mane.   This afternoon I tried to trim some of his mane as earlier I had seen the long neck hair got in the way of some of his grooming.  I was able to only trim a little of his fur as he is almost constantly in motion.

So we are working at increasing our bond together.  Hopefully it won't take much longer for him to relax and go about the entire house.

New cat. Rascal

I feel a little guilty.  I somewhat feel like a person whose long term spouse had died and within weeks they get remarried to someone else. Not a good image.  I miss my Daisy.  I also miss having a cat.  

The weekly newspaper had photos of cats for adoption from the county animal shelter, Humane Society, and the Flathead Spay and Neuter Task Force.  The Spay and Neuter Task Force had a photo of a white and black cat for adoption.  My friend Donna and I went to look at the cat.  He seemed nice.  But he was a long haired cat.  I never had a long hair cat.  For some reason - too many cat food commercials? - I had the idea a long haired cat was an indoor cat and needed extra attention and pampering.

I looked around at the other organizations in the Valley. The humane society had a back and white cat but I had to wait a few days to be able to look at the cat as viewing was only by appointment due to COVID restrictions.   When I called later I was told this cat also had a sister and both needed to be adopted together.  A later photo showed the cat to be more black with white, and I wanted a white cat with black, more like Daisy.  And I wanted only one cat.

I checked around western Montana.  Other organizations had a few white with black cats.  Or that was what the photo showed.  I called and tried to get more photos as the distances were 70 and 100 miles away.  I never did get any more photos.

So I defaulted back to the Spay and Neuter Task Force cat. This cat, and two other cats, had been rescued from a junkyard in Columbia Falls.  The cat has a microchip and they found who the owner was.  The owner agreed the cat could be adopted.  The cat had a habit of roaming and disappearing from its previous home.   I talked to the owner about the cat.  The cat is named: Rascal.

A few days ago I adopted Rascal.   For now I think I will keep that name.  He is a male cat and is 5 years old.

The first day Rascal just wanted to sit in the corner of the living room.  When I came back in the house later Rascal was missing.  I looked and looked all over the house before I found him in the basement.  Then he ran upstairs and hid.  Later in the evening I found him the basement as I hadn't closed the door.  I let him be.  I figured he would come out later to eat or explore.

The next morning I couldn't find him. I used a flashlight and looked everywhere. After the third time I looked for him in the afternoon he came down to me in the basement.   This time I closed the basement door after we left the basement.

I was able to pet him.   When I took a break and cleaned the ashes from the woodstove Rascal went to my bedroom.  Later I couldn't find him.  Eventually I found him under my bed.  He found a spot to lay there in between the stuff stored there.  And he stayed there the rest of the day.

Last night he was under the bed when I went to bed.  He came out and joined me on top of the bed.  Since I was falling asleep and not petting him he left the bed.  This morning after I woke up he came back on to the bed.  I was able to pet him and he liked it.   He mainly stayed in the bedroom and under the bed today.  When I came into the bedroom he would come out and I was able to pet him.

So Rascal is taking his time getting used to his new home.  I wonder if he prefers under the bed, or that part of the basement, as those were about the only areas Daisy didn't go.

Petting Rascal is different than petting Daisy.  Rascal keeps moving over and over and around and around as I pet him.  He doesn't sit still.  He also prefers his head to be rubbed by me, also prefers to rub his head against my hands and arm.

So I am getting used to my new cat.  He seems nice. I haven't updated his microchip to me as the owner.  I am waiting to see if he will adjust to living out here, and me to him. If not I can take him back.  I won't let him outside for a number of weeks so he can get set in his ways that this is his home.

Today I was finally able to get a few photos of Rascal.