1st Year at the New House: Part 2

If you haven’t checked out part one of this series, make sure to do so –> 1st Year at the New House: Part 1

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This 1st Year series is a  walk-through of our first year here at the new house, with a lot of pictures and some short captions and explanations.

In mid-September, I also started working on building my greenhouse – with some help of course.  I had purchased this 15x7x7 greenhouse to use the previous winter at our other house.  I posted a little video tour of that completed greenhouse on my Southern Gardener YouTube page.  I got rid of the cover before we moved because it already had a few holes in it, and I used the hoop frame to start construction on my new one.

We got it finished by the end of October, just in time for the cold weather!  I did the door all on my own.  Cheers to wood that is slightly warped and not perfectly straight!  😕  But at least it’s functional!  I just wedge the door closed (for now) with a large rock.

I am hoping to do a more detailed blog post about the construction of this greenhouse on my Southern Gardener blog {no promises!}, but the only way it is anchored down is by the inside tables we build around the edges.

We tried really hard to get these swing set anchors into the ground because that’s what we used when we constructed my first greenhouse at our previous house, but we must have tried 10 different spots and couldn’t get one in the ground!  There were just too many rocks we kept hitting.  So we attached the legs of the tables to the 4×4 base and figured the weight of the tables would be enough, and we were correct.  This greenhouse has since withstood the winds of Zeta, which came through Gadsden, Alabama as a tropical storm.  The wind gusts were pretty intense that night/morning.  So my way of thinking is if this greenhouse ever blows over, I have more pressing matters to worry about – like a strong tornado that just blew threw.

As I continued trying to make the outside areas more appealing, I ran into some issues I’d never had to deal with at our other house.  I mentioned Mr Groundhog in part 1 of this series.  I also never had to deal with having outdoor cats . . . who like to use my flower pots as litter boxes . . .

With these two pots, I had to cover the dirt with pine straw and put giant rocks in the way.  I don’t mind them sleeping on the dirt so long as they don’t damage the plants…

But they started digging in the dirt, so the pine straw and large rocks stopped that.  I didn’t get a picture of the dirt dug up before putting the pine straw and rocks in place.

So I had to ‘cat proof’ all of my larger flower pots outside.  😕

In mid-September, Jasmine went to the vet because she had a sore on one of her back knees that wouldn’t heal.  She kept licking and gnawing on it.  We assumed something happened while they were all quarantined in one room at the previous house (while movers were loading stuff) or during the 1-hour drive when it was time for the cats to move.

Turns out there was a small knot under the skin that we were unaware of.  The vet recommended surgery to remove it, so she had surgery on October 3rd, 2019.

Of course the stitches came out the first day.  The vet said more than likely it was benign and asked if we wanted it sent off for a biopsy.  Um, yes.  Since we are doing the surgery anyway, we’d like it biopsied.  The results came back malignant.  It was a sarcoma, but the vet said it was a low-index cancer, meaning it doesn’t spread fast, and if it does grow back, it will be very slow.  Our two options, should it start growing back, are to amputate her leg or just leave it alone.  Fingers crossed it doesn’t come back!  She is 15 years old now, so amputating her leg is not really advisable.

Because of the location of the wound, it took forever to heal – more than 2 months.  Some of these images are a little graphic, so  you can scroll past these thumbnails if you don’t want to see.

We were a little concerned the vet didn’t recommend any bandaging for it and he didn’t send her home with any pain medicine.  We took her to a different vet for another opinion, and we started bandaging the wound, using silver sulfadiazine to prevent infection.  But it wouldn’t heal.  There just wasn’t much skin to close the wound.  She had a 2nd surgery on November 12th at the other vet’s clinic.  She wound up visiting the vet 10 times over the course of 2 months (2 of those visits being surgeries).  On our last visit in late November, the vet recommended taking the bandage off as she was concerned the friction from the bandage was preventing the spot from healing.  We were skeptical, but we did it (hoping she wouldn’t bleed all over the place).  Per the vets instructions, we kept Vaseline on the wound to somewhat ‘seal’ it, and she wore the cone of shame so she wouldn’t be able to lick and chew at it.

It finally healed!  And we keep a check on it to make sure there isn’t another knot forming under the skin.  I have to say, Jasmine was a trouper at the vet during all of these visits and only got really pissy once when they were checking her leg and pressing on it.  At our previous vet before we moved, she would turn into a psycho demon cat by the time we got her back into the room.  They would have to sedate her just to give her shots and do her annual blood work.  I was surprised she was so mellow in the waiting room at these 2 vet clinics, just  hanging out on her leash and exploring – but usually very vocal about it.

It seems most of this post is centered around our cats.  😆  By mid-October, the outside cats were a lot more comfortable with us and knew the feeding routine.  They were now coming up to the house on the back patio to be fed.  They were still skittish, but slowly progress was being made.

Zari got a little too comfortable being on the back patio and darted into the house one morning.  I was nervous there might be a fight between her and one of our other inside cats, and until we could get them to the vet to get checked for contagious diseases, we didn’t want them mingling with our other cats.  I was trying to catch her, and she kept throwing herself into lower windows and French doors (with window parts), trying to get outside.  The poor baby!  I finally got to a door and opened it so she could dart outside.

To get them more used to us, we would sit outside at their food bowls while they ate, reaching out to touch them and try to pet them.  Also in mid-October, we started letting them inside one closed-off room, letting them come into the window on their own terms to explore while we were in the room.

While looking through my phone screenshots for part 1 of this series, I came across this one below.

In late October and through some of November last year, I kept hearing this constant pulsating hum coming from somewhere outside.  It was a more defined noise in the house than outside.  It was driving me crazy, and I couldn’t sleep because of it.  I spent a lot of time Googling what it could be, but I have no idea what it really was.  It eventually stopped, so I was just grateful for that.  By this point, we had realized there was way more noise here at our house than we had anticipated, and while I was able to deal with the traffic noise better than Alex, this pulsating hum was driving me insane.  But it just stopped one day…  I will say that it did come back in 2020, and Alex was able to hear it this time.  We still have no clue to this day what it is, but it can be maddening!

By December, both outdoor kitties were sitting in our laps! Zari took a lot longer to do so, but this was huge progress compared to the skittish little kitten she was just 4 months before.

In December, it was time to catch them and take them to the vet.  They needed routine bloodwork and yearly shots, and they needed to be fixed before Zari wound up getting pregnant.  All bloodwork came back great (YAY – no infectious diseases!), and the vet estimated their age to be around 8 months old.  Whew!  That was close!  I have read of some 6-month old kittens getting pregnant, so I am really glad she didn’t.  My heart ached taking them to a place they were unfamiliar with for a few nights (we wanted them to heal some before letting them back outside), especially having never been enclosed in anything prior to this.  These 2 did better on the way to/from the vet clinic than our 5 inside cats…

I actually went to visit with them the day before we were to pick them up, and the staff said they were doing wonderful.  This is actually the first time Zari let me hold her.

Since they were still outside and it was wintertime, we invested in this heated outdoor house.  They used it a lot, so it was reassuring to know they were out of the really cold weather.

And to wrap up part 2, here are last year’s Christmas decorations.  I suck at decorating.  I don’t want a bunch of stuff I’ll have to store somewhere the rest of the year (one of the reasons I opt for a live tree – no need to store it for next year).  So I put up a live tree in my bedroom (no cats in there!), and I decorated our upstairs fireplace mantle.  That’s it.  Ignore the cat water bowl in the middle of everything.  🙄

Moving into 2020… check out part three of this series!