August 1, 2024
Howdy and welcome to August! Its been a very hot day and I'm getting ready to cook supper and then go work in the cattery and be with my babies! I look forward to it.
We had quite a bit of business in our antique store/sweet shop today. It was nice to see so many folks!
My husband is doing well with all of his recovery process. I am doing well tonight, but very busy. Take a look at the kittens! What a crop! LOL
One litter decided to dump their water and play in it. It made their pictures not look as good as I would like, but they are still cute little stinkers, and they'll probably look better next time.....probably!
Have a great evening!
May 12, 2024
Well, good evening everyone! This has been an extremely busy weekend. We got so much done. Feels good after being down sick and unable to get anything done.
The best part was Saturday when a family came and picked up their new kitten. I ALWAYS love that time! The kitten went home happy and fit right in. I got wonderful videos back and it was just very cool to see a new happy family!
We did also have bad news. A kitten I sold four years ago to one of my families that have gotten multiples from me came down with FIP. Unfortunately I was unable to help as it was too late when they contacted me. They rightfully put him down, so there is no more suffering for him.
Folks I wanted to mention this because as I have told many of you, FIP has in the past been considered a death sentence, no exceptions, but many universities have been working so very hard to find a cure, and although I'm not going to call it 100%, there is a new treatment that has cured some cats. PLEASE if your vet tells you your cat possibly has FIP, CALL ME! I can hook you up with the folks who do this treatment. We did have a kitten get FIP approximately 2 years ago. They went through the treatment. In fact, they found out about it and told me about it. Their cat was cured! So please, let me know. I can help!
Well, I'm very exhausted tonight, so I have to get busy in my cattery. Tomorrow is Monday folks! Let's make it great!
May 9, 2024
Wow, what a rush of a day! You know you just begin to think you can't pack anymore into one day, one 24-hour period, and then BOOM! Something else HAS to be done, and you just move on with it! That's been today!
I'm working in my cattery now. I mean, its only 9:00 p.m., so I still have all night, right? LOLOL No, but it is a busy day.
We went to see the electrophysiologist to see about that machine called a Watchman for Ross, so that he won't have to take blood thinner anymore. However, we got there and talked to the doctor and he said no, Ross can't have the Watchman due to the fact that he has had blood clots in his lungs. They said it would not work right for him. So what this means is he will be on blood thinner for the rest of his life, but it also means that we won't have to go through four months of tests, procedures and followups, including having to drive to Des Moines for most all of those things, so we can get our life back on track for a while and hopefully get things headed the right direction. God just has other plans for us, and we are ready to start taking steps as he directs us.
Goodnight everyone!
May 8, 2024
So here we are! Another day, another thunderstorm. Wow there is so much water all around right now. Someone needs to turn off the spigot. LOL
Well anyway, I'm here, trying to recover from whatever this is I have.... oh yeah, parainfluenza virus 3, whatever that is. Doctor says I have to just enjoy it till its over. Its been 4 weeks, and I am just so incredibly tired, my heart is racing and I have shortness of breath. Oh well, this must be what I'm supposed to enjoy! LOL
Tomorrow we go to see about starting the process for Ross to get a Watchman. I'm sure wondering if we are doing the right thing, but he wants to do it to get off of the blood thinner. I can't blame him there, so I'll help him all I can.
Okay for tonight's cattery update, please look to the left, in my column of queens, and look for Christmas Stocking. I'm going to be posting Oliver's picture there. He will be picked up this weekend, but I thought he was too cute not to share. Now look beyond the fact that he played in the water and rolled in the litter. I'm just pretending it gave him an "aura"! Oh boy, well, anyway. Enjoy his picture. I'm going to get some other pictures tonight and will try to post them tomorrow night. With the storm just starting, I don't want to blow up my laptop, so gonna post Oliver and then get on with cleaning in the cattery for the night.
Goodnight everyone!
May 7, 2024
You have no idea of how glad I am to be back on this page. It has been a horrible several months and many of you that know me, know all about it. I'm just going to post a brief synopsis of all that has gone on, and then I'm going to get busy cleaning and getting things to look brand new here again.
I vaguely remember November. I had several orders for special baked goods in my bakery, but December changed a LOT for us. My husband fell and broke his hip and with all that went on for the next month, basically our lives completely shut down. Now I still had everything on the farm to do and the cattery to care for, but everything got the bare minimum as I cared for my, at the time, 85-year-old husband. We were basically trapped here. We had issues with an unscrupulous nursing home in Fonda, Iowa. If you love your folks, PLEASE DO NOT EVER SEND THEM TO CARE INITIATIVES, of which there are 43 in the state of Iowa. We had so many difficulties that I had to take my husband out of there against medical advice. Let me just say this nursing home let a veteran suffocate due to ignoring his calls for help. Oh they were punished, but not enough in my opinion. They were fined $10,000 and told not to do it again. SERIOUSLY??????
Folks, my cattery is inspected more often and more stringently than nursing homes are. The average rate of inspection for a nursing home is once every 41 months!!!!!! I am inspected as a cattery all the way from 3 to 10 times a year. Now I love my cats, BUT, don't you think humans deserve better??????
Anyway, I said I was going to keep this short. Ross finally got to the point where we could leave the house, and I'm serious when I say it was difficult to leave him for an hour at a time to do chores or work in my cattery and I couldn't afford help as we had zero money coming in with our store being shut down.
After he got through that, he had the neck surgery that he was supposed to have before the broken hip. That surgery went very well and as a matter of fact today we went for his first followup appointment on that and the doctor released him because he is doing so well.
So now, over the next four months, we are going to be working on a thing called a Watchman that, if he is approved, will attach to a valve of his heart (the way I understand it) and will eventually allow him to get off of his blood thinners, which are causing problems for him as well! Oh and I forgot to mention he had to have two oral surgeries between the above two more serious surgeries.
My body finally gave out on me about 3 weeks ago and I was so sick I couldn't get out of bed. Finally got that over with, I thought, but my heart was racing, my blood sugar was up and my blood pressure was up. I just figured I was coming to the end. I really felt that terrible. Went to the ER this past Sunday, fearing a possible stroke. Nope, no stroke. Just good old prednisone causing an avalanche of symptoms for me. So I'm now off of that and just finally today starting to feel like I'm going to survive. I'm still extremely tired and have to go at things slowly, but its all happening!
Now for the news of the cattery! I lost a few of my older moms this past winter. They just had gotten too old to continue and they just stayed with me as long as they could. So you may see some names disappear from my list on the left and you will find a few new ones appearing. I am going to get some new girls to add to my herd of queens. I'll be picking 2 up later this month, but they won't be ready for breeding for another year.
I believe I have several girls who are currently pregnant and some who are getting that way, so hopefully I will have lots of kittens to make folks happy with. Got some folks coming this weekend to pick up their Oliver! I'll try to post Oliver's picture here tonight or tomorrow night. Look forward to lots of new pictures coming in the next several days, weeks and months.
Thanks for everyone who prayed for Ross and I. We sincerely appreciate that. God is good and we are grateful!
October 30, 2023
Lots of things have been happening around here this year, and it has just been crazy.
At the present time, I've only got one kitten left to sell and possibly a few pregnant cats, mostly Balinese, so I should have several coming up here toward the end of the year.
In my store my husband bought me a printer that I can print pictures on cookies with as well as a printer that will print cake toppers, and a freeze dryer! That's been exciting! I'm trying to learn all kinds of new things in hopes of bringing in more income. If you need something baked, don't hesitate to contact me!
Well, speaking of which, I'm at my bakery and have cookies in the oven, so I better go check them out.
See you soon!
August 22, 2023
Today has been a lot of hustle and bustle but tonight I have worked in my cattery and got another surprise, well, sort of. I knew this cat was pregnant, but I would have estimated another week before babies were born. I won't post their pictures just yet, but within a few days I will. Tortie had 3 babies and I believe we have one flame point in this group! So if you are interested in a flame point, keep your eye out on Tortie's page!
I am posting pictures to Hope's page tonight. She has 5 nice babies and I'm getting them on the site tonight! Enjoy the pictures! I believe some of these are already chosen, but as soon as I know for sure, I'll post it on here.
Night everyone!
Val
August 20, 2023
Well I'm really late getting started tonight. It has been an incredibly busy day but I got a lot done. I am happy with all I got done, but I still have so much yet to do! I'm going to try to take pictures of Cocoa Puff's babies tonight. Cocoa Puff was actually named Sweet Chocolate by my sister who stayed here a short while last year. Cocoa Puff did not show pregnancy at all! I was shocked! I opened the door to clean her room one night and there was a baby on the floor. I hurried and got her a birthing box and a pad and she promptly had 4 more babies! So she has 5 little ones and she's a great mom! I knew she would be! She's just like her mom, Pippy and she looks a lot like Pippy as well! Its too soon to tell sex or colors on these babies, but it won't take long before we know.
Well, gotta get started cleaning so I can get those pictures taken! They will be posted within an hour here!
Night everyone!
Val
August 19, 2023
Wow! Tonight it is extremely hot! I guess it is time for Iowa's time to go through the fire. Everyone else has but I thought we had missed it. Not quite, although we are only, I say only, going to have a week. I'm very thankful that my cats have air conditioning. Hopefully they will never know about the heat! I wish I could get that to happen in my barnyard!
My laptop is acting up tonight, so no pictures and I'm going to sign off for tonight.
See you tomorrow!
Val
August 18, 2023
Wow, just one year ago today I was having total knee replacement. I can't hardly believe it. I can't say it has been a great year for my healing. I've had lots of problems with it, but nothing that Tramadol couldn't handle! LOL No, seriously, I rarely have to take that anymore. So, its good. I still have some pain now and then. Especially when I'm up on it too much, but I guess I do think it is better than before the surgery,
Well today was very hectic again. Ross had a bunch of stuff to burn and he planted our Aronia berry plants and we probably got 5 to 6 cups of berries from the plants this year. Hopefully, after being planted, next year will be even better! I'm not certain yet of how to use them, well, not fully anyway, other than jams and jelly and maybe a sauce, but I'm going to be spending time researching them. This is something he wanted and something we are both interested in doing, so here we are! Hopefully a little later in the fall we will be replanting a few rows of black raspberries. My mom always made a black raspberry cobbler for July 4th. I haven't had one for many years, since way before she passed away because we just couldn't get the berries, but I have them here where we live, just not in places I can get to, so we are going to put them in places I can get to and see if we can't get enough for a cobbler and a few pies to freeze for the winter. Man how I love them and miss them! They were all around the small home I grew up in.
There was a railroad track right behind our house and all along the tracks were black raspberry vines and mom picked all summer long, as long as they were on the vine. She climbed into some horrible spots to get them and got her arms stuck and bled, but she didn't care. She made pies, cobblers, jams and jellies to last through the winter and spring until the new crop came on and not just for us, but for anyone who wanted them. She made fresh homemade bread and although we couldn't afford real butter, we had hot homemade bread, margarine, and raspberry or grape jelly or jam. Or she made what she called dough dodgers. It was just very large fried bread, fried in a cast iron skillet with a big dollop of shortening to fry it in. Another wonderful memory that has gone, along with her. I sure do miss her a lot. Times were so different then.
Well, enough for tonight. Gotta go feed my babies. I'm going to be pretty late tonight, so I'm going to try to do more pictures over the weekend. I'm looking into a better quality camera tomorrow to see if I can't get one that will download straight to my laptop. Hopefully I can cut out some steps while trying to get pictures on here.
Night everyone!
Val
August 17, 2023
Wow what a very busy day! The plumber is working both today and tomorrow to change out the main pipe in our house. Oh my goodness, what a long time it has taken due to trying to find funding, etc., anyway within the next few weeks, we should have a brand new walk in shower! Ross has needed this especially since his accident 3 years ago with his knee. His leg does not work the way it used to and a tub/shower combination is no longer in his best interest, so with the help of the VA and a home equity line of credit, we are finally going to make a shower much more accessible for him and much easier for myself at the same time!
So here I am tonight in my cattery. I'm going to again make this short so I can spend some time with my cats and kittens. I love those babies! I'm going to start posting some pictures tonight. Check out Eula's new babies!
See ya tomorrow night!
Val
August 16, 2023
This is going to be a short post tonight. I'm very late getting to work with my cats tonight. Sooooo very much going on today and preparing for the plumber to come tomorrow to change out most of the pipes in the house. I'm getting our laundry all caught up tonight so we have plenty of clean clothes, just in case we have to spend the weekend without water. I'll be filling up milk jugs for the critters after I do chores in the morning, again, just in case and more jugs will be filled and prepared for the cattery. Ugggg, I hope we will only have issues now tomorrow and Friday and then it will all be fixed. If so, Bath Planet will be soon coming in to install the shower that was supposed to be done in May! Boy am I anxious for this to get done.
I was telling a little about me last night. Well, I married a Pastor, which is the greatest thing. I have learned so much from him about the Bible yes, and about faith, but a lot about just life in general. He is 20 years older than I am and I couldn't be happier to have his smarts when I need them. He has 20 years more experience doing things than I have and sometimes its quite amazing what he can do. Sometimes I don't listen and just try to fumble my way through things and then after he lets me do it and then fail, he does it and succeeds and I wonder why I didn't listen. I sometimes want to prove to him that I am as smart as he is, and its true, I am, but in my age frame. He is smarter in his and together, if I just stop and watch and learn, I'm really amazed and how simple it all can be. Life, faith, work, everything. If you just calm down and look from someone else's perspective, wow, what you can learn. Especially from the older generations. They have so much to teach us. Yes, I'm 64 and I know lots of things, but when I stop and listen to him, I'm amazed. Plus, I love him very much!
Well, gonna get busy with my cats and kittens.
Goodnight!
Val
August 15, 2023
Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog! I hope you will find this interesting and informative as well as just plain fun.
I thought this would give you all a chance to "get to know me" if you haven't already met me, so I'm just going to start here and tell you a little about myself.
I'm old. Okay, well, not ancient, but certainly no spring chicken, although I own several spring chickens! Rhode Island Reds to be exact! But we'll talk about them later!
I am a 64-year-old woman who is totally crazy about cats! I have had cats all of the life I have lived that I can remember (did that make sense?).
I started out with an old white stray cat that my mom picked up because she was afraid he was going to get hit by a car and that thought just wasn't something she could stand. Snowflake (or Tom cat as we called him) was completely white, and he was a very special cat to me. You see my siblings were all much older than I, 17, 20 and 24 years older actually, and already out of the house, mostly, when I was born to my 44 year old mother, so I really didn't have any close siblings. My cat was my bestest friend and I did love that old boy! He was with me until in my early 20s and I still miss him.
Well anyway, when my husband and I were married, we got our first cat together about a year after we did get married. That was a siamese male that we named Ellsworth T. Scat. Our cattery is built on his offspring, and he gave us many great babies. We called him Scat cat. He died in 2012, just before my husband and I went to Israel for 13 days. We both missed him a lot.
Now we have many cats, I'd have to go back and count for certain, and I do each time I have an inspection and then the exact number slips my mind (remember, I'm old!) But at one time we had 45 cats that we were breeding and every one of them were my pets and I looked forward to spending time with them. Now I'm down to about 32, yeah, still a lot, but each time one passes, I cry like a baby. I know each of these cats so personally, their habits, their way of behaving, etc., that I feel attached to every one of them and don't really like to think about the time this one or that one will be leaving.
My kittens are born in private rooms with their moms and from day one I handle them and learn about each of them. I have one kitten right now that HATES to be picked up. That kitten spits and snarls at me and last night even screamed at me! LOLOL It settles down in a few seconds, but oh those first few seconds! How hilarious and wonderful it is!
Well, there will be a lot to talk about over the time of writing this, but just enjoy and again, if you have pictures of your cats that you purchased from Dunroven Farms and would like them placed on this website under the Happy Kittens Happy Owners page, email them to me at [email protected] and I'd love to share them. If you have a funny story, anything you would like told, let me know. Also, if you are interested in purchasing a kitten from Dunroven Farms, we'd like to get to know you as well! Please fill out my contact form and I try to answer as quickily as I receive them, so you won't have a very long wait.
Well, until tomorrow!
Me!
Howdy and welcome to August! Its been a very hot day and I'm getting ready to cook supper and then go work in the cattery and be with my babies! I look forward to it.
We had quite a bit of business in our antique store/sweet shop today. It was nice to see so many folks!
My husband is doing well with all of his recovery process. I am doing well tonight, but very busy. Take a look at the kittens! What a crop! LOL
One litter decided to dump their water and play in it. It made their pictures not look as good as I would like, but they are still cute little stinkers, and they'll probably look better next time.....probably!
Have a great evening!
May 12, 2024
Well, good evening everyone! This has been an extremely busy weekend. We got so much done. Feels good after being down sick and unable to get anything done.
The best part was Saturday when a family came and picked up their new kitten. I ALWAYS love that time! The kitten went home happy and fit right in. I got wonderful videos back and it was just very cool to see a new happy family!
We did also have bad news. A kitten I sold four years ago to one of my families that have gotten multiples from me came down with FIP. Unfortunately I was unable to help as it was too late when they contacted me. They rightfully put him down, so there is no more suffering for him.
Folks I wanted to mention this because as I have told many of you, FIP has in the past been considered a death sentence, no exceptions, but many universities have been working so very hard to find a cure, and although I'm not going to call it 100%, there is a new treatment that has cured some cats. PLEASE if your vet tells you your cat possibly has FIP, CALL ME! I can hook you up with the folks who do this treatment. We did have a kitten get FIP approximately 2 years ago. They went through the treatment. In fact, they found out about it and told me about it. Their cat was cured! So please, let me know. I can help!
Well, I'm very exhausted tonight, so I have to get busy in my cattery. Tomorrow is Monday folks! Let's make it great!
May 9, 2024
Wow, what a rush of a day! You know you just begin to think you can't pack anymore into one day, one 24-hour period, and then BOOM! Something else HAS to be done, and you just move on with it! That's been today!
I'm working in my cattery now. I mean, its only 9:00 p.m., so I still have all night, right? LOLOL No, but it is a busy day.
We went to see the electrophysiologist to see about that machine called a Watchman for Ross, so that he won't have to take blood thinner anymore. However, we got there and talked to the doctor and he said no, Ross can't have the Watchman due to the fact that he has had blood clots in his lungs. They said it would not work right for him. So what this means is he will be on blood thinner for the rest of his life, but it also means that we won't have to go through four months of tests, procedures and followups, including having to drive to Des Moines for most all of those things, so we can get our life back on track for a while and hopefully get things headed the right direction. God just has other plans for us, and we are ready to start taking steps as he directs us.
Goodnight everyone!
May 8, 2024
So here we are! Another day, another thunderstorm. Wow there is so much water all around right now. Someone needs to turn off the spigot. LOL
Well anyway, I'm here, trying to recover from whatever this is I have.... oh yeah, parainfluenza virus 3, whatever that is. Doctor says I have to just enjoy it till its over. Its been 4 weeks, and I am just so incredibly tired, my heart is racing and I have shortness of breath. Oh well, this must be what I'm supposed to enjoy! LOL
Tomorrow we go to see about starting the process for Ross to get a Watchman. I'm sure wondering if we are doing the right thing, but he wants to do it to get off of the blood thinner. I can't blame him there, so I'll help him all I can.
Okay for tonight's cattery update, please look to the left, in my column of queens, and look for Christmas Stocking. I'm going to be posting Oliver's picture there. He will be picked up this weekend, but I thought he was too cute not to share. Now look beyond the fact that he played in the water and rolled in the litter. I'm just pretending it gave him an "aura"! Oh boy, well, anyway. Enjoy his picture. I'm going to get some other pictures tonight and will try to post them tomorrow night. With the storm just starting, I don't want to blow up my laptop, so gonna post Oliver and then get on with cleaning in the cattery for the night.
Goodnight everyone!
May 7, 2024
You have no idea of how glad I am to be back on this page. It has been a horrible several months and many of you that know me, know all about it. I'm just going to post a brief synopsis of all that has gone on, and then I'm going to get busy cleaning and getting things to look brand new here again.
I vaguely remember November. I had several orders for special baked goods in my bakery, but December changed a LOT for us. My husband fell and broke his hip and with all that went on for the next month, basically our lives completely shut down. Now I still had everything on the farm to do and the cattery to care for, but everything got the bare minimum as I cared for my, at the time, 85-year-old husband. We were basically trapped here. We had issues with an unscrupulous nursing home in Fonda, Iowa. If you love your folks, PLEASE DO NOT EVER SEND THEM TO CARE INITIATIVES, of which there are 43 in the state of Iowa. We had so many difficulties that I had to take my husband out of there against medical advice. Let me just say this nursing home let a veteran suffocate due to ignoring his calls for help. Oh they were punished, but not enough in my opinion. They were fined $10,000 and told not to do it again. SERIOUSLY??????
Folks, my cattery is inspected more often and more stringently than nursing homes are. The average rate of inspection for a nursing home is once every 41 months!!!!!! I am inspected as a cattery all the way from 3 to 10 times a year. Now I love my cats, BUT, don't you think humans deserve better??????
Anyway, I said I was going to keep this short. Ross finally got to the point where we could leave the house, and I'm serious when I say it was difficult to leave him for an hour at a time to do chores or work in my cattery and I couldn't afford help as we had zero money coming in with our store being shut down.
After he got through that, he had the neck surgery that he was supposed to have before the broken hip. That surgery went very well and as a matter of fact today we went for his first followup appointment on that and the doctor released him because he is doing so well.
So now, over the next four months, we are going to be working on a thing called a Watchman that, if he is approved, will attach to a valve of his heart (the way I understand it) and will eventually allow him to get off of his blood thinners, which are causing problems for him as well! Oh and I forgot to mention he had to have two oral surgeries between the above two more serious surgeries.
My body finally gave out on me about 3 weeks ago and I was so sick I couldn't get out of bed. Finally got that over with, I thought, but my heart was racing, my blood sugar was up and my blood pressure was up. I just figured I was coming to the end. I really felt that terrible. Went to the ER this past Sunday, fearing a possible stroke. Nope, no stroke. Just good old prednisone causing an avalanche of symptoms for me. So I'm now off of that and just finally today starting to feel like I'm going to survive. I'm still extremely tired and have to go at things slowly, but its all happening!
Now for the news of the cattery! I lost a few of my older moms this past winter. They just had gotten too old to continue and they just stayed with me as long as they could. So you may see some names disappear from my list on the left and you will find a few new ones appearing. I am going to get some new girls to add to my herd of queens. I'll be picking 2 up later this month, but they won't be ready for breeding for another year.
I believe I have several girls who are currently pregnant and some who are getting that way, so hopefully I will have lots of kittens to make folks happy with. Got some folks coming this weekend to pick up their Oliver! I'll try to post Oliver's picture here tonight or tomorrow night. Look forward to lots of new pictures coming in the next several days, weeks and months.
Thanks for everyone who prayed for Ross and I. We sincerely appreciate that. God is good and we are grateful!
October 30, 2023
Lots of things have been happening around here this year, and it has just been crazy.
At the present time, I've only got one kitten left to sell and possibly a few pregnant cats, mostly Balinese, so I should have several coming up here toward the end of the year.
In my store my husband bought me a printer that I can print pictures on cookies with as well as a printer that will print cake toppers, and a freeze dryer! That's been exciting! I'm trying to learn all kinds of new things in hopes of bringing in more income. If you need something baked, don't hesitate to contact me!
Well, speaking of which, I'm at my bakery and have cookies in the oven, so I better go check them out.
See you soon!
August 22, 2023
Today has been a lot of hustle and bustle but tonight I have worked in my cattery and got another surprise, well, sort of. I knew this cat was pregnant, but I would have estimated another week before babies were born. I won't post their pictures just yet, but within a few days I will. Tortie had 3 babies and I believe we have one flame point in this group! So if you are interested in a flame point, keep your eye out on Tortie's page!
I am posting pictures to Hope's page tonight. She has 5 nice babies and I'm getting them on the site tonight! Enjoy the pictures! I believe some of these are already chosen, but as soon as I know for sure, I'll post it on here.
Night everyone!
Val
August 20, 2023
Well I'm really late getting started tonight. It has been an incredibly busy day but I got a lot done. I am happy with all I got done, but I still have so much yet to do! I'm going to try to take pictures of Cocoa Puff's babies tonight. Cocoa Puff was actually named Sweet Chocolate by my sister who stayed here a short while last year. Cocoa Puff did not show pregnancy at all! I was shocked! I opened the door to clean her room one night and there was a baby on the floor. I hurried and got her a birthing box and a pad and she promptly had 4 more babies! So she has 5 little ones and she's a great mom! I knew she would be! She's just like her mom, Pippy and she looks a lot like Pippy as well! Its too soon to tell sex or colors on these babies, but it won't take long before we know.
Well, gotta get started cleaning so I can get those pictures taken! They will be posted within an hour here!
Night everyone!
Val
August 19, 2023
Wow! Tonight it is extremely hot! I guess it is time for Iowa's time to go through the fire. Everyone else has but I thought we had missed it. Not quite, although we are only, I say only, going to have a week. I'm very thankful that my cats have air conditioning. Hopefully they will never know about the heat! I wish I could get that to happen in my barnyard!
My laptop is acting up tonight, so no pictures and I'm going to sign off for tonight.
See you tomorrow!
Val
August 18, 2023
Wow, just one year ago today I was having total knee replacement. I can't hardly believe it. I can't say it has been a great year for my healing. I've had lots of problems with it, but nothing that Tramadol couldn't handle! LOL No, seriously, I rarely have to take that anymore. So, its good. I still have some pain now and then. Especially when I'm up on it too much, but I guess I do think it is better than before the surgery,
Well today was very hectic again. Ross had a bunch of stuff to burn and he planted our Aronia berry plants and we probably got 5 to 6 cups of berries from the plants this year. Hopefully, after being planted, next year will be even better! I'm not certain yet of how to use them, well, not fully anyway, other than jams and jelly and maybe a sauce, but I'm going to be spending time researching them. This is something he wanted and something we are both interested in doing, so here we are! Hopefully a little later in the fall we will be replanting a few rows of black raspberries. My mom always made a black raspberry cobbler for July 4th. I haven't had one for many years, since way before she passed away because we just couldn't get the berries, but I have them here where we live, just not in places I can get to, so we are going to put them in places I can get to and see if we can't get enough for a cobbler and a few pies to freeze for the winter. Man how I love them and miss them! They were all around the small home I grew up in.
There was a railroad track right behind our house and all along the tracks were black raspberry vines and mom picked all summer long, as long as they were on the vine. She climbed into some horrible spots to get them and got her arms stuck and bled, but she didn't care. She made pies, cobblers, jams and jellies to last through the winter and spring until the new crop came on and not just for us, but for anyone who wanted them. She made fresh homemade bread and although we couldn't afford real butter, we had hot homemade bread, margarine, and raspberry or grape jelly or jam. Or she made what she called dough dodgers. It was just very large fried bread, fried in a cast iron skillet with a big dollop of shortening to fry it in. Another wonderful memory that has gone, along with her. I sure do miss her a lot. Times were so different then.
Well, enough for tonight. Gotta go feed my babies. I'm going to be pretty late tonight, so I'm going to try to do more pictures over the weekend. I'm looking into a better quality camera tomorrow to see if I can't get one that will download straight to my laptop. Hopefully I can cut out some steps while trying to get pictures on here.
Night everyone!
Val
August 17, 2023
Wow what a very busy day! The plumber is working both today and tomorrow to change out the main pipe in our house. Oh my goodness, what a long time it has taken due to trying to find funding, etc., anyway within the next few weeks, we should have a brand new walk in shower! Ross has needed this especially since his accident 3 years ago with his knee. His leg does not work the way it used to and a tub/shower combination is no longer in his best interest, so with the help of the VA and a home equity line of credit, we are finally going to make a shower much more accessible for him and much easier for myself at the same time!
So here I am tonight in my cattery. I'm going to again make this short so I can spend some time with my cats and kittens. I love those babies! I'm going to start posting some pictures tonight. Check out Eula's new babies!
See ya tomorrow night!
Val
August 16, 2023
This is going to be a short post tonight. I'm very late getting to work with my cats tonight. Sooooo very much going on today and preparing for the plumber to come tomorrow to change out most of the pipes in the house. I'm getting our laundry all caught up tonight so we have plenty of clean clothes, just in case we have to spend the weekend without water. I'll be filling up milk jugs for the critters after I do chores in the morning, again, just in case and more jugs will be filled and prepared for the cattery. Ugggg, I hope we will only have issues now tomorrow and Friday and then it will all be fixed. If so, Bath Planet will be soon coming in to install the shower that was supposed to be done in May! Boy am I anxious for this to get done.
I was telling a little about me last night. Well, I married a Pastor, which is the greatest thing. I have learned so much from him about the Bible yes, and about faith, but a lot about just life in general. He is 20 years older than I am and I couldn't be happier to have his smarts when I need them. He has 20 years more experience doing things than I have and sometimes its quite amazing what he can do. Sometimes I don't listen and just try to fumble my way through things and then after he lets me do it and then fail, he does it and succeeds and I wonder why I didn't listen. I sometimes want to prove to him that I am as smart as he is, and its true, I am, but in my age frame. He is smarter in his and together, if I just stop and watch and learn, I'm really amazed and how simple it all can be. Life, faith, work, everything. If you just calm down and look from someone else's perspective, wow, what you can learn. Especially from the older generations. They have so much to teach us. Yes, I'm 64 and I know lots of things, but when I stop and listen to him, I'm amazed. Plus, I love him very much!
Well, gonna get busy with my cats and kittens.
Goodnight!
Val
August 15, 2023
Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog! I hope you will find this interesting and informative as well as just plain fun.
I thought this would give you all a chance to "get to know me" if you haven't already met me, so I'm just going to start here and tell you a little about myself.
I'm old. Okay, well, not ancient, but certainly no spring chicken, although I own several spring chickens! Rhode Island Reds to be exact! But we'll talk about them later!
I am a 64-year-old woman who is totally crazy about cats! I have had cats all of the life I have lived that I can remember (did that make sense?).
I started out with an old white stray cat that my mom picked up because she was afraid he was going to get hit by a car and that thought just wasn't something she could stand. Snowflake (or Tom cat as we called him) was completely white, and he was a very special cat to me. You see my siblings were all much older than I, 17, 20 and 24 years older actually, and already out of the house, mostly, when I was born to my 44 year old mother, so I really didn't have any close siblings. My cat was my bestest friend and I did love that old boy! He was with me until in my early 20s and I still miss him.
Well anyway, when my husband and I were married, we got our first cat together about a year after we did get married. That was a siamese male that we named Ellsworth T. Scat. Our cattery is built on his offspring, and he gave us many great babies. We called him Scat cat. He died in 2012, just before my husband and I went to Israel for 13 days. We both missed him a lot.
Now we have many cats, I'd have to go back and count for certain, and I do each time I have an inspection and then the exact number slips my mind (remember, I'm old!) But at one time we had 45 cats that we were breeding and every one of them were my pets and I looked forward to spending time with them. Now I'm down to about 32, yeah, still a lot, but each time one passes, I cry like a baby. I know each of these cats so personally, their habits, their way of behaving, etc., that I feel attached to every one of them and don't really like to think about the time this one or that one will be leaving.
My kittens are born in private rooms with their moms and from day one I handle them and learn about each of them. I have one kitten right now that HATES to be picked up. That kitten spits and snarls at me and last night even screamed at me! LOLOL It settles down in a few seconds, but oh those first few seconds! How hilarious and wonderful it is!
Well, there will be a lot to talk about over the time of writing this, but just enjoy and again, if you have pictures of your cats that you purchased from Dunroven Farms and would like them placed on this website under the Happy Kittens Happy Owners page, email them to me at [email protected] and I'd love to share them. If you have a funny story, anything you would like told, let me know. Also, if you are interested in purchasing a kitten from Dunroven Farms, we'd like to get to know you as well! Please fill out my contact form and I try to answer as quickily as I receive them, so you won't have a very long wait.
Well, until tomorrow!
Me!