Quien Sabe

April 23, 2023

Howdy folks,

Well, the last week flashed before our eyes again and, 'poof', has just as quickly disappeared.  Little Daisy(Digger) is doing well and has been eating quite regularly.  Erin put her in a flexible garden tub, on blankets with hot water bottles underneath.  Initially, she has been getting fed every 2-3 hours, but now that we've wrapped up our second week, we've gained a little flexibility and have been able to stretch it to 4-5 hours upon occasion.  We've even gotten to the point that she's gobbling up the first syringe-full of kitten formula rather quickly and is starting to polish off a second one.  Her weight hasn't changed much, but has only risen slightly over the last week from 4.5 oz to 5.  This has been almost all on Erin.  I've been able to get her to sleep on my chest and have also volunteered it as a little, mini-kitten playground, but Erin has been the one setting her alarm and getting up every few hours to heat up the formula and feed her.  And, at first, kittens need encouragement to poop and pee, so then she needs to be held over the kitchen sink as we use a wet paper towel to simulate the mother's tongue.  Speaking of the mother, Bootsie has been hanging around and acting like nothing was amiss.  She's even been paling around with a new tomcat that shows up once a month and has been here all week.  She's clearly sick of getting pregnant and does not need much of a disturbance to fly the coop.  The weather has been quite windy this week with the spring wind just pummeling us some days.  We're can really feel the breeze here!  And the cold!  This week saw temperatures sinking as low as 20 and rising all the way up to the lower 70s one sunny afternoon.  Usually, if it's nice and it's the weekend, we try to run into Las Vegas to do our shopping.  That trip is usally a mix of picking up pet food and supplies, things for the ranch, groceries, fuel and any other odds and ends that pop up.  Of course, if there's any way possible, we try to sneak a stop at the Skillet into our itinerary...definitely our favorite restaurant and watering hole in town!  This weekend it didn't pan out, though, as we only had three hours to drive in from the ranch, hit our three or four stops, refuel and then zip back down the interstate to get back.  We've been using the dog crate as a safe zone for Daisy when we're not inside the house and when she's napping in between feedings.  The dogs get ridiculously excited when they see her or hear her...sometimes with drool running out of the corners of their mouths.  We're assuming that they're just excited, but she is taco-sized, so...as they say out here, 'Quien sabe'(who knows)?

I suddenly found myself looking for another job.  We keep nearing the end of the construction project on the ranch, where we're building a new house for the boss.  It's the 8th year and we're literally 98% of the way there.  I've been being told since January that I need to be ready with something else for whenever the project was done.  So, I've been talking with the boss about staying on to do landscaping, tractor & backhoe work, fence-mending, etc., but nothing was ever decided on decisively, so I called about a ranch hand job that I saw posted down at Pecos River Station.  Turns out it was for a job on the old Imus Ranch!  If you remember Don Imus, the radio host and entertainer, he and his wife had a camp for kids with cancer out in northern New Mexico.  I always listened to his show growing up and found it very cool that I ended up moving 2000 miles away from my home to live on a ranch just 3.5 miles as-the-crow-flies from the Imus Ranch.  Don Imus died a few years ago, and the ranch was sold before that, so now it's owned by the owner of RFD-TV, which is a rural lifestyle TV network.  I was very excited about this and went over to interview and see the place.  I was asked to come out and work for a day to try it out before a decision was made.  The job would have involved lots of horseback riding, barnwork, stall cleaning and landscaping, and seemed ideal for me, but in the midst of all of this I was informed by my boss here that they indeed want me to stay on the ranch after construction is done to work full-time.  So, long story short, I was very near to possibly getting an absolute dream job being an honest-to-goodness cowpoke out West on the old Imus Ranch, only to be plucked away at the last minute by my boss to stay right where I'm at with not very much changing.  I feel a little sheepish about offering myself up for a job only to not be able to take it, but, in the end, I've secured the very good job that I already had for at least another year or more!

So, here's another batch of pictures for everyone's enjoyment.  First, a photo image that I came up with of some of the cats in the window above the kitchen sink.  Then, a quick pencil sketch of how I was suggesting to lay out the stone fountain behind the new house.  Next, three actual shots of the cats in the kitchen window with the last rays of sunlight highlighting individual cats: Kachina; Misty; and Zia & Kachina.  Then, GG(Gray-Gris Peck) showing off his subtle, black stripes.  Next, five shots of us feeding and fussing over Little Daisy...you see how helpful the dogs have been!  Then, a late night shot of some of the cats looking for bugs upstairs by the light of a single lamp.  Next, two shots from inside our casita...soon to be added to our long list of former abodes.  And, finally, three shots from an evening stroll with the dogs around the ranch, showing: old barbed wire fencing; an old cattle ramp; and one of our other horse gates.

Take care.