Here is a quick, “day in the life” of taking care of the farm critters here. As Airbnb hosts we always strive for five stars here at Loving Farm, no matter the species. As of December 2024 we have 10 cats…I mean three indoor kitties, three outdoor kitties and two ducks. Ok, just six cats. Not that many, right?

The indoor guys are named Mittens, 15 years old (aka Mr. Mittens), Tux, 10 (aka Tuxie, Tuckers, King Tux) and Oscar (aka Oscgrrrrrrr, Pukey (more to come on that one later)). Mittens is short, round, and super fluffy. Tux is tall with a gray and white fluffy suit and some amazing white mittens and Oscar is a tabby with the cutest two-tone nose and black lip liner you ever did see. He even has a gray patch on his neck that for the longest time we wondered if it was dirt. No, just Oscar.

Outside-ish we have Max (aka Peaches, his drag name) and Gray (4), his bobtail sibling who is our sister in strength with all of these guys. George (pronounced in Spanish when we don’t want him to know we are talking about him) is the tall one who we used to call, “The Guy on the Couch”, an ode to a Half Baked character who slept on the couch through the whole movie. That is George when he comes inside. He will go find a spot and sleep quietly until it’s time to leave for his next appointment. These three happen to be classified as “outdoor cats” but let me tell you, I am currently literally surrounded by all of them in the den as I typed this sentence. Its cold outside! Cats are smart.

Ducks

Howard and Dayz are down in the duck run living their best lives. They are Khaki Campbells. Howard is named after Howard the Duck and lives up to his namesake. He is big and bossy. Dayz is his buddy, full of sass and energy. Shout out to Nick and June who were the other 2 original members of our flock. Nick was a smaller drake and named after Nick from the Handmaid’s Tale. June, was none other than Elizabeth Moss’s character June Osborne. Strong, commanding, brave. All of the things. As it is important to keep the ratio of male to female ducks extremely high, we are waiting on the arrival of some new ladies to back Dayz up.

I am going to share our daily routine, but when someone else cares for them, our main expectation is that when we come home everyone is fed, hydrated and healthy. If they want to go extra and spoil them, by all means we welcome that, but we admittedly feel over the top in our care for these critters.

6:00 -7:00: Wake up.

A cat usually wakes us up by either vocalizing their displeasure to our extended slumber, by walking on top of us to show us it is time to get up, or by taking a big dump in the closest litter pan (we have 4) followed by an impression of someone digging to the core of the Earth. If that does not get you up, the wafting smell of a poo might make its way into a nostril to seal the deal. And let us not forget the ever popular cat puke sound that always gets you moving! If you’re lucky, you might find it with your clean sock on the way to the kitchen.

The duck food is prepared (one, half-cup scoop per duck) with a sprinkling of some brewers yeast from the container on the pet food station. If it is super cold, I will bring a bucket or two of fresh water down to make sure they have some unfrozen water to sip on with breakfast. We might scoop in some uncooked oats with their grain or toss some defrosted frozen corn into the run when we let them out as it helps warm up their bodies in the cold weather.

I, Marietta, am on morning duty with ducks. Sometimes I go right out with their food to open their house door to let them out. Some days, we feed the cats first. It usually depends on what time they get locked up at night and the weather. When they go in early, I go out first to open the door to their house. We don’t leave water inside of their little hut so I always feel like they are super thirsty when they have been in all night and waiting for their sippies of water waiting for them outside.

Back in the house a.k.a. “The Cattarie” the plates for the cats’ breakfast are prepared. George has usually shown up by now if he hasn’t spent the night. We place all 6 plates out on the pet food counter. One of us “cooks” and the other does crowd control. Each can lid gets licked clean by Gray, Max, Oscar, and George. Mittens and Tux hang back and take in the madness. Max has taken to long-arm smacking his counterparts during this time. Sometimes he gets smacked back.

Oscar attempts to jump into the action at the “cook’s station” the entire time, so you have to keep your head on a swivel. Otherwise, he will enthusiastically chomp anything he can get his mouth on if he breaches the perimeter. Sometimes, Oscar serves Tux and Mittens in their respective spots (“Tux, party of one? Mr. Mittens, having the senior special again today sir?). This looks like the crowd control person carrying Oscar and a plate of food. The remaining four cats lick the spoon once all of the meals are prepared. One person grabs the three plates for the rats and the other serves George in a final flurry of mews sounding like large kittens screaming for their mother’s milk. Then as the plates hit the floor, all is quiet except for the sounds of lip smacking cats and cans being licked. I think of the dinner scene from Christmas Vacation every time.

Tux is on a special prescription diet for urinary crystals so he eats by himself because the food is made with gold and copper nuggets, apparently. It is about 80 dollars for 24 cans of cat food. But, if he does not eat it, he will get sick, so here we are. Dang he is cute. It’s worth it. Mittens eats super slow. He’s 15. He is missing several teeth and gets sort of confused sometimes. Because of this, he eats alone in the bathroom. The “rats”, Oscar, Gray and Max, eat near Tux’s door (a door we built a couple of years ago to separate Tux from Max and Oscar which is a whole ‘nother story). It has a hardware cloth covering it so they can see one another.

George eats alone in the den, because the rats would try to eat his food and vice versa if he ate with them. He is a big guy, so he gets the biggest portion. If Oscar gets a hold of his plate he will eat until he pukes. We slow him down a hair by putting the empty can on his plate, which he cleans out after he scarfs the two little piles of wet food he gets smashed onto his plate. Gray and Max get a hair more than Oscar, and one of them gets an empty can to clean as well at breakfast.

Of course the litter is scooped at some point, nearly daily, and we never skip more then a day, which is very rare. We have litter pans everywhere, it seems. One in our bathroom, which is actually a storage tote that we cut an opening in for Mittens. He likes to pee standing up and was peeing on the floor, over the edge. A lid on a pan did not work, as it would just come out of the side where the top and bottom met. This solution was our best yet. He gets to spray his little heart out now!

There is a potty upstairs in the hall that I feel is most used by Gray and Tux. Downstairs hall has one and then there is the one in the dressing room. The rule of thumb is to have a pan for each cat, PLUS ONE. We justify our shortcut by counting the outside cats out of a bit of the rotation. Don’t come for us. It mostly works, but Gray will still hold a humpty-dump until she gets in the house from being outside all day. I get it.

Snack time is at 9:30 which gives this helicopter cat mom a good excuse to regroup Max and Gray if they go outside after breakfast. For snack everyone gets some dry food. The “rats” have their snuffy mat that we toss a handful or so of “chips” on to. Mittens goes into the bathroom area with any potential leftovers from breakfast and some chips. Tux goes behind his safety door, on the other side of the snuffy. George is usually not around for chips, except for a cold or wet day when he pokes his nose out after he eats breakfast and turns back around to lay in the house for a spell.

At some point between breakfast and cat supper, we make sure to get outside and let the ducks out of their run for some foraging in the yard. Dayz and Howard will remind you each time you walk past them to let them out. We only let them forage when we are out there with them to supervise. We have a group of dogs that runs around the neighborhood and you never know when they will pop back here for a visit. I am also a helicopter duck mom and I am ok with that. At this time, we change their water buckets and Perriee might clean out their house.

Duck pool changing days are Sunday, Tuesday or Wednesday and Friday. We change their green water buckets and their short black splash pool daily. This way, they always have fresh, poo-free water to drink. Ducks drink the poopy pool water. They drink it all. Buckets and pools get scrubbed out on Sundays with a mixture of about 5 parts water, 1 part white vinegar and some mint oil. This is a nice, non toxic cleaner that helps disinfect and clean their water containers. We have been using it for about 6 years with great success.

Perriee also picks the poo out of their house on the pool cleaning days. She fluffs and freshens their straw, adding extra whole flakes along the inside walls when the temps drop really low. We never heat their house and it is always vented with a nice opening along the top of the inside walls along three sides, covered with hardware cloth (a strong metal type mesh) to keep out potential predators.

Sometimes there will be additional cat snacks throughout the afternoon, but supper time is around 4:30. We just repeat the whole crazy meal process from breakfast all over again, except each rat gets their own can to lick as a side dish, since Tux’s remaining food empties the third mealtime can.

We try to let the outside cats get another jaunt in the outside after they eat supper then start calling them back in to tuck inside before it gets dark. We have a 99% success rate. Evening snacks help with this. Sometimes George comes for a nosh, but often it is just Max and Gray. When George does come, if he wants to go out he will let you know by sitting by the door with his, “let me outside” voice that I can assure you will understand when you hear it. There is no denying him unless you are ok with not sleeping. We don’t know how much he likes the indoor plumbing (litter pans) so we assume he has to use the bathroom and off he goes into the night.

Perriee will go lock the ducks into their house at night and pick up their food dish, usually around 8:00 in the winter and 9 or 9:30 in the summer when the sun is out longer. Cats settle into their corners of the house, then ultimately into a bed with the humans and we lay down for a few hours until it is time to wake up and do it all again.