Picture Year in Review (2025), Part 5: Fall

Well, the biggest thing that happened this fall was our platinum plated cat *sigh*.  

Sepp managed to get out on Halloween (we had gone swimming that day and left the door open longer than normal because we were wrangling Alvah and he got out at some point in that kerfluffle).  I didn't realize he was outside until late when he hadn't touched his food and I called him in a few times.  He came in, but seemed to be moving a bit slower than normal, but it was kind of cold out, so I thought he was just cold and tired (felt terrible about the whole thing at the time...felt even worse about it later).  Fast forward to the next day (Saturday) and I lost track of him during the day due to being busy and then realized he hadn't touched his food all day long that night (he eats in the kitchen, so easier for me to keep track of it).  He had been sleeping on my bed downstairs when I left him in the morning and when I went down to check on him he was still sleeping in that location.  I immediately got worried as he's not a lazy cat by any stretch and is usually bouncing off the walls.  I picked him up and quickly saw he was disoriented when walking and he was favoring a back leg.  I brought him upstairs and made sure that he got food, and most importantly, water, down him and checked him over for wounds.  I found one on his back leg, but it didn't seem to be infected or really that bad, so I thought maybe he'd gotten. a bruise in his muscle from some fight or other.  By the time Sunday rolled around, he was WAY worse.  I had to basically feed him water and got him to lick some tuna and that was it.  He couldn't walk on his back leg at all and I was really getting scared he was on his way out with how bad he was getting.  

We got him into the vet first thing Monday morning and the vet had the same problem I did.  He was in bad shape for sure, but she couldn't find any wounds on him (not that he was cooperating either).  She gave him an anti-inflammatory and a long lasting antibiotic shot and we headed home.  After that Sepp improved immediately.  A few days later I noticed his tail up by his butt was wet and couldn't figure out how he did that until I saw the injury.  He was tore up on his back leg, like bad and the wound had ruptured.  The vet was able to fit him in and we ended up in surgery with him to suture up a couple of gnarly wounds on his back leg.  Fast forward to the sutures dissolving, the wound reopening and a second surgery to fix that and dude that poor cat spent all of November in a cone and we ended up in debt to get him fixed up.  He's only 2 1/2 at this point and a really good cat (kills lots of rodents), so it was worth it, but yet again, not an expense I saw coming.  Enjoy the pics of coned cat as he was desperately trying to get back outside all of November, probably to go after the cat who had humiliated him previously.  Poor cat still has a basically bald spot around his neck where the cone was and his backside is going take forever to grow back in.

Here are some other pictures that happened this fall...

Stuck with a small pie pumpkin for our Jack O' Lantern this Halloween.  Saved all of the pumpkin pieces, roasted them and used them to make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.  Worked great and I plan to do that going forward.

Canning and other projects just aren't in the cards for me at this stage in my life, but a friend of ours was nice enough to gift us a pint of applesauce.  We ate it with pork chops one night and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I was able to return the jar to her with a thank you note since she does a lot of canning.  

And one last pic of the fall foliage.  It was wet this fall too, but the trees held onto their leaves pretty well for a while, so we got to enjoy the leaves changing color.

Enjoy!