15 September, 2010 - Wednesday "Fixing" the cat and the car ...

Susan and our neighbor took our cats in to get them fixed this morning. Susan marked our cat's ear with ink to be sure we each got the right one back. They are both male litter mates and are nearly identical. We thought for awhile that our cat was a female but it finally started growing some ... well, you know whats. The thing was they were small (don't tell the cat, we didn't want to hurt his ego) and even the vet remarked that it was a little more than "somewhat" under developed in that area ... so the cat is now an "it."

While they were gone a neighbor came over and we looked over the steering linkage on his pickup. He had it narrowed down to the steering gear box and was right but he had a drag link going bad too so that added another unexpected $30.00 to the repair bill. While the ladies were in town they picked up a starter for the Cherokee. It's been causing problems lately and it seems you can't buy just the bushings to fix them anymore so we bought a rebuilt one at the parts store. Right after he left Susan got back with the starter for the Cherokee so I put that on. Susan got up on the roof and put silicone sealer around the screws holding the metal roofing down until she ran out of silicone caulk. I'd moved the goat to a new area to browse and it didn't like it so I moved him to a different new area and told him to shut up and eat. I checked back later when he was sounding distressed and he was standing on three legs under the slide rope. He'd somehow got the chain tangled in the upper rope and under his front leg and couldn't figure out how to extricate himself. I freed him up and he continued gorging himself until we left to bail out the cat.

I went in for the second trip to get some parts and finish up some things in town. I went to the saw shop and had them make up a couple of chains for the Homelite saw then took the chain I bought previously (that was the wrong one) back to the hardware store. We took the old starter back to the parts
store to get our $49.50 core charge refunded then went to the farmer's market. We didn't buy anything there because we already had everything they were selling. From there we went to the gas station to fill the two one gallon cans I use for the chain saws and from there headed home. Once home I mixed oil in the two cans of gasoline. One is 40:1 and the other is 50:1 to cover the different saws and string trimmers we have.

The motor has been making a strange noise lately and it wouldn't do it when I had time to look for the problem until last night. It sounded like someone pounding with a hammer in the distance but it wasn't rythmic or related to engine or vehicle speed. It turned out to be the clutch on the AC compressor is occassionally grabbing and releasing. That's pretty remarkable since it does it with the electrical connection unplugged. Something else to fix!!!

Susan made sloppy joes for supper and we watched a netflix movie before going to bed. The cat was a little more subdued than normal for some reason!

I'm hooking up the battery tester to check the battery again on the Cherokee.  I rana battery test and starter load test to be sure the starter was bad before I replaced it.  The battery passed,  The starter failed.  It was drawing 300 amps when the maximum should be 175.

The dog is learning that it doesn't come in the house unless invited.

Susan was sealing the roofing screws with silicone caulk.  The gaskets on the screws didn't last long.  They're already brittle and cracking after the first year.

Outside the veteranarian's office there were hundreds of birds descending on a tree with small red seeds.

The two cats, happy to be going home.  Ours is on the right side.

The farmer's market.

We had our friend take this picture.  It's unusual to have someone else along who can take pictures so we can both be in the same photo.