Vincent Saved the Day !!!!

Brrrrrrr  .......

 

But the good news is it’s warming up ....

It’s up to 57 in the office now .....

Iggy, Sam, Tabatha, Mitzie, Big Red, Fritz and Fudge got to hide out in the bath room cuz it was easier to keep them warm in a small area while the hoomans worked to get the electricity back on.

Mom and me are supposed to stay on the farm and stay safe during snow storms.  This morning they said it was coming and Lena told mom she better get out and buy straw and salt.  Billy said he needed tarps and wire, too.  The load was too big for the goat cart so we had to take the truck.  About halfway to the co-op it started snowing. 

Before the truck was loaded there was a good cover of snow on the ground.  The guy loading the truck was so funny.  He didn’t look much more than a teenager and he was resting between each bale of straw and telling mom how he’d been in this job too long - February would make a year - and he was getting too old for this.  The lifting was getting harder every month !!!!  Mom was snickering.

We needed to buy eggs for Sam and Tiger.  That’s all they’re eating right now and mom was worried cuz the chickens aren’t laying many and they just drop them anywhere and it’s gonna be hard to find dinner for Sam and Tiger in the snow.  Had to wait in line 40 minutes to check out of Food Lion.  They kept yelling, “Hey you cat, you’re not allowed in here.” And I said, then get us checked out quick!

When we got back out to the truck it was really covered in snow!!!  Part way home Lena called mom to say the house across the street was on fire and the roads were all blocked from fire equipment and it might be a while before we could get back in.  Mom insisted on driving since I don’t have much experience in the snow.  She can be so stuffy sometimes!  We stopped for a cup of coffee and a can of Fancy Feast.

When we got to the driveway they were finally letting traffic by very slowly - they were staged in our driveway and trying to flag us around and I’m leaning out the window Merowing that I LIVE here, you have to let me go home!  The fireman came up to mom’s window and said, “What’s that cat saying?” Mom translated and he said, “Oh my is that the world famous Vincent?  Certainly we’ll let YOU get home.”

Please pray for our neighbors.  They’ve totally lost their house.  One room has a window left.  The roof is gone and one whole side of the house.  I hope nobody was hurt, not the hoomans or the doggies or anybody else who lived there.  We haven’t heard yet.  For those of you familiar with our neighbors, it was the green house right across from the driveway that sits back far off 20.

Everybody made it into work ok and things were going well so me and mom went to the office to see what we could fine on e-mail.  And poof - the power went off.  We thought it was probably from the fire, like the transformer at the end of the street or maybe a fire truck hit the pole or something.  There was like 12 fire trucks and all kinds of sheriff’s cars and emergency vehicles.  it was a really bad fire.  But it turned out our main fuse had blown. 

Oh boo.  This happens sometimes cus our electrical service is so small and our needs have grown so big.  It happened a lot in the summer.  And we had some spare fuses on hand.  But where were they????  Nowhere to be found.  Mom was about to just sit down and cry.  You have to go to the next big town, Culpeper to get them.  Nobody in Orange has them.  Lots of hills to get anywhere and we knew our truck couldn’t do it.

Just about that time Joe crawled out from his cave and said, “why don’t I have any electricity?”  He offered to do ANYTHING to get it back, he hates to be cold.  Mom said you’ll have to drive me to Lowe’s.  He has a big 4 wheel drive pick up.  So he said ok.  Boogz had to stay home so I got to hop in and ride in the middle!! 

Almost to Lowe’s we have to cross a railroad track. It’s right in front of a big sawmill place.  We had to stop when the lights flashed and the gate went down. And we waited.  Hmmm was there a train or wasn’t there?  Finally here it came, real slow.  I counted the cars. 1, 2, 3, ..... 12, 13, 14 ... 1, 2, 3, ..... 12, 13, 14 ...  1, 2, 3, ..... 12, 13, 14 ... and the train got slower and slower. We were saying come on, come on get across the road before you stop. 

But the very last car blocked the road.  Oh Booo.  I wanted to get out and play on the train but mom wouldn’t let me.  She said sit still and behave!  So I did.  And we waited.  And we waited.  Cars and trucks and a snow plow and a UPS truck piled up behind us.  And somebody started blowing their horn.  Like that’s gonna make the train move!!  Stoopid Hooman!

After 35 minutes the train slowly started to chug away.  We couldn’t see if it had loaded or unloaded lumber or what.  Maybe the driver just wanted to stop and make a snowhooman and didn’t realize he blocked the road.  I don’t know.  When the gate went up we had trouble taking off cuz the snow had gotted pretty deep by then.

Mom was nice and carried me into Lowe’s since the snow was up to my hips.  The door guard looked at me and said, “cat?”. Mom walked right by, pointed outside and said, “SNOW!”  He shrugged.  We found the fuses, they only had 6 in the whole big store, in the size we needed, and bought them and left.

Meanwhile back at the farm, Billy got out the generator, hoping to get some heat going before everybody froze to death.  Lena had gathered the old and the frail and the tropical up and put them in the bathroom which, cuz of the duct work, gets really hot, so it was staying kind of warm. 

Last year after the snow, a store donated two big generators to the SPCA.  They’d been bought and returned but the boxes weren’t even opened.  The SPCA sold them to us - instead of selling them at their yard sale - for a really good price.  Some of our wonderful donors got together and bought them for us.  Our old generator was hard to keep running and wasn’t very powerful.  These were really really powerful.  And big and heavy.

So Billy and Wayne get the first one from the tool trailer all the way to the 9^th Life Center, a long trip in the snow lugging a heavy generator.  Billy gets it all set up, puts in oil and gas and primes it and OH NO gas starts spewing out all over the place.  Something is bad wrong with the carbureator. 

So Billy and Wayne make a long heavy trip to put this one away and get the other one.  They lug it all the way down to the 9^th Life Center.  All worried that it might have the same problem.  But it didn’t!!!  After they set it up it started right up and worked purrfect.  The 9^th Life Center was only at 62 and the heat started working, warming the bathroom up to 70 real quick!!!  Meanwhile the outlying areas, like the office and mom’s place and Joe’s place kept getting colder. 

Getting back from Culpeper wasn’t too bad.  The main street was all blocked up with people skidding all over so we too the back streets.  Why do some morons have to go racing around and be so stoopid?  One guy didn’t want to wait for the light to turn left - so he went off on the shoulder of the road and right and then tried to flip a u turn in the road and instead did about six spins around - amazingly missing everybody else - and then ended up in the parking lot across the street - and ha ha ha - stopped by the traffic light in that direction.

 Back at the farm, Mom got the fuse into place and WOW there was light and everything started working again.  She got the heat going in the out buildings.  Then turned off the generator and got the 9^th Life Center heat back on the electricity.  And here we are, all alive and safe and well !!!  Yippee !!!  I’m so glad I was here to save the day!

So far nothing is sticking to the roofs at cats or rabbits - keep paws crossed and prayers out that all the roofs stay safe and everybody is warm and safe till summer comes back!

I’m sure you can guess!!!  KiKi and Beauty are loving this!!!

I think they’re the only ones!!!

Love, Vincent