Cats, cats, cats

Yesterday, as I composed my post, I heard an odd percussive noise emanate from the other end of the house. I surveyed the main floor of the house and saw nothing out of the ordinary so I got back to work. About a half hour later, I hit "publish post" and took my coffee mug to the sink. I turned on the faucet and almost no water came out. At that instant, R bolted from his bed and started dancing and whining by the door.

It was one of those moments when I knew that there was probably a lake forming in the basement but I also knew that R was about to have an accident (he's been drinking obsessively since his exercise was curbed by the -30 degree temperatures). I put a leash on R, stepped outside the door, and he proceeded to spend FIVE minutes peeing, periodically switching which leg he lifted because he got tired. I urged him to "hurry up" and used other exhortations but his bladder must have been close to bursting. I just wanted to go stop the gushing water in the house!

I finally tugged him inside and ran downstairs. It was raining in the basement with water dripping from a large section of the ceiling. I vaguely remembered how to turn off the water to the whole house but first I needed a flashlight. With water dripping down around the light fixtures, I wasn't going to risk turning them on. After more sprinting around, I finally cut off the water coming from our well.

We all have our "go-to" friends, the ones we call when the ceiling is raining. I called that friend and he was here in minutes. This morning, he capped off the burst pipe (which had finally thawed yesterday afternoon), and turned our water on. More work remains but the immediate crisis is over.

The Duo again had a curtailed exercise session yesterday afternoon thanks to the pipe. I let them romp crazily for a short time as it snowed in our meadow.

This morning, the storm was gone, and a winter wonderland awaited us. K rolled in the fluffy new snow, wriggling and grinding her scent into the snow. I've begun to think that this behavior is not just fun and games but rather a scent-marking strategy. I've noticed that canines pee in the spots where other canines have wriggled - this observation includes both coyotes and domestic dogs. I wonder if K's hiatus from wriggling while her paw was painful reflected the fact that she didn't have the confidence to mark her territory, and now that she feels better, she's marking myriad times per ride or hike.

She didn't look very serious just after one of her wriggles!

But soon she collected herself and looked much more like the matriarch of our forest.

Snow on a chocolate nose...

Of all of us, I think that K is the happiest about the warmer weather. Her "bad" paw seems to bother her a lot on arctic days and a boot doesn't help much. Today, she was back to her frolicking self.

The dark clouds over the Divide behind K looked more ominous than they were but they provided a beautiful backdrop for the mountains and K.

When I headed out to ride solo, it was a day of cat tracks. A perfect layer of snow fell yesterday and the animals were stirring again after the deep freeze. A bobcat walked in the faint remnant of my snowbike track.

Later, I found hulking cat tracks - a big male mountain lion had walked near where the elk herd had spent the night. His heel pad (the big triangular one) was 55 mm wide at its base, clearly telling us that he was a male (females generally have pads less than 52 mm wide). Also, in some of his tracks, I could see the bicuspid apex on his heel pad, a trait seen only in cats.

Just to give you a sense of perspective, I placed my foot next to a pair of his tracks, a left front paw on the bottom and a left hind paw on the top. His paws seemed very big as I compared my foot to them.

I followed the tracks a distance in each direction. He appeared to be hunting, meandering from the plateau where I was riding down toward a draw and then up toward a ridge. His final trajectory was generally toward our neck of the woods. I wonder if he'll pass through, perhaps even visiting a wildlife camera? I hope so!

The most distinctive feature of these tracks, compared to other lion tracks, was how messy they were. Usually, lion tracks are very precise with each foot placed carefully down and no signs of dragging the paws. This lion dragged left and right paws in the shallow snow, leaving furrows leading to the each paw print. I wonder if he was an older lion, walking with a stiff gait, like we saw in a video of a walking mountain lion last summer.

Any day when I see mountain lion tracks is a good one! I'm so glad that these shy predators are flourishing here.