I am worn down and out. $21 more bucks for antibiotics for the orange male with the absess, from Clover Ridge Road. No leads on homes for either him or the sweet black and white male--Frap. They've been in my garage in cages. They'll have to move elsewhere due to the extreme heat in the garage. It will be too hot for human or animal now in the garage until fall.
I have given up that I will ever have a cat yard here. My brother's too busy but he doesn't want me trying to make one out of scrounged materials. And the logistics with the garage in the way make it nearly impossible anyhow.
Doesn't matter.
I want to leave. The cats hate it here, without cat runs or a way to enjoy the outside.
I want to live where I can see the stars at night, where I can walk to downtown and have parks to hike in. The concrete and crushing traffic, the noise of Albany, is killing me and not softly. The culture here is completely different than I am used to. I just want a hideaway along a river. I had so many places in Corvallis and around there, that I could run to, to get away. I miss having my window wide open nights, to the night air, cold or hot, and the stars in my eyes as I fell asleep. I miss that so much I just want to cry.
Living here is so far from who I am, what I like, that I can't even recognize my life anymore.
I am convinced the lack of greenery, the concrete and car culture is what makes people turn to drugs, crime and angry outbursts.
I told my brother I want him to sell the house today. In an e-mail. He did not reply. I know, he doesn't have time for that sort of shit. It's his house. I guess he can rent it once I"m gone if he decides not to sell it. I have to stay here a year, to keep HUD. Stay here, here, until next February. The thought kills me.
Some woman called today, was insistent I get her cat fixed immediately, that she's had kittens, and she wants to go join her husband in the mountains. So, I have this feeling, although she says she's going to keep the cat, that she intends to dump the cat on me, because she was just insistent about me picking the cat up to take up to be spayed. I told her she should get a SafeHaven voucher to get the cat fixed. So, I am fairly sure if I took the cat up to be fixed, this woman would not be there when I got back with her--forcing the cat on me. So I won't be getting her cat fixed. I don't trust her. Besides, I did give her a way to get the cat fixed, through a SafeHaven voucher.
Another woman who adopted a kitten from me a year ago, says she got another kitten from a friend and would like to know a free way to get the cat neutered. I haven't returned her call because she calls on a long distance number cell phone and I don't have long distance.
I trapped five more cats, four of them females, two of whom are pregnant, at the Millersburg colony. The third and fourth females are the mothers of the two sets of kittens Heartland now has. And the fifth cat is a black male. Total adults fixed there as of tomorrow--12, with seven kittens removed.
Frap, the black and white male, also had an absess, but it ruptured. I thought he was fine, good to go, UNTIL I had him on my lap in the garage tonight and looked into his mouth. Most of his teeth look just fine. But a front top tooth, the long sharp one, is unbelievably brown and disgusting, looks a quarter inch wide and has the appearance of a chunk of wood. Maybe it is a slice of wood up in there and not a tooth. Just made me want to sob.
Both boys need tested. And if negative, Frap needs whatever that is, pulled out. But I'm broke. And to further complicate matters, my vet officially quits his practise in just a few days. He can't get this cat in, even if I had the money, since his schedule, up to his last day, is full.
I don't know what I'll do for a vet after he quits. He says he has an option when he sold to lease the clinic for use up to a year. But I"ve heard from others he plans immediate retirement and a move to Tennessee. I could hardly blame him if that's true.
I keep asking clinic staff what's going to happen with the new vets, if prices are going to skyrocket, if they'll keep taking Poppa funds, but nobody knows. So my future is also up in the air.
For now, it's these two boys who need tested and treated. I have neither the money nor a vet now where that could be done. The Clover Ridge cats, second time around, have broken me. Just like the first experience a few years ago did, on that same road, only a block away.
For cats, that road is better termed Hell Street and the occupants, who just seem to turn their eyes away from any suffering without a problem, I call "Albany devil's helpers". I got to make up these fun little labels to just be able to keep on going.
At 10:30 tonight, the phone rings, waking me up and it's V, the former Boondoggie, which means only one thing---she wants something of me, probably to take on all her cats because she's decided to leave, or some other huge cat favor. I hung up on her, telling her it was rude to call someone that late. They never call unless they want something of me, right now, this minute, that will cost hundreds of dollars. Maybe that black cat she claimed was fixed, then let loose, and watched get pregnant, but would never even watch a trap to catch her, over a months' time, has had kittens. I don't care. I am not V and M's 911 or open wallet. I am sick of them leeching me dry for a year now.
Doesn't anyone at all ever think that maybe all the work I do for free to help them, maybe they should return the favor or pay back the money, or even make payments to POPPA, say when POPPA pays to get their 15 to 20 house cats fixed? What is wrong with people around here? Why do they think they are entitled to free fixes, paid for by the hard work of volunteers, and that they should do nothing in return?
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Have you seen the cat enclosure plans at http://www.just4cats.com ? I ordered them, and the book is very thorough and easy to understand. If you'd like me to lend it to you, please let me know -- you could build an enclosure attached to a window, and then let cats enter the enclosure through the window. I'm planning to do that here sometime this year, but I don't know when I'll get around to it.
ReplyDeleteI've lived all over North America, and I've moved dozens of times in my life, sometimes to cities I'd never even visited before! It takes time to adjust to a new place... I'd say about two years. I know you didn't ask my opinion, but your brother did a good thing by buying that house so you could life someplace secure, without a crazy landlord holding things over your head. I hope you'll give it a bit more time before you decide you just can't stand it. Change is difficult, but we do adapt eventually. I know you don't want to stay there forever, but I think you should stick it out for two years just to see how you feel then.
I know he did a good thing, buying the house, but I'm a country person and I never will be a city person, who likes this horrendous traffic, noise, and constant light.
ReplyDeleteAs for the cat enclosure, I have no place here where the cats could go out a window to the cat yard. The problem is all the windows are up front, a few feet from the street. The only one in back, is the dining room window, which opens to the driveway.
At the last place, they went out a window onto a shelf with a ramp I'd built into the cat yard, or out a cat door in the little room of the kitchen that was already there when I moved in, as a big hole in the wall the tenant prior had cut so his dog could enter and exit. It was all very cool. I could also access the cat yard through the door on the room off the kitchen, or, sit there with that door open, if it was raining or cold, and watch the cats in the cat yard from there. I slept in the cat yard summers, with the cats. It was great.
If you have a yard or garden area, you could cut a window or door to access it. It would probably qualify as an improvement to the house, so your brother shouldn't complain too much.
ReplyDeleteOnce you have access to an area, it should be possible to build a temporary cat run.
The yard is out behind the garage. I thought it would be great to create a small room in the garage, a relaxing room, then cut a hole in the back side of the two car garage and put in a sliding glass door, which then would open to the cat yard. But still the problem remains, how to get the cats in and out of the house through the garage. There is a front door to the house and a back door that opens into the garage. I use one side of the garage for my car. But I don't use the far bay. The garage is way too hot to use for anything all summer except parking a car inside it. Nothing could survive the heat in there.
ReplyDeleteThe driveway makes an L up one side of the house, then a 90 degree angle turn, to the garage door. The garage sits behind the house, perpindicular to it. So the driveway comes up beside the north end of the house, then you turn, along the west side or backside of the house, to get to the garage, which is off the kitchen and bathroom. So cement surrounds my house. The yard is beyond that double wide cement driveway that accesses the double car garage. The garage door opener does not work on the second bay currently. But I don't use it anyway.
So I'd have to build the cat run beyond the garage. If I built a room inside the far bay of the garage and put in the sliding glass door access to the backyard, still, how to get the cats in and out of the garage. I don't want them stuck in the garage, because it has all sorts of nicks and crannies, and because I go in and out of it in my car, the first bay that is. But some of my cats are wild, and I can't carry them out to the cat yard, and I can't build a tunnel either, because they'd just sit in it, and I need to be able to get them inside, or catch them if I need to. The garage door to inside of house is one of those unbelievably strong doors, with metal inside it. You can't cut a cat door in those. The door on the garage to the outside, for people, also is metal. Someone at least put really good doors on this house. It's quite a logistics issue. I was trying to figure out something again today and so far I can't come up with a thing. Besides, my brother doesn't want to cut a hole for a door in the side of the garage, or make a room in it, even if it's crude and not finished. I'm not sure why. He doesn't have time to come all the way up and do this stuff and I have a feeling he doesn't want to touch the house structurally. Not sure.
The doors made of metal are fire doors. Depending on when the house was built, , they were probably required to pass inspection. You could certainly remove those doors, set them aside, and replace them with conventional doors which could be cut. I've done all sorts of things to our house, like remove sliding closet doors, but I just store the doors in the garage in case we ever sell and someone wants them put back.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what sort of garage door you have, but if you can, try to put some styrofoam or other insulation on the inside of the door. It will make an incredible different in the temperature in your garage. Our garage used to get up to 100+ degrees in the summer, but now it's never over 82, even with the sun shining directly on it. We had a choice of buying an insulated door when our house was built, but it was really expensive, and I didn't think it would make a difference. I guess it would have, though! After a couple of years of hot garage misery I went to Home Depot and bought precut styrofoam sheets to insert in the door panels, and the improvement was wonderful. Any insulating material that you can scrounge up will do the trick. If you insulated the door, and put a portable swamp cooler in there, it would be quite comfortable for human or animal.