Too Much

I've been getting too many phone calls lately. Injured cats. Unwanted cats. Strays people feed they now want gone. I'm ready again to turn off the phone. I haven't slept well in ages.

I don't think any of the other valley groups are doing much right now. Broke I think. Or worn out too. Maybe that's why the outrageous numbers of calls in the last ten days. And I mean outrageous.

I haven't any adoptions for way too long, which means I have no space here. I have Dirt Eater in my bathroom, meaning again, I can't really do laundry or take a shower. She's going back tomorrow, sadly. She was a starving new arrival there, tame and sweet, but I can't take even one more tame sweet teenager. No room. No adoptions. No money. There's someone wanting a companion for their outside cat. But the other cat disappeared, likely killed by a predator, and I just can't adopt out anymore where there are predators. I don't sleep afterwards. I'm telling them I can't help them.

I just heard Rio got the Olympics. It would have been great if Chicago had won, but there's something romantic and exotic that comes to my mind when I hear the name "Rio". I know there is horrible poverty there, like everywhere, but congratulations to Rio on their win and I bet it will be spectacular and help the city out, maybe even the poor.

Also, I wish I could help ease somehow the suffering again going on in Indonesia and Somoa after those natural disasters. How horrible. We are lucky here, to have few natural disasters hit, but that could change at any moment I know. Oregon is way over due for another large quake here.

I've been through two small quakes in Oregon. Both occured when I lived at the Benton Plaza, a low income "projects" type building in Corvallis. One quake felt like a gentle rocking, back and forth. swaying like a tree branch in a gentle wind.

The other was violent shaking. My cat of the time, Wrangle, woke me up before both quakes, panicked. There was nothing to do but hope for the best on the violent shake quake. The building shook violently for what seemed like ages. After it was over, I put my cat in her carrier and ran out into the street.

The other one, the gentle sway one, no big deal. It was like being on a boat experiencing the gently rocking of the waves.

I was in a quake in Alaska too, when working in Seward for the summer. I was climbing when it hit, on Little Marathon mountain. I didn't know what was going on, only that suddenly shale rock was cascading down around me. I dodged behind the biggest rock I could find for cover. I thought it was just a slide or something, but when I got back to the basement apartment where all the workers lived, 12 of us, sometimes more, I discovered almost everything had been knocked from shelves and that a quake had hit the region, although it was small.