Garage Mom and Kittens Part Two Video

Tie Dyed

Yesterday I stopped in at the dollar store to get some carrot seed and potting soil. I saw white T-shirts there for a dollar of course. I remembered the old boxes of RIT dye I had gotten free in a box of stuff from someone who was moving.

I bought four white shirts and when I came home, started the pots of water to boil, necessary to tie dye. I love how they came out. To create stripe, I tied the shirt in varing widths of cloth strips. For the circles, I tied off quarters with zip ties and twist ties. I might get a couple more dollar shirts today, since I have two other boxes of dye. They must be used!

White Mom's Video

What Should Happen When Bin Laden Breaks His Silence

I watched Charlie Gibson soberly deliver quotes from an alleged Bin Laden communication, reacting to Obama policy, like a faithful messenger of doom in league with the doomers.

I thought, 'For gosh sakes, why in the world are they giving him air time?'

Bin Laden is a nobody. At least he should be. The media gives him a worldwide audience for his insignificant rants.

I thought to myself, 'The media needs a backbone. If they had balls and a backbone they would just say no to airing that violence inciting crapola and they'd be heroes!'

I can hear them now. ABC news is being handed the latest threats and rants from Bin Laden. The news director gives it a glance, shaking his head, then says "Can you believe this madman? Hasn't someone strapped him into restraints by now in some mental ward? I mean, this guy is over the top. Mr. Gibson, could you put this story where it belongs, please." The news director winks.

"No problem," Gibson says with an impish grin and heads straight to the men's room, where he hands out strips of the Bin Laden communique, with fraternal boisterousness, to anyone who enters for use as asswipes.

Later, at a bar with journalists from other networks, someone brings up the latest Bin Laden rant and Gibson says, "You know what we do with those, don't you, over at ABC?" The others lean close to hear, then break into uproarious laughter. The common folk at the bar join in, slapping Mr. Gibson on the back in approval.

Goodbye White Girl, Gabby and Napoleon. Severe Thunderstorms Again Hit Valley.

Last unfixed adult cat from Hill people colony near Lebanon. She was fixed Tuesday.
Today, the only cat I took up was another trapped at the Albany business. She is all black and was in early pregnancy. She was fixed today.

I took white mom and the two kittens to the neighbor over there who will foster the kittens. To my immense relief and happiness, they expressed their intent to keep White Girl for good. No more will she have to scrounge, deaf and mostly blind, unwanted for food. When they said this, I almost fell to my knees and sobbed.

On the way over there, I encountered a Weed Man truck that was wildly swerving, unable to maintain its lane. I thought he was going to turn right on Geary. He must have thought so, too, then changed his impaired mind and nearly hit the far corner of Geary and Santiam before continuing his wild uncontrolled drive down Santiam.

I have no cell phone. I was fearful, thinking he would smash me. He's swerve, speeed up, slow down, almost hit the curb, swerve again. He pulled up beside me. I honked loudly and motioned to get off the road, yelling "Get off the road before you kill someone." He turned into the Fred Meyer parking lot. When I got to the sisters' place, a few minutes later, I called the police from there. I don't know if they found him. I don't know if he was drunk or having some medical emergency, but he didn't belong on the road. He was in a Weed Man truck with a tank, probably full of toxic chemicals, on the back, too.

So I said my goodbyes to White Girl, Gabby and Napoleon. They're in good hands.


White Girl looks a little rough after eye surgery. She has a bit swelling, and her face had to be shaved before surgery.








For the second afternoon in a row, severe thunderstorms have hit the mid valley region of Oregon. They're still going on, so I will quit and unplug my computer. For awhile, there were tornado warnings in parts of Linn and Marian counties.

Old

I just have not recuperated from the pre-clinic days yet. Trying to find cats to catch, going all the way over to Sweet Home, to find no cats and meet that mean cat collector woman. After leaving Sweet Home late, I went by the place I was supposed to be at, earlier, if I'd been on schedule, to leave traps. And finally, getting home already tired from dealing with the SS cat and her anguish over her missing kittens, I couldn't sleep and headed back over to the SS building that Saturday night, very very late, early morning actually, to search again.

It was too much for an old body like mine.

I was supposed to be at the clinic by 7:45, but I didn't get there until 8:00 a.m. Half the cats scheduled didn't show up with their caretakers. I know Nick, the coordinator, was bummed to have such a low show clinic, but then it was really a blessing, because one vet didn't show up for the afternoon shift and another had been bitten by a dog. The other two were late due to emergencies. So the clinic slowed to a virtual standstill, with sometimes not one cat even coming out of the van in an hour. It was really a miracle that half the registered cats were not brought in by the caretakers.

There was some sort of a dog show going on next door, trials or something. I wanted to slip in and watch but was too worn out and gimped up by my painful knee.

My knee would not hold out for even the morning of the clinic. I ended up unable to really walk on it. Well, it was just a lot that Sunday alone.

Now, I've also got the two Cottonwood boys in my bathroom. I've got the white girl and her kittens in the spare bedroom and now the Conser kittens and their feral mom in a rabbit hutch in my garage. A lot of these new kittens need medication. I never caught up on sleep yet after the clinic.

I'm kind of a mess, worn out, constipated, irritable, overwhelmed in constant labor and stress and mad at myself for taking in any cats at all, because I already have too many to care for, too much work, too much stress.

I'm dazed and confused and stupid, too, for taking on too much. I'm getting old I think. But White Girl and her two are heading tomorrow. Yaaahooo. Maybe it will get easier somewhat then. The Conser mom and her five kittens are all going back there once fixed.

I cannot take on trying to adopt out those kittens. Why? Because, for some reason, since I moved to Albany, I cannot adopt out a cat for the life of me. It's months in between adoptions for me now. I suck at it over here. Too much competition from a million little rescues and then SafeHaven.

My printer quit working too, so currently I can't make fliers about cats needing homes.

Soooo.....I weakened

I built the table, got it done, but it did not fit in my car. So, I went out there and told them I'd keep them at my place until the mom could be spayed, but that all of them would return once fixed. They were quite happy, as they are trying to clean up for a graduation party. They're nice folks.

With help, I loaded the hutch with mom and kittens into the back of my car. Right now, I have them on the table I'd made, in the garage. But the garage gets too hot for cats and I'll have to put them elsewhere. I am happy White Girl and her kittens, Gabby and Napoleon leave tomorrow.

In the meantime, KATA called and could not get ahold of their Albany volunteer, so wanted me to go to Petco and pick up a bottle baby someone dropped off there, after, allegedly, finding it along a road in Albany.

I went and picked up that little flea bag and he was covered in fleas, but happy, well socialized and not hungry, which makes me suspicious of the story of the person who wanted to leave him at Petco. But anyhow, I guess a KATA volunteer will pick him up from here later on. I'm overloaded!

Freak Accident

Whispy and Lightning, the two Cottonwood boys, those kids and I dug from a junkpile in a thunderstorm.
Lightning!
KATA just called and asked me to pick up a bottle babe, dropped off at the Albany Petco. The caller said she found it along a road in Albany, but who knows where the little boy really came from.


This morning, while in a rush, giving antibiotics to Whispy and Lightning, bottle feeding Gabby and Napoleon, giving White Girl more food and water, cleaning her litterbox, dealing with a mischievous Miss Daisy, who somehow jumped into an upper cupboard containing dry kitten food, Poppy had a freak accident.

I heard desperate clawing and thrashing and dashed into the living room. There Poppy was violently attemtping to free a tooth caught in the tiny strings of the mini blinds. I have never seen such a thing. Had she simply put her feet down on the table, where the cats sleep and look out the window, and raised up, she could have freed herself. But she had panicked.

I grabbed a towel and threw it around her flailing back legs and lifted her up, freeing her. In the process she nailed my arm with two ugly scratches. I've been scratched so often I barely notice, however, even if I'm dripping blood everywhere, which I was.

I'd also received a call from Matt, at the Albany business. He had trapped another one, a big black cat he'd been after for some time. So I went and retrieved that cat. I asked fearfully if he had seen Tia. He had not, but then he only puts out food, in a few places, and isn't out there watching. He has, however, retrapped at least three of the already fixed cats again. So they're still out there.

I am trying to quickly build a table for the rabbit hutch housing the feral mom and her five kittens out on Conser, too. I had quickly built most of it in my pajamas this morning, in a dark garage in front of my car. I've got the table making down pat! But after returning from picking up the black trapped cat, I found my battery powered screwdriver dead in the water. The batteries don't hold much charge anymore and need replaced. I put the battery on the charger.

White Girl is doing well and seems to see better already. She is in a rabbit hutch in my spare bedroom. Her kittens stay the night with her. Then I take them out, bottle feed them, and let them run around the spare bedroom off and on during the day. White Girl seems to enjoy the break from rowdy kittens. All three are leaving tomorrow. That will make my cats happy. With the bathroom taken by Whispy and Lightning and the spare bedroom occupied by Gabby, Napoleon and White Girl, my cats have not been happy about the decline of free space, space they consider theirs by right.

Poppy was uninjured in her freak accident. Even the tooth is ok, that she hung by. I have a new respect for the dangers of mini blinds.

Kittens Everywhere

I went out to Cottonwood last night, just as a massive rolling thunder and lightning storm got into gear. I thought I was going to pick up the one remaining unfixed male, Socks. Socks was nowhere to be found, however. Only the foster kids were out, no adults came out to talk to me. There were kittens found, the kids said, three of them. A friend of theirs took one. One of the girls quickly dutifully got the man on the phone to talk about spay neuter. It was cute, really. I thought she was handing me the phone to talk to somebody else, who has a female who needs fixed.

These kids have mutliple issues from the lacks of their biological parents. But they're trying their darndest and were so eager to help. One girl and a rather big young teen kid, went over to a junk pile and began tearing it apart very very loudly. I went over and tried to get them to quiet down and be gentle because the kittens, if they were in the junk, were scared and could easily be injured. At first the young man became slightly hostile at being told what to do.

I told him I needed his muscle to lift the junk pieces, and I did. Just then he startled and yelled, pointing to the dark gray sky, "Did you see that?" Lightning, very close, jagged and stark against the ominous sky.

I said "That was close. You guys, you should go inside, to be safe." They refused, citing the kittens safety. "Ok," I said, "then let's find them quickly."

The thunder rumbled. The rain pounded down, spastically, in wild mood swings.

The girl suddenly held up something brown and scraggly---a little long hair brown tabby boy kitten with his eyes glued shut with pus. I put him into a carrier in my car. Then we carefully began looking for the other little boy. They knew it was a boy, they said, "by the look of him" and because they'd been coaxing them out and holding them.

The big kid directed me to lift one end of a heavy pile of metal siding. When we did, a gray kitten darted out and into a PVC pipe. I put my net over one end and the kids hoisted up the other end until he slid out into my net. "Good job!" I said. The little gray tabby boy is very tame and sweet. The little longhair tabby wants held and comforted. Both have slight colds but are already playing in my bathroom.

I had no intention of taking on two more kittens. But now they're here and I feel slightly overwhelmed. I'm still sleep deprived from this weekend. I have the white girl and her two kittens in my bedroom in a rabbit hutch. The sisters over in that neighborhood are taking all three on Thursday, thankfully.

I had continued on, last night, up to the Hill Colony and picked up the last unfixed adult there, the female with three kittens. Lightning was splitting the gray sky as I drove the two lane roads through muted bright green grass fields. It was beautiful.

I ended up with only her, that last young mother, to take up to be fixed today.

On the way back, I stopped at the Conser colony. I instantly saw the black mother and was taken to the junk filled back of the garage, where the kittens lay, where they had been born, on the filthy concrete strewn and stained in age old poop and urine. What would possess a mother to bear her kittens in such filth and then not move them? It was as if she yearned for their deaths, so she could be free.



I picked up the five two week olds, eyes open, but underdeveloped for their age. They had raw butts and one had yellowish poop clinging to what was left of the fur around his rectum. 'Coccidia,' I thought immediately. No surprise, given where they were born and living.

I put them on a towel in one trap, covered it, set another ahead of it, hoping to catch the young mom. She was frantic, but the husband was power washing their porch in preparation for a graduation party of this coming weekend. I don't know if she'll go in or not. The kittens are likely doomed. They asked what they should do and I told them, "Either let nature take its course or rabbit hutch them all and treat them with Albon or take them to a vet and have them euthanized."

They hemmed and hawed. They want me to take them all. I know that. But I won't and I can't. I'm really kind of fed up with the country folk mentality. They knew to watch for eartips and they didn't. And now they have more and want it someone else's problem.

Vicki of KATA had someone with a not completely fixed colony call her to tell her a kitten was hanging by a leg from a ribbon and was going to die. Vicki tried to get her to take the kitten to her own vet, you know, take some responsibility. She said, "Who is your vet?" The woman said, without a pause, "You are!"

KATA did finally pick up that kitten, leg all gangrene, and he had to be euthanized. If they had not, the kitten's death would have been prolonged and very difficult. The woman would not have taken him in, or ended his suffering herself in some manner. Vicki told me the story because they get it too, emotional blackmail and outrageous expectations of free service.

I couldn't even stay out there, while the trap was set, due to their two constantly high pitched piercing dogs yapping. Across the road, the white dog who once bit me, leaving me a nasty scar, and another, ran up and down the fence, barking their yappy heads off too.

I can't take high pitched dog yapping. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I told her I had to leave and why. She said sometimes the yapping drives her nuts also but she doesn't know what to do about it.

Speaking of high pierced screeches, Lightning, the gray tab boy kitten, does not like being left alone and literally shrieks after I leave the bathroom. It's grating on my nerves big time.

75 more Albany jobs were lost Friday, when Weyerhauser closed its trucking division. I believe the work they did might go to subcontractors, I don't know. But 75 more families around here now have no jobs and 75 more family wage jobs just vaporized.

At the clinic Sunday, a long time acquaintance from FCCO clinics, a Roseburg woman, told me her job was in some danger. Her husband was laid off a year ago and still has not found work. She looked worried I think. She and her husband are a few years older than I am. If you lose jobs at such an age, the liklihood of finding anything else is not great these days.

UPDATE: Caught the mom, went out then, and tranferred mom and babies, after feeding them and giving them their first dose of Albon, for coccidia, into a rabbit hutch. I had nothing to put it on, so it's on the floor of the nasty hot garage. I had told them they'd need a table for it, but sometimes when I talk to them, it's almost like talking to a deaf person.

Hard Times

With GM's bankruptcy, I heard over 20,000 jobs will be lost. I also heard on the news tonight that HUD payments to housing authorities to provide housing vouchers for disabled and low income people who qualify, have been slashed so badly that in the Portland area, I think it is 600 or 700 people have been notified that their voucher assistance will end. They get one month's notice.

I think is just wrong. Our government has been giving failing huge companies billions. Disabled Americans and seniors, who rely on HUD vouchers, will have nowhere to turn.

The news interviewed a couple. She lost her job. He is on disability. They got a housing voucher and are living in a small house. They were one of the voucher holders who got the termination letter. They have one month before voucher assistance terminates. Their rent is just over the amount of the husband's disability check. They sold their camp trailer to make deposits to move into the house. Now they wish they still had that camper so they'd have a roof over their heads. They're both in their late 50's and without hope, really. They say they'll likely end up living in a tent somewhere.

That's really horrible for older Americans to face such a thing while banks get billions and end up messing up anyhow and squandering much of the taxpayer money given to them without strings attached.

I'm on a voucher. I wonder how many people in the Linn Benton Housing authority will get a letter. I know there are not as many by a long shot in these two counties on HUD as in the Portland area. I wonder how they decide who gets terminated when the federal money is drastically reduced.

White Girl Settled in with Kittens

I got White Girl settled in with her kittens, for now, in a rabbit hutch in my bedroom. She seems to think that's ok, and the kittens sure do. They slept next to the trap last night in my bathroom, huddled next to mom, only trap mesh seperating them. Mom eats anything I give her. I've been bottle feeding them KMR, which they love. And their bowels and bladders still need external stimulation (fake licking) to work. Mom is recovering well, already eating and drinking and already seems to see better, following the surgery done on the van on her eyes, by volunteer vet Dr. Reid.

I had been trying to get ahold of the Cottonwood folks to get their last male done. When I got ahold of them today, they said they had found kittens, three of them. I asked if they were the kittens of the Siamese? She had been pregnant at spay and they thought she had abandoned her kittens. They think these are the Siamese's kittens, who in fact, did just fine. A friend of theirs was able to grab one and took that one home. The other two are being coaxed out from under the deck and cajoled and talked to by the foster kids, who are intent on helping them.

I will go out this evening and see if I can get ahold of Socks, Mr. Boy out there, and catch those two kittens. The last unfixed adult out at the Hill People colony, the female, mother of the three kittens, also will be fixed tomorrow.

As for anybody else for tomorrow, not sure, am tired.

I need to do something about the feral female with four newbie kittens out on Conser too.

The elderly black long hair manx, who is being cared for by the people out there who found her, is doing great and warming up fast, taking her antibiotics and pain meds mixed into Recovery Diet, a smelly canned cat food put out by Royal Canin.

I didn't believe the tech out at Countryside, when he said a cat will even eat clindimycin mixed into Recovery Diet. I was objecting to that particular antibiotic for a shy cat due to the difficulty in getting a cat to take it. It tastes horrible!

But boy, do they ever gobble it mixed into Recovery Diet. It is an excellent product. The couple said that not only did the old gal gobble hers, laced with the not very good tasting antibiotic, but all their own cats lined up at the door yowling, when she merely opened the can. I wonder what is in that stuff and boy, wouldn't that make great trap bait?