The 15

Big black dominant male, fixed today.
Tabby on white male, fixed today.
The second big dominant male fixed today. All dominant males are now fixed.
Muted torti, fixed today, slow waking up.
One of two black tuxes fixed today. One was a lactating female and the other a male but I can't remember which is which.
Gray tabby tux male, fixed today.
Gray male, fixed today.
Gray in heat female, fixed today.
Brown tabby male, fixed today.
Muted calico, fixed today.
Tabby on white, fixed today.
Black female, fixed today. She was pregnant, but just barely.
Abbytabby tux, fixed today.
The brown tabby male, who was euthanized, due to severe diarrhea, lack of any body weight, neurological issues, etc. Very sick kitty.
The other black and white fixed today.

I'm very exhausted. I was going to sleep after dropping the cats at the FCCO clinic but they asked me to cage clean, so I did. I was impressed by their fixed place clinic and the organization and the flow of the clinic. I am quick to impress with flow and organization and easy to disgust with lack of organization. So it was a pleasure to see this well organized circular clinic.

I watched people come and go to the window also, to rent traps for upcoming clinics, in a rather steady stream. The FCCO now has it down. Transporting cats up from here to there is not hard either.

The brown tabby male with skinned tail, likely from being run over, neurological issues, possibly also from being hit by a car, and constant dripping diarrhea, was euthanized. There was no hope for him. He was so beautiful, too.

The rest were fixed and are fine although one muted torti is coming out of anesthesia very slowly.

I'm going to bed.

15 More VV Cats Caught. Down Two VV Kittens, Up One.

Well, I went over tonight to the VV, since tomorrow she made appointments for a Portland FCCO clinic for ten plus more adults to be fixed.

I snagged those unfixed cats, one after another, using a drop trap and a trap with the door held up with a dollar store laundry line run from the trap door, up through a rusty eye hook in their shed ceiling, then out to my car, where I tied it off on the passenger side mirror.

I had to selectively trap for the unfixed cats is why I used the line. I'd cut the line or untie it and drop it, when a cat I wanted was eating in the trap.

I snagged cat after cat after cat, then came home with every trap full and two in one trap and a little torti kitten I hand grabbed when she wasn't looking, and transferred three out to broken traps, then cleaned the three they'd been in and headed back to catch three more, which I did, including both major males still unfixed.

Two boy kittens went home with a friend of friends. They'll be ok and will be fixed. I'll be making sure and so will my friends who see her every week. Nice lady.

So I had ten VV kittens in my bathroom. Then I had 8 after the two boys left. Then I snagged the torti kitten and now I have 9.

I also delivered three bags of cat food today to the homeless camp, where Fat Zach came from originally. They wanted to discuss ear mites. All three old wet brains were sitting around one camp sipping 40's. They wanted to know what they could do to treat the camp cats' mites. In the end, I agreed to retrap them, and clean their ears out myself, in a net. While I'm at it, I told them, and they were impressed and eager for me to be trapping in the camps again, I'll flea treat them all, worm them, and give each another vaccination.

After I hiked out, I thought, "OMG, what did I just promise." Oh well. I like those three. I like them a lot.

More Kitten Photos

Giggles, the funny calico kitten.
Pebbles, the most energetic kitten of the ten, a wildly playful clowning muted torti, only about five weeks of age.
Bambam is the most needy, being one of the two youngest. His sister, Pebbles, is just the opposite, outgoing and self assured. However, Bambam was the last kitten, along with Rumba, that I pulled out of there just last Friday.
Bonkers like to wave his tail back and forth, almost like a dog wagging its tail.
Rumba is the shyest but coming out of his shell. Bless his little heart.
Pebbles again.

Two of the kittens may be leaving today to go to a friend of a friend. Since it is a friend of a friend, I can be sure they will be fixed and will also keep track myself.

2nd Segment of Sunville Times, my Christmas Story, in EOP!

Click the post title to visit EOP--Exterminating Angel Press, website. Scroll on down and click on Sunville Times to read the second installment of my original Christmas story. They are running it in four installments on their website!

Three Cats Fixed Today

Here's the starving Lynx Pt, fixed today. His story below.
The Lebanon trailer park calico, fixed today.
The calico's male kitten, also fixed today.
And the starving Lynx Pt. again.

I took up three cats to be fixed today. I took up the Lynx Point male I trapped out at the abandoned trailer. He never belonged there. He was so starved he ate five cans of wet food within an hour after I caught him.

I saw other cats from a distance, down the tracks, but none would come to my traps set at the trailer. Something awful must have happened there to the other cats, so the maybe two left of the original are so scared of the property now they won't come near it.

The other two cats fixed today are a mother and her son from a Lebanon trailer park, the same one where I took in about 30 cats to be fixed a year or maybe two years back, where the little orange mother came and deposited her four kittens by my car, then backed off. That trailer park. She met at the freeway this morning however and I didn't have to drive to pick them up. She's a nice young woman, eager to get her cats fixed and willing to drive to get it done and she paid my gas.

The three cats were done by noon. Good thing. I was tired out from checking traps off and on, all night. I did sleep four hours, from 1:00 a.m. until I jolted awake at 5:00 a.m. yanked on clothes and raced out to check those traps. I'd had a dream that I'd caught a skunk, you see.

Nothing in either trap and I won't try further, not now anyhow. Seems pointless.

I got back by 5:30 a.m. and slept for another hour then got ready to go up with the cats.

I got a neighbor to take the Siamese male. He's tame you see and has no ear mites at all. The vet checked his teeth to determine age, so I could tell the trailer woman's mom that this is not a cat her daughter fed at all. The vet says he's about a year old. I got the trailer cats fixed two years ago.

I don't know if this guy was dumped off or roaming in search of females and got lost. All I know is he is literally starved to death. I took a cage out to the neighbors, for whom I once trapped over 40 cats, and we set him up in the same cage he'd been in for a couple days here, before I could get him fixed.

He had seemed so relieved to have a soft bed and all the food he could eat. The moment I put him back into the cage at their place, he went straight for the food, as we, strangers to him, watched right beside him. Ferals don't do that.

You can lean over him, too, and he does not react to that. A feral would go nuts if something was peering down on them.

I was so happy that they would take him on, along with their herds. Their cat herds were there, unbeknownst to them, when they bought the place. They've been long fixed, however. I used my remote control trap to catch the last ones there. I miss that remote control. I triggered it there on a cat from 700 feet, using a spotting scope to determine the cat had no ear tip. The remote control receiver unit and my spotting scope were stolen out of my garage a few months ago.

Flat Chest Syndrome Minnie, from the Seed Warehouse, Has Died

Minnie, the flat chested female kitten, from the seed warehouse south of Corvallis, born with a severe defect, has died. She went to a rescue in Portland for disabled cats about two weeks ago. She didn't last long and died a few days ago.

She was doomed from birth but was such a happy girl while she was here, for six weeks, after being born in a live trap, in my garage. At six weeks of age, she and her two siblings went to the Portland rescue where she died shortly thereafter.

Kittens!

Bambam
Rocky, Pebbles and Giggles.
Bonkers, the tabby male kitten.
Whimsy, the delightful little girl Siamese.

I began trying to retrap the rural trailer cats, although most have disappeared. The 350 pound daughter moved out and to Lebanon. The trailer sits empty and I think other family members are going to demolish it. They are grass seed farmers, some of the family. None have helped or expressed interest in the cats. These are breeders from way back. I trapped a possum Saturday night, then a Lynx Point Siamese. He isn't fixed. He's the only one two years ago I did not catch, if it is even the same cat by now.

When I told her I caught the Siamese, she was all happy and said, "I wish I had someone to breed him with."

I said, "What in the world are you talking about? Do you think I sit out here, nights, on my time, to help you, so you can breed more cats?"

"Well, I want Siamese kittens. I don't have any."

Again, I tried to tell her, on the phone, sitting there out in the black of night, at the empty trailer her daughter occupied, that she has plenty of cats and many are dying because she has too many and doesn't care for any of them very well, as her daughter didn't, at this trailer, when she lived here.

I got 8 fixed at the trailer and ten at the mother's barn in another location. Then the daughter took in two of her mother's barn kittens and showed them to me once. They were covered in fleas and inside the trailer were piles of trash and filth with even a mouse flattened from being stepped on repeatedly, crusted into the smelly carpet. I got those two fixed, too, eventually.

And the first thing this woman thinks about, when I trap an unfixed Siamese, is "Oh, let's breed more."

She will never learn and there is no sense arguing with someone who doesn't learn and never will change. If any of the poor cats left behind when the daughter moved out are still alive, I hope to catch them. The mother will take them on at her barn, supposedly.

I'm trying to get a donation from her for my bait and gas. I think she probably will cover that. I hope so anyhow.

It is often hard to get people to understand fair play. I am a stranger to her. I am getting these cats fixed because she and her daughter neglected personal responsibility and did not get it done, then her daughter left them behind when she moved. I am helping her relocate them to her barn because neighbors, who know them, won't help. Neither will their family members, who live very close by.

It's the new America, where neighbors don't give a rip about neighbors and family doesn't give a rip about family.

Illegal Splendor

Tonight the illegal fireworks in town have begun. They are nothing like last years' illegal displays that outdo most legal fireworks displays I've seen. I wonder if the cops are out on patrol for illegals. I hope not. I need my entertainment! They never have been before so I can't imagine they'd change.

I usually take a lawn chair out on my sidewalk this time of year after dark to watch.

Albany pyro's really put on the display.

But tonight, I'm sick. I'm barfing sick.

After getting back from the halfway trip to the wedding, I felt unusually tired. I've slept a lot the last couple of days, to recuperate from the extreme trapping and transporting. I would get too hot then too cold. I slept all afternoon.

I woke up so wobbly on my legs I could barely walk. I thought, "Well, I'm just dehydrated" and drank a lot of water. After that, I gave up on doing anything and planted myself back on my couch.

But the barfing began. I'm no barfer. I only barfed twice but that is like a fifth of the total times I've barfed in my entire life. At least I think so.

I felt better after barfing but it didn't last. I'm still feeling like road kill warmed over. I'm feeling like pet cemetery animals.

I feel like I ate something that grew bad things quickly. Another wave of upchucking seems to be coming on. My face gets hot first.

I folded up the lawn chair, put it away, and rolled back the covers on my bed. The booms and bangs and cracks and sizzles are loud outside. I wish I could watch the goings on. But not tonight. There will be more tomorrow night I'm sure.

Tonight, I am no good. Waves of incredible drowsiness wash over me.

I did name the ten bathroom kittens. The calico is now Giggles. The female chocolate point Siamese kitten is Whimsy. Her two brothers are Samba and Tango. The third Siamese Lynx Point male is Rumba. The gray tux boy is Rocky. The black tux boy is Hoops. The brown tabby boy is Bonkers. The brother and sister, a tabby on white and a muted torti, the smallest of all the kittens, are Pebbles and Bambam.

At least I named the kittens.

The illegal splendor going on outside is probably fantastic, as usual, here, where pyromania is a treasured hobby nurtured and handed down, generation to generation.

There is no reason to brave traffic jams and masses of people to sit in some field and await ten minutes of engineered legal fireworks when the skies here are lit up in all directions.

UPDATE: Keni, Poppa's president, is also ill, with the same symptoms--vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness and weakness. Only she is much worse.

We saw each other last Wednesday, when I took up the FIV kittens. I helped her clean up there, for a couple of hours, but we shared no food or drink. The dust was incredible, when vacuuming and I was happy to be gone when I left. I wonder if it is coincidence we are both sick with the same symptoms or if there was something out there we came in contact with.

Wedding Fiasco

I was supposed to be at a wedding which is happening in Yachats in 45 minutes. It's my sister-in-laws sister getting married. She invited me three days ago by phone.

I was honored to be invited. It was the very first wedding I've been invited to attend in my entire life. I did not attend either of my brother's weddings. I can't remember why, probably because of being in the mental health system and drugged to the hilt and having no car.

My niece got married. But she got married in Europe. I had no money to fly to Europe. And no passport. The rest of my family went. The marriage did not last but the wedding, in Venice, was likely beautiful.

I told J, the woman who invited me, I have no clothes and she said "no worries, wear what you have".

This morning I desperately searched for something to wear without stains or holes. I have some rain shoes, some hiking type boots and some plastic Kmart velcro fasten sandals. That's my shoe selection. I threw the rain shoes in the car and wore the sandals even though they are beat up and ugly.

I had some gray slacks that fit, but they have one paint stain on one leg. They're from a thrift store, like almost all my clothes. I had to choose those. Everything else I have--old jeans.

I should take heed of advice, given out long ago, by a writer. Which one, I can't remember. "You need one good suit of clothes, for weddings and funerals."

I was ten miles west of Philomath when the nagging question tagged my mind. I could not get it from my mind. "Did I turn off the stove elment after making that last cup of coffee?"

I tried and tried to remember. I did not want to turn around. Once free of the towns, and in the country, I had rolled down my windows and turned up the radio and was already feeling free and looking forward to being on the coast. I don't know if the rest of my family will be over there or not. I never heard from any of them.

I had been invited to my very first wedding. That itself made me feel sky high, like somebody loved me, like my existence had been acknowledged.

But the question of the elment on or off nagged me relentlessly. I've left elments on before, and usually when I think I've left it on, I have.

I turned around. I came back home. The elment was on.

I can't make it now. Guess the invitation was the big deal to me anyhow. Guess that feeling, of being invited to something significant to someone else, is a feeling I like. I will write the newly weds and tell them so.

7 Albany Cats Fixed Today

I've added some kitten cuteness. I have ten kittens in my bathroom from the VV. They arrive and slowly, they see it's ok, and start to go wild! Play! Food! The Siamese female is the silliest and friendliest along with her brothers, the Lynx Points. The recent arrivals, the gray tux, black tux, another Lynx Point and the muted tortis brother are slowly coming out of their shells, too.This little Lynx Point boy is darling.
And this girl, one of three, unbelievable!
The black tux, after rehydration and ear mite killing, is really coming into his own.
But this one, the girl Siamese, she is something else again.
This little girl's brother just arrived yesterday, but she too is a ball of confidence and energy.

This big black male still needs caught and fixed.
This old black tux male from VV was fixed today.
Small but dominant gray male, fixed today from VV.
This big orange guy was fixed Wednesday. See that ear tip?
Huge Gray tabby male, fixed today from VV.
Huge black male fixed today from VV.
Black female fixed today from VV.

Gray tux male, fixed today from VV.

Today, I took up 7 cats to be fixed. I could have had four done at Heartland but why torture myself? I was already tired and Heartland is way over in Corvallis. I could get them all done quickly up in Wilsonville and that's what I did. They are so easy to work with.

One of the six I trapped up at the VV last night turned out to be a female. She was the small black one. I wasn't sure on that one, if it was male or female, so decided I better keep her, rather than one day try to retrap her.

I wish I'd trapped the pregnant gray female.

So six more from the VV, five of them major males. However, there are at least two more major males up there to get caught and other sub dominants. Prior to today, I had taken in only three males of 14 cats fixed from there. Currently 20 adult cats have been fixed from the VV and ten kittens removed. 30 cats in all. So far.

The seventh cat I took up was a new show in my yard. Yup. Cat number 33 I've caught in my yard alone. He's a two year old or so tamish male and he showed up at least two weeks ago very starved. My neighbor also has been feeding the poor fellow. Now at least he's neutered.Latest yard cat fixed today.


I fell asleep hard in my car at the rest area, after delivering the cats to the clinic and did not wake for four hours!!!! Dead hard dreaming sleep. Felt good.

Now, it's Miller Time!