Game Cam Fun

 I put the game cam up at the trailer park deck night before last since no one there had seen the mom and final teen needing caught.  I had no luck setting traps or coordinating to stop feeding with the person feeding.

In the end I had to call a halt to trapping since I need all my traps to return to the big Lebanon colony.  That man has 15 more FCCO spots Friday.   He has the spots and the cats but its me who does all the work and bears the expense.

Boohoo, ha.  Complain complain.  Fortunately donations help from others, to pay the gas, all the bait, and it was a lot of wet cat food I used tonight, etc expenses.  

Anyhow, I looked at the game cam card this morning, after returning the black long hair girl I caught there--Stranger, who was spayed yesterday.  

It was busy on the deck last night.  Four different cats--the mom, the unfixed teen, and the fixed boy teen were all on cam along with a huge black tux male, who really really enjoyed the catnip I spread night before.

Mister Big

Rolling in the nip

Covered in nip and too high to function

Mommy Dearest makes many appearances on camera all night long.

Here comes the unfixed torti teen

Fixed bro teen Scatter is enamored with the camera.

So I'll get back to that one at some point.  Just so little time, and I seem to be the youngest one in the trailer park, so can't really request help, even with carrying a trap.   Just kidding, only the youngest on that street end full of octagenarians.

Right now I'm back in Lebanon helping a man who thinks he's 80 but is actually my age exactly.

Already 45 cats helped there and he has the 15 spots tomorrow.  Caught five today outside. With the 9 semi ferals still unfixed inside the trailer should not be hard to get the 15 in all.  His daughters are coming to help round up the trailer bound ones tomorrow.  Thank goodness.   I have no clue how many more unfixed ones there are outside.   If I get the 15 for Friday, that will up the number helped at one place in Lebanon to 60 cats.   I'm sure he'd like me to find more placements for more of his cats, but hey I found placements already for 16, time for him to do some work at it, is my opinion.   Gawd almighty.   

I caught a possum there too and also ran off a really fat large skunk.   The usual stuff.

These are the two I caught up there this morning, both kittens.  The other three are all gray.

Off to bed.  

Wet and Dark Weekend

 The weekend weather was downright yucky.   

Rain and ick, gray and dark skies.   Time to stay inside and make soup.

Only I didn't make soup.

I slept a lot Saturday then went trapping at the trailer park where the two teens came from who were fixed last Monday.  This was basically out of sheer boredom and a need to get out of the house, even if to sit in a car.

I had by now figured out there's a big colony on the street behind the trailer park, fed in various spots and that the mom and kittens are spillover from that.

So I was not surprised when this morning I caught a long hair black, who is not one of the cats I'm after.  I contacted the lady on the street behind and sent her a photo.  This one is not ear tipped but she said looks just like the rest she has already trapped to be fixed---i.e. black, short or long hair.  I think she's caught ten or twelve or so.  HCC paid for one at least a year ago.

So I got him or her an appointment to be fixed Tuesday at Radpets.   Nice of them to work the cat in.

I was back over there this evening and tried again to catch the two I want to catch but only recaught the little now fixed black tux teen boy again.  Ok.  Let him out.  Came home.

Anyhow, that's about it besides a bunch of cleaning and laundry.  Catch up stuff.   

I may as well hibernate the winter through.  I could stuff myself with blueberries and blackberries before hand and just emerge now and then to look around, blurry eyed, and then go back into my cozy little den. Come out maybe mid June, I don't know.   I like that idea.  Could save a lot of money that way.  

Here's the cat, getting offered up gourmet tuna and Temptation cat treats while he awaits his fate, which is a neuter job and vaccines, along with flea treatment.

Very pretty cat, likely a boy with that nose, you think?   I don't know.  I'm not looking.  Not polite.  I'll be able to tell by smell tomorrow.  

Blueberry

 Blueberry died today.  She'd had diarrhea for a few weeks off and on, but it had become much worse.  I finally caught her last night, and got her into a large cage I'd set up for when I could get her.

It wasn't good.   She pooped on the blanket I had for her to sleep on in there, despite there also being a large litter box.

I got a vet appointment for her and took her in this morning.  Thankfully.

Vet said she had a thickened colon and likely had cancer since her temp was normal.   The other possibilities were untreatable, like diabetes and hyperthyroidism and ibs, her being a wild thing and hard to catch.

They did do a giardia snap test but I knew it would be negative.  It was.

So off she went to never never land, after a sedative that put her to sleep beforehand.

She was almost but not quite 16.   

She came from Lebanon, Milton street, among several teens I caught in a woodpile.   I got 11 in all fixed there and tried to find the four teens homes, once semi tame.  Heartland took on Blueberry and she was there months before she got a home.  Two months later however they returned her to Heartland and they contacted me to come get her or she would be euthanized.  I frantically raced over and found her trembling from fright in a carrier in their bathroom.    She was so relieved to be back here.

That was way back in 2012 I took her back.

She had a good life here.  I could only handle her if confined and tried to keep her mats shaved off.  She was toothless by now.  I'd taken her for two different dentals and she'd needed multiple extractions.  Kittens who grow up in impovrished nutrition wise environments often face early onset tooth issues, as she did.

I'm happy she is no longer suffering.  Chronic diarrhea is absolutely miserable.  At some point, intestinal tumors explode in growth causing terrible pain.

She loved this hanging basket until it finally fell apart.

She loved the tree hideout too, in the cat yard, before that tree had to be taken out, when it split.

She loved to watch birds from the window

Rain

 Rain will pour down at least for four days.   Our temps are now in the 50's.   (so I'm told).  

It is depressing, this return of the long dripping gray and rain.

The news is too depressing to watch.   The blatant lying going on is unbelievable.   Too much.  Would rather watch cartoons than the news lately.   

I think our governor spoke correctly.  She said the White House is not interested in the truth.

The bullshit meter has broken, due to excessive bullshit exposure, beyond what it could measure.

I especially enjoyed the praying that was combined with straight up lies.   Made for some belly laughs at least and a few wtf's inbetween. 

It all feels like madness.   

If the skies were blue, it would be easier to escape the collective insanity.  

To survive, I will need a horde of books, and an offing of all news and most social media.  

Send books!!!  

And cat food.  

The essentials for survival--cats and books.

Someone said to me, we'll probably have a rough time as you really can't put all that's happened back in the bottle.  Who was that, said that to me.  I can't remember now.

So here comes the rain, pouring rain.   Great.

Apples, Too Many

 My apple tree produced a massive crop of apples this year.  It does so every other year.

I should have reduced the crop more early on.  I can't remember how many five gallon buckets of fallen apples I've picked up since late August and put in the yard debris.

I've made applesauce but have a tiny freezer, so not much and one person can eat only so much applesauce.   

The apple tree was never sprayed.   Most have worms in them.  So to use them, I have cut out the worm spots.  The worms are a larval stage of some bug, I forget its name.

Many have no worms.  I eat them cut into quarters then.    Sometimes with peanut butter.

I decided to make hard cider.   I have no equipment.   This rarely stops me.

I have a glass jug.  I got an airlock off amazon. Before, when I made dandelion wine, I used balloons with pinprick holes as airlocks, during the  fermentation stage.

I don't have an apple chopper.  I do not have a cider press.

I was going to make a press from my car jack but never did.  

So I steamed the apple chunks soft.  First I cut them up by hand while watching endless episodes of Survivor and Amazing Race and other shows on Pluto (free TV).  I used a potato masher and then put the mash into a dish cloth and wrung the juice out.   Slow way to make a jug of hard cider!

With a press, I could have mass produced!  But I don't have many glass bottles saved up.

I brought the filtered cider up to pasteurization temp, which is 170 F or so, then cooled it down and funneled it into the glass bottle with some softened yeast.  It's really fermenting right now.   Might end up quite hard cider.   When the bubbling stops, I'll strain it again and cap it off to sit a month or two.

Maybe next time I'll just add some yeast to store bought juice instead.   

I'm also thinking of other ways to use more apples.  I could dry apple slices in the oven on its lowest heat.  Ok, will do some this evening.  I like to spice them up in different ways.  I like to dice up raw apples in salad too.  Been doing that.

My tree still has apples, lots of apples.   Like what the hell.  How many apples can one small tree create?   It won't produce next year.  It's only an every other year event.  I hope to remember to prune the tree down severely in February.

So Long Kittens

 The kittens left this morning.

The two boys, Beetle and Spook, will be going to a friend of the vet at Radpets.

I left them at the clinic this morning, with four other cats, three of them females.

I just handed off Safron, the little black long hair girl kitten.  I'd called her Ghostie, but my friend's sister wants her and immediately named her Safron.   She has a brand new cat carrier, brand new litterbox, kitten height size and a zillion toys.  My friend will make sure she gets spayed.  She's still too little.

I will miss them.  But....I have my bathroom back.  

The four I took to be fixed today at Radpets include Calypso, who is from a large Sweet Home colony, while Scatter and Rose, are teens from a trailer park in Albany.   I was going to give the Sweet Home lady both spots I had open because the mom and second kitten at the trailer park vanished into the maze of trailers and backyards Saturday night and were not seen at all on Sunday.

But....I received a call from an Albany cat loving man who had a stray female show up with kittens.  He was trapping the kittens when he caught the mom too, with one of the kittens in the trap.

So I gave him the fourth spot for mom and went over and seperated her and the kitten out.  The kittens are fat, healthy and darling.   But they are little hisser spitters, at six weeks old.  He still is trying to catch the last kitten.

So that worked out really well.   And Felicia, the mom, is being fixed today.

I haven't got a photo yet of Calypso, the young muted calico from Sweet Home.

Safron, the little girl kitten

Felicia, from Albany

Rose, a young torti, from Albany

Scatter, Rose's best bud, from Albany

We've got some nice weather again, even may get on the warm side today and tomorrow, no rain until at least Friday I think it is.

Last night, when I headed over to get Felicia, I saw the beautiful moon.

Peggy said it was beautiful early this morning too.  She saw it when she drove the muted calico she'd caught down early to me, to take to the clinic in Corvallis.

Summer 2025

 

So Long Summer 2025.   I had a few adventures, went to camp twice at Waldo Lake, but the 2nd time it was clouded in smoke from the Emigrant Fire, which did not stop me from a ten mile kayak trek.  There were day trips to Waldo too, and trips to the reservoir and up the very algae clogged south Santiam from Foster Reservoir.   A short trip to Alsea Falls.  A brief look at the balloon launch from the side of the highway at the Art and Air Festival.

Lost Slinko and Rogue, Vino and Gracie to old age and Slurpy to a likely brain tumor.

Tried to take the summer off from trapping but did not suceed.

So, helped lots of cats too.

I spent my days and adventures alone.  I didn't want to, but could find no one to join me.  I'm used to that.

Wondering if I'll get another summer to enjoy life.  Or if our country will be burning by then.   Retribution, revenge, anger, but mostly a purge of all speech and thought opposed to current admin. 

 What will become of us?  I don't know.  I can only hope for another summer with time spent somewhere beautiful and peaceful with water.

The long gray begins.......