The Cold

 Despite the sub freezing nights, we are getting sun during the day.  Instead of the heavy cold fog.

Not warm sun, but we can see the sun.  It's beautiful.

Right now, its up to 27 degrees outside.   It should be above freezing at some point after 10:00 a.m.  Sunny, I think, again.

Better than much of the country.

I have the thermostat set at 65, during the day.  I plan on downing that to 62 over the next week.  They advised those with heat pumps not to be changing the temperature, day to night.  I'm not sure why.  They advised not closing vents in some rooms either, as that can damage your furnace and heat pump.  However, my thermostat is in the hall.  I only have two rooms whose doors I could close, but that would close off cat movement.   I don't have cat doors in the bedroom doors.  I think I can hang blankets over the door openings.   Since the thermostat is in the hall, it might help.

  I feel bad for my elderly skinny old cats but there's nothing I can do about it.   I'm not the only one dealing with extreme electric bills.  The local facebook pages are full of stories from those struggling with them. These utilities in Oregon I think are charging consumers for the price of their own negligance in keeping trees away from power lines causing wildfires and after the fires--lawsuits from people who lost their homes in fires.   There have been massive payouts to homeowners who lost their homes.  The rest of us pay for it.

The power bill for this month will probably be astronomical once again.  It's not doable.  

Wish I had a wood stove sometimes.  There was one in here when I moved in, but my brother had it disconnected because it was not modern enough to be approved by his homeowners insurance.   It was tough to get out of here, being so heavy.  You can't legally sell a wood stove over a certain number of years old.   I drug it out on a tarp finally, with a lot of effort.  Someone came and took it away, said they'd split the metal recycling money with me, but after they drove off, I never saw them again.  People are so dishonest.

I was happy when the couple on Seven Mile told me they cancelled their FCCO spots for the coming Wednesday.    Bait freezes in this weather and the second barn is a much more difficult place to trap, with the cats living in the loft and only coming downstairs to eat.  There is almost no space for traps and they all come down to eat together, so the first cat caught would scare them all off being caught.   Somehow the couple fit the drop trap into that tiny space.  I don't know how and where they put it, but the cats need more time to adjust to eating under it, they said.   

I'm happy about it because holding them in the garage before and after surgery means running two space heaters to keep them warm enough at night.  That is very costly.

I feel bad for the FCCO, that they cancelled over the weekend, and yesterday, were closed.  They won't see their cancellation until today.  Will they be able to fill all those appointments with someone else at that late stage?  I don't know. But it is what it is and when its cold like this, and you have to trap after dark, its one of those things.  

Its interesting to me so many people won't make the call to the FCCO.  Yesterday a woman sent me a post from a man familiar to me.  He was posting on next door, in a small town south of here.  He claims to have over 20 cats and has tried every animal helping group around for help getting them fixed.  Well he did contact me, months ago.  I gave him the FCCO appointment application form link then.  He never responded.  When I saw his name in the message posted recently, I emailed him again, from his original request.   Again, no response.   WTH.   Is he no longer checking his email?   I had sent him the link once again, to get appointments, explaining he had to get them, that I couldn't.   Same with a trailer park in Sweet HOme, allegedly 100 cats there.  The lady claimed she filled out the FCCO form but said FCCO never responded but pretty sure she's lying, because they would have responded.

Can only do what you can do.   

My nonprofit has bought 14 of these in the last months, and given them to colony caretakers from Lebanon to Sweet Home.   Meow Village has donated some of those 14, four I think.   They're really well insulated.   

Prissy in front, Tickle in back

Prissy and Tickle from Quartzville road, the bathroom escapees, along with Thistle, love each other.  They're likely sisters.   They still try to sleep together, in a small carrier, but its too small to hold the both of them, so one or the other hangs out.  Thistle sticks mostly to the cat yard.

Today I have Gleaners.  I am looking forward to it greatly.  I have had almost no human contact lately outside of Gleaners last week.   I got a text we're having a potluck first week of February.  Got to figure out what to take this time.   I was going to take finger food pot pies (miniature) last time, but then switched to something else.   But since I have eggs and can make a puff pastry dough for crust and add other ingredients to the filling, I will plan on making those.

Today is looking unfortunately like it will be gray and foggy and cold all day.

A week from tomorrow, temperatures will get back to normal here, with days in the 50's and nights in the mid to upper 30's.  And rain.

Fake Fire Help

 Just saw that a couple from Oregon were arrested inside the California fire zone.  In a fire truck and fire fighting gear.

However, he's a convicted arsonist.  

They live not far from here, near Scio and Lacomb. Roaring River is a Linn county park in Lacomb.   He bought the fire truck at auction.

He spent time in prison for arson in Wilsonville.

WTF are they doing down in a big fire zone, with his own fire truck.  A convicted arsonist.   This will be interesting.

Oregon crazies, giving us bad publicity. 

It Will Be Cold

 It's going to be cold nights for a week at least.  Down in low 20's.   Hardly that cold but.....

cold enough.

Lisa, who moved to Michigan, promptly sent me their forecast---Ha!   Highs of 15 degrees.   So, cold here is relative.  Ours is supposed to be down in 24 F range at night.  Their lows will be half that.

OK, no complaining.

I only worry about the power bill.   The electric company is into double digit increases each year. It's killing my budget.   But hey, what can I say?   I have old cats and I can't find it in myself to let them be cold.  I can put on layers.  They can't.

However I'm not sure about trapping this next week.   Seven Mile lady had 16 more spots mid week.   But trapping is only good late there.  This second barn will be very difficult anyway.    Bait will freeze once its dark.  Or even before.

No normal cat is out and about when its so cold.  They're into clumping together and sleeping through it.  Good plan.

That's my usual MO for when its that cold at night.   Read in bed, smothered in cats.

I'm going to cover my beloved windows, on the outside, with something.  Not cardboard.  That would bring the neighbors to my door.  Too white trash for them I'm sure.

Such a superior insulator however.  Maybe I can cover the cardboard with something pretty.  Artsy cardboard over the windows.  Why not.

Day Over

 Night before last, I was a restless sleeper, up and down.  This happens sometimes when I have an early rise alarm set and cats in the garage.

I got up for good about 4:30 a.m. and began preparing the cats to load in the car.  I was going to leave about 7:00 a.m.   But all the cats need shifted to clean traps first.

It's a long process with 14 cats.   I put the back transfer door of a clean trap, lined in newspaper and part of a pee pad, against the transfer door of the trap the cat is in.  I open both doors and move the cage cover off the cat inhabited trap to the empty clean one.  The cat generally scoots right into the cage covered trap. 

Then I clean the trap the cat had been in, so I can do it over again with the next cat.   For half or more of the traps, this meant  a trip to the shower, to wash it there, since its down to freezing nights and I don't have an outside hose hooked up.

I left just after 7:00, but hit heavy congestion traffic that delayed my arrival until nearly 9:00 a.m.

After checking the cats in, I headed straight to Karen's place.   She wasn't there but had told me to go on in and do what I wanted.  What I wanted to do was nap and I did, on her couch, two seperate times.   Her house is under remodel but last stages.  I can't imagine living months in her kitchen but she had to during the remodel.  

It is beautiful though, what the remodelers have done to it.  

I remained there until about 3:30 when I headed back to FCCO to pick up the cats.  It was almost 4:45 before I got the call to come pick them up.  The parking lot had been crammed in cars waiting so I was too far from the pickup table for me to carry 14 cats back to my car.

But, in the meantime, while waiting, the people in the car next to me had gone and gotten their cats picked up and loaded.  But when he tried to start his vehicle, it would not start.  He knocked on my window and asked if I had jumper cables.  He thought it was the battery dead because he'd sat there waiting, engine off, but lights on.  I stumbled, not wanting to tell him I did have some, because I was pretty sure they don't work anymore, have broken wires.   They're 25 plus years old.  Finally I told him I had some, but also told him my reservations.  Besides, I was pretty sure it wasn't his battery.   He'd come after I had arrived and not waited that long before he was called to come pick up his cats at the table outside the front doors of FCCO.  How bad does your battery have to be, to go dead in 15 minutes with your lights on.

But that's the hallmark of a bad starter.  It works to start your car, then suddenly doesn't work when you go to restart your car.   I repositioned my car to have the battery close enough to his battery that the cables would reach then came half hour of trying to charge it up enough to start the car.   That never worked.  He was so sure, just five more minutes and it would charge enough to start.  AFter 40 minutes he gave up, with sincere thanks given to me for delaying my departure.  In the meantime, he had loaded my cats back in the car for me.  He said he would call his cousin.  He had teenage kids in the car too.  I hope they got it going somehow.  It could have been my bad jump cables.    I probably should have kept my mouth shut that they were in the car.   

More congestion on the way home.  I got home about 7:00.   It was time to clean my cats litter boxes, feed my cats and feed the 14 guest cats.  That took awhile but I got it done and went to bed.  I have maybe 20 cans of cat food left in the house after all the trapping and then feeding 14 extras.   After I return the cats I will need to head to the store.

Here are photos of the last two, the two I caught out there night before last.   We'd miscommunicated badly about trapping on Wednesday.  They had doctor appointments and were gone much of the day.   I finally went out after dark and caught two more late.

The classic torti is from the second barn.  We are going to try to catch the rest from there next week, for more appointments she got.   Its open on one side and occupied by goats.  The cats live in the loft.  There's really nowhere to set traps except a small walkway as you enter the barn.  We will not get them all the first time around due to the lack of space for traps.  The cats will catch on very very fast.

Us Peasants

 I didn't watch Biden's fairwell speech.  Just like I won't watch the coronation of the next.  

I'm not easily political.    I'd rather pet a cat.   

I am a bit worried about exactly what Biden warned against in his goodbye speech.  I only saw the headlines.  The dark clouds on the horizon of an American oligarchy with too much power and too much time on their hands.

I can bend the knee, to a-holes usually, to try to get their cats fixed or saved.

I've done that.  After the cats are safe, I can tell them what I think.

To see all those billionaires go suck up to the new king makes me want to wretch.  

Its pathetic to behold.   Grown men.

Don't they have minds of their own?  Independence?  Think for themselves?  Are they scared they might lose money or be targeted if they don't go bow down?   I don't get it.  I've never seen the like.  Or is it the opposite, they want to make more money and have more power.  

They all already have enough money to live a hundred or more lives like kings.  How many yachts do they need?

They'll help make laws to govern the likes of us peasants.  Do you think they give a rip about us peasants?  I wonder if they know we exist.  

I feel like they might be bored with their lives and we will become pawns in one of their rich people board games.  

I see the leaders of the world, like unfixed male cats facing off atop a fence, all puffed up and yowling, spray marking their territories.  Or like dog packs and if you can't be the top dog of the pack, you roll over and show your belly to the leader, in a sign of submission. 

I need to go pet a cat.  The oligarchs of America will do what they want.  Hopefully they'll leave us alone.    All I want to do is get these 14 cats from Seven Mile up to the clinic this morning.

Nothing To It

What does one say, to arrive at a new colony, get out of the car to discuss with the cats' caretaker, how we will proceed, when she blurts out "I already caught 10"?

She's over 80 years old too.

I'm not used to this.  I'm used to 20 to 50 year old whiners who claim they can't trap their own, you have to do it, won't lift a finger.

This, that, any excuse.

I think my mouth dropped open when she said that.  I had delivered her a drop trap and a large live trap, a week ago, so she could prefeed in them, get the cats used to going in and out, to get their food.   People often don't actually do it however.   They just say they will.

I'd texted her "on way".  When I got there, 15 minutes or so later, she'd trapped 10.  She had seven under the drop trap, then covered the trap with a blue tarp.  And three were in my large trap.  I had it bungeed open for her to feed in, so the cats were hungry and three younger ones were in there eating.  She just slipped the bungee cord off the front.  

We rode out to the barn through the field in her electric golf cart with a trailer.  I'd loaded seven empty traps on it.   I transferred the seven under the drop trap to the seven empty traps and we drove them back to my car on the trailer behind the golf cart.   I loaded them up in my car, then loaded the other three empty traps onto the trailer and we went back out to the barn.   I transferred the three in my big trap to the small traps, set the large trap and off we went to my car through the field, with the cats.

I drove the ten cats home and unloaded them onto the cat shelves in the garage and by the time I did that, she texted me two were in the big trap.

I went and fetched them.  It was pitch dark by then and she had loaded the trap with the two cats in it onto the golf cart trailer and already brought them to the driveway.  I transferred them into two  traps, gave her four more empty ones and came home.  Since the cart has no headlights, she'll try today for the other four.

What could be easier on me than that?  I had envisioned hours out there, somehow checking traps repeatedly in a distant barn.  

They're beautiful cats.  I'll get better photos at some point. For now, I do have photos of all 12, although they don't do their beauty justice.

Gleaners was fine too.   A couple and another woman jumped in to help fill adoptee boxes.  I did not have to fill all 19 boxes alone.   Thank goodness.   I took Aleve before I went and afterwards had to also take some Tylenol but all good.    I hope she catches the last four cats today out at the colony.    If anyone can, that would be her.

January Moldy

 

  

Big Black is still around.

I put my game cam out for the night, for kicks.  It's kind of fun.

Only two cats on it this time.  One is owned behind me and one house over.  And this guy, I don't think he's owned.   Not fixed, has hair loss on butt end from fleas.   I'll just catch him and get it done, since I now feed him.  

I took five in to be fixed yesterday.   Four girls one boy.   One is yet another from Waterloo park and now the lady who has been feeding them is being harrassed by off leash dog walkers, themselves breaking the law.   How someone breaking a law can be so high and mighty to someone trying to help some strays is bleak to think about.  Someone has an inflated entitlement thing going and lacks a heart.

She asked me to see if SCR can help place the three.  Dog walkers like to complain even when they're the ones breaking rules.   The county does not have the balls to do right by cats.   Or the heart.

We had thought we might have some sunny days.  Instead the fog moved in and the gray.  Maybe today will be better.

Here are the cats fixed yesterday.

Skadoo, Growlers kitten, now almost an adult herself.  She's now being held by the lady who fed them, who hopes I can catch Growler and the other kitten (young adult) and find a barn placement through scr for them.

Mama K from 5th street in Lebanon

Pashmina, a girl, from Tennessee Road in Lebanon.  This lady doesn't know it but HCC, my nonprofit, has already paid for several of hers to be fixed.  The Alpine Vet Tech has taken them to be fixed, paid for by HCC.  I think about 9 others from there.  

Taco, a young male

Virginia, a black tux girl

What's in store for the week?   Gleaners today.   I'm wearing out a bit on Gleaners.   I'm picking up the work too a man has done, but he'll be gone three months after knee replacement.   I don't even know if I'll have time with the new duties to get any food myself.   I'm getting a little tired of a few old folks doing most of the harder labor there.   My brother says its the same in every organization that relies on volunteers--a handful end up doing the work that everyone benefits from.   In this case, however, a lot of the old guarders who have done a lot of the work, are out for medical reasons.  Its just three months I'll be doing the extra duties and I'm more concerned about today, than the rest of the time, because of my trapping obligations later on.

After I get home from Gleaners, I load up a bunch of traps and head out Seven Mile to trap.   She has 16 reservations at the FCCO for Thursday.    I hope to catch about half of them tonight.  They live in a rather small area and will quickly catch on to the traps.   The rest I'll have to try for tomorrow.

 I think about my trips to Astoria with cats, how much I love it there, even when I am tired out from getting up so early to head out there.   I haven't gone in over a year now, mainly because my car is so sketchy, with so many miles on it.  The next thing that likely will go wrong, I'm told, is the AC compressor, its bearings.     I'm not sure it will be that or the fuel pump or head gasket and its already using oil.    I joined this facebook first generation scion group, not sure why.  I'm leaving it already.  It's just a bunch of people who kind of look down on those who use them as a working car, not as collector items all pimped out, with low miles.   Whatever.  I know there are lots of people who get cars to be seen in them or so they'll be looked at.   My idea of cars is how useful they are for what you need.   I guess the groupies are the same, they just need something different from their box cars.  My car has been fabulous for what I need--hauling cats, camping.  Cheap to operate and repair, by comparison to newer cars.   I don't know how people afford the sensor laden new cars.  One sensor goes bad and its a huge amount of money to replace it.   Generation 2 scions (2008 and on) have larger motors so get worse gas mileage and are a foot longer.  I forget when Toyota quit making scions.  Maybe 2015 or 2016.

Many folks think I should buy a new used car.  Hand me the money, and maybe I will.  Ha.  They suggest cars like used Subaru's or other all wheel drives.   They do not understand why I politiely say not interested.   All wheel drives are expensive to maintain and if you blow one tire, you have to replace them all.  they get bad gas mileage by comparison because they're heavier and have bigger engines.   Hey, I live on almost nothing folks.  I know what works for me and what doesn't, with a car.   It'd be nice to wind the clock back in a way, make simple cars, cheap to repair and operate, maybe a car home mechanics could repair.  One of the biggest requests on local facebook groups is about cars.  When a car breaks down, people are stranded and can't get to work or get their kids to daycare or whatever.   Constant pleas on facebook for help with car repair costs.  Help with car repair, rent payments, a place to live, and veterinarian bills are the most common requests I see.

Anyhow, I hope I see the sun today.