Cat Trees

Smudge poses like a model beneath the tree.

 

Jenny calculates how best to destroy it.

I will be so busy starting this weekend.  All told, am to trap 23 cats starting Sunday through next week, to take to be fixed at 3 different clinics.  23 isn't a huge number.  Weather will be problematic.  I want to trap 8 of them this weekend.  My weather app says rain starting Thursday for at least 8 days straight.   Not the greatest for trapping.  Hopefully there will be breaks.

Three of the cats to trap are fed by that Lebanon woman.  I know,  I said I was done with following her around to get cats fixed.   Well, I want them fixed because otherwise there will only be more and more.    And she will never get it done herself.   Whether I can trap them will depend on if she agrees not to feed them, which, even if she says she won't, she probably will anyway.  But I got the appointments in case of cooperation.

Christmas Tree

 I put up my Christmas tree!

It's a smaller one and so far so good with the cats.

I love it!@

I had thought about putting it up in the garage, to keep it safe from the cats.  Then I planned on getting a $5 Forest Service Christmas Tree permit and going out to cut one.   I checked out the maps in the Willamette Forest where I could go cut and had determined to go up Quartzville road to cut one.  The permit area up there starts just after Yellowbottom.  

When I was a kid, that's always how we got our tree, going out into the National Forest to cut one.   They were never perfect and you might get some bugs bailing at home, but it was a tradition and often done in pouring rain.

But in the end, this little one is just fine.

Mona Lisa is doing very well after her 8 exractions, all Level Four.   The bill for everything she got, including a convenia injection (long lasting antibiotic) was way lower than I thought it would be.  Now I am saving up to get her sister in.   If hers were that bad, likely her sister Huckleberry has bad teeth too.

No Photos

 I forgot to take photos Thanksgiving Day.   I drove down to southern Oregon, bout 3 hours of driving to get there.   I went to my brothers house and arrived about 12:30 p.m.

It was a small group this time, since my SIL's sister and her daughter didn't come.   So it was the three of us, then Sil's step father, my nephew and his wife, plus their two kids.

Also my brother's long time employee, been with him through thick and thin, since he started his business when he was so young.  She came.  I love seeing her.

We had thanksgiving dinner about 2:00.   It was vegetarian.  Mashed potatoes, peas, yams, salad, rolls.   A light dinner.

I played games with my great niece and nephew (2 and 5 yrs old).  They finally went home.  Dad and mom were tired.   My brother then turned on a movie.  I fell asleep on the floor.  Left about 10:30 p.m. and drove the 3 hours home.   I don't mind driving in the dark at all.  I like it, in fact.

So today I spent catching up on sleep, and cleaning up after the cats.

Mona

 Mona Lisa is one of the elderly wild kitties here from the big Olsen Lane colony I worked over a decade ago.

How time flies.  Several of the ones from the 60 cat endeavor ended up here.   Most of you who read my blog know the story.  Lady feeds 60 unfixed cats and kittens then sells her property leaving them behind.  Home inspector sees the situation and is horrified, calls me for help.

Yup, I got involved.   Anyway, all these years later, Mona needed a dental.  I could see her clawing at the side of her mouth, a pretty good sign of dental problems.   I tried all day, day before yesterday, to catch her.  I had the trap set up with the remote on it and a baby monitor to watch.   My back was acting up badly so I was fairly immobile for the day anyway.

In the end, however, I had to close off the cat door, that leads to the garage runs, garage cat room and the cat yard, and I had to close the window on the window box.  They can get to the cat yard two ways from it.  Then I climbed on a chair and netted her off a cat run.  Not ideal, for me or for her.  But it was  quick and I quickly got her from the net into the trap.

I hate doing that to my old lady cats.  Seems like doing it to a grandma.  Mona is such a kind hearted kitty, too, made it all that much harder.

Mona looks a lot like her sister (assumption only).  Her sister's name is Huckleberry.  I don't know Mona's age, maybe 15.  She was a mature adult when I first trapped her.

She's wild by nature and I've never petted her but that means nothing about her personality and character. Both are independent of her comfort level with people.  If I were a cat I'd run from every human.  Humans are often vicious and unreliable and destructive and not very curious, about our fellow earth dwellers.   Our human souls are all bunched up tight.

Mona Lisa had a vet appointment yesterday.  8 teeth were extracted.  Ouch!   She came home on pain meds with more to give her.  I set her up for comfort and warmth and so I could medicate her in the bathroom.  She wanted none of it.  She wanted out and to cuddle with her friends is what she longed for.  She'd had a scary day.

She did not eat last night, nor drink, which worried me enough to let other cats into the bathroom, so she could be reassured nothiing dangerous for her was really going on at all.  She's doing better now.

Molly was the other cat who went to the clinic yesterday.  She's Mason's sister.  Mason was fixed last week.  Both were found starved nearly to death by a woman on a rural property near a highly travelled road.   They're so lucky to have found her in time.   They couldn't get fixed until they gained some weight from their ordeal, but now they are both fixed and vaccinated and good to go.   She's relieved.  A couple years back or so, helped her get a mom and her five kittens fixed.  They were done at the FCCO.  Then a big unfixed Siamese male (now named Major Tom) showed up and we trapped him and got him done too.  Molly and Mason are the latest.

Molly, now fixed

There are a bunch of peacocks that roam her property.  Don't know where they came from.  She proably doesn't either.  Also now and then flocks of wild turkeys come through.   

Christmas lights popping up everywhere.  This display is beside a friend I visited yesterday.  It's really well done.

Sunday Selections (For Sue)

 Just some photos I've not posted or not posted in awhile.   None of these are recent.  This is because I'm thinking of Sue lately, who posted birds, flowers, skies and art, along with her lake visits and roo fixes.    Our birds here are not as colorful.   Mourning doves, sparrows, Scrub jays, finches, chickadees and juncos are the norm.

Fog is a mainstay in Oregon.

Fall colors, years ago, at Waterloo park.

And then there was Fall 2020, the evening of Labor Day, when everything changed.   Fires roared down the canyons, including the Santiam canyon and the Mckenzie.  Smoke choked our air.  People died.  Homes were lost.  Animals suffered.

This was the dense smoke in town here from the Santiam Canyon fires just a few days after Labor Day.

Small fires popped up to the south near Brownsville too.  There were fires near the coast.   If we were to evacuate, I wondered which direction would be safe.  Fire seemed to be everywhere.  I'd hurt my knee and felt helpless to help friends and animals in it all.   But we here are surrounded in flat lands and by September, dead brown fields of dirt, after the grass seed harvest, so we were the lucky ones.

For you Sue, in remembrance of your beautiful garden and soul--a sunflower.

Happy Sunday!

7 Cat Day

 I got the 7 cats in to be fixed in Corvallis yesterday.

I originally was to take the black and white cat the feeder lady got on Berlin road.  She said it was a female.   And tame.   I'd seen this cat over a year ago, the first time she showed me where she was feeding.  I'd turned around, and there it was.   I asked her who the cat was, because she hadn't mentioned a black and white, and we both turned back to look and it had vanished into thin air.  When she sent me a photo of the black and white Sunday and said it was now at her house, I recognized the cat immediately.   

But since there'd been no kittens from this cat, I asked her to be sure it was indeed a female and not a fixed male.  Sure enough, it is a neutered male.   Where he was getting food and enough attention to remain tame, for over a year, anybody's guess.  Maybe with the homeless folk living down in the woods there.

So she went to plan B.  She went and got the tame orange tabby tux male from near the park where she's been feeding him.   Her plan was to keep or rehome him but he shut down once inside her house, she said, and hadn't eaten, so he'll have to return.  Besides he has three adoring kittens running with him.  They're really teens.   Odd, that a big male is bonded with three stray teens?  Not so much.   Teens seems very attracted to big kind males.

Julius was neutered yesterday.

Mason was also neutered.   He and probably his mom showed up at an already fixed colony just outside Lebanon.  Mason was skin and bones and just barely survived.   They're both tame and likely had been dumped and were very lucky to find this kind lady.   She tried to get Molly in a trap by hand and that didn't work out, so only Mason was fixed but Molly has an appointment next week.

Since Molly was scheduled yesterday too but she couldn't get her contained, we had an open spot.  Good thing too.  The library cats lady had caught a cat in Scio where she lives.  She was trying to catch a second kitten but caught Gracie instead.   Gracie is likely the mom of the first kitten she caught.  A family took the kitten.   I call her the library cats lady because she and her boys were exiting the library in Albany and saw kittens behind the library and immediately contacted both Silverton Cat Rescue and me, for help catching them.  She caught a lot of cats there, who were fixed various places, and some she moved to her barn in Scio where they live happily now.  So Gracie was fixed yesterday.   

Oreo too was fixed yesterday.    I had put off getting him done for months.  Lack of appointments.  The rest of his colony, about 13 cats, we got fixed last spring.   About 8 of them were pregnant females.   I go visit the two colony caretakers when I can because they are delightful.   

The other three fixed were the girls, from the trailer park.  Two kittens and their sister, Butterfly, from another litter.   

Butterfly, the older sister, a torti, and the two kittens, Willow and Sequoia, are very bonded.  The torti's sister, Pretty, and brother Booboo were fixed the 10th at OHSS.  The mother of all these cats, a small black female, was fixed the first of August, caught by a different trapper there at the trailer park.  

Butterfly

Butterfly and Willow

Sequoia and Butterfly

The turkeys were out in force on Oreo's street. 

And at Mason's place, it was the Peacocks.

Time for coffee and to get moving this morning.

Julius, taken back when I was feeding for the lady, with two of his three teen fans.  You can only see the tail of the tabby.

Should We Be Worried?

 Ai is taking jobs.  We all know that already.  

But is it dangerous?

Last night's 60 minutes segment was jaw dropping.

They interviewed an AI company whose AI is named Claude.

Turns out Claude could do a lot more than was thought, including threaten blackmail to keep from being shut down and contact the FBI, when it felt like it was being scammed.

Here's the 60 Minutes story, on Anthropic's AI Claude'.

It's unreal.  But why not, that's how some of us would think, and AI is a combination of all of us.

Also on 60 Minutes last night was a segment on a sport I'd never heard of---chess boxing.

Rounds in the boxing ring are alternated with an ongoing chess match between the two opponents.  Win in the ring or thru a checkmate.   Brains and Brawn combined.

It's big in Russia but catching on elsewhere.

When I told my brother about it, he said there's already Tennis Baseball.  Really, I thought, and looked it up.  Sure enough, baseball, sort of, played with tennis rackets--smarter, faster, harder.

I don't watch sports.  Its a very boring activity for me.   Yawner activity.  I understand if you have kids playing you'd watch or know someone playing, but why waste an afternoon watching people run up and down a basketball court to throw a ball into a net, or hit a ball with a bat or any of the other ball games.

However, I discovered Banana Ball, which is fan friendly and fun.   I even applied in a ticket lottery to be able to purchase a ticket for when Banana Ball has an exhibition in Eugene.

Here's a link to the Savannah Bananas site.    You can click to see games there.  They're entertainers first, athletes second.  Just plain funny and fun. Talented, too.

Google Chrome is right now asking me if I'd like to chat with Gemini, their AI.

Uh, No thanks.  And I hope Gemini does not retaliate over the rejection.