Low Snow

 Weirdest winter ever in Oregon, feels like.

We had a lot of rain, up until January.  Then it stopped and we got almost no rain in January.   It would be very cold at night, with either sun or fog during the day.

The mountains were not getting snow.  Ski resorts were and still are struggling.

This month, we started off with a bit of rain and we'll get more this weekend.  But what about mountain snow?  The following link is from OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting).

What do forecasters say about snow in the mountains?

I think the winter olympics have begun.   I don't think I get a channel that will carry them, not more than highlights in the news.

I have an antenna and get quite a few channels that way.  I have Roku and get access to a lot of free content that way also but I don't think the Olympics.   I'll check today.   I'm not a sports fan but some of the Olympic events are enjoyable to watch.

Sunday is the super bowl.  I think.   I know some diehard excited Seahawks fans.   I'm not into sports and won't pretend I'm interested.

I spent 7 hours out yesterday, parked along the rural road, where the gray tux boy, Roadie, came from.  He's still in my garage.  I had traps set for the Siamese.  I finally got a good look at her.  She is the one I got fixed last summer but had to return since she was lactating.  Her kittens must all have died, however.   Predators pick them off easily in such a location.

Before I got out of my car to set a trap, a Jeep pulled in behind me and the lady came up to my window.   I didn't know her, but she knows the feeder lady.  Or did.  They had some falling out awhile ago.  She had her two very cute dogs with her to walk in the vast area.   One is a corgi.

She headed down the road beyond the gate with her dogs.  Later on, I went on a walk and ran into her way out in the fields between the road and the river.   The dogs came running to greet me like they'd known me forever.

Right after I set the trap city vehicles began pulling in around me.   One was towing a porta potty they set up at one end of the pullout.  A supervisor (maybe) sat in his truck with it idling nearby for awhile.  They had road signs up and there were flaggers on the road.  I asked what they were doing and he said maybe it was brush hogging, but the section back towards town from me isn't very long and I couldn't imagine brush hogging along that short a distance would take all day.  Whatever they were doing did take all day.  I was there before they arrived and after they left too.  My day was longer there than theirs.

I never caught the cat.   She came out late afternoon and was so hungry she nearly came close enough to grab.  But she would not go into a trap and was limping badly.  I tried everything I could think of to get her to go into it, including spreading catnip.   She's been caught once to be fixed.   Then the feeder lady I guess tried to catch her months ago and the trap closed on her back and she got out.   She didn't look like she felt well and was protective of her sore front foot/ankle.   I finally gave her dry food at front of trap, she was so hungry, and hoped she would then go into the trap for the wet food.  She didn't.  She ate the dry food and vanished into the brush.   I took up the trap and came home.

By tomorrow evening, we will get more rain.   Sunday too.   Maybe snow will still come to the mountains.  There's still some time.   

Odd Looking Cat Toy

 

I made a new cat toy with remnants from cutting a fleece up to become two cage covers.   I had this strip of remnant and this is what I made:

I don't know what it is, but I stuffed it with cardboard, paper towel bits and cloth.  Oh, and catnip.

The cats don't care that its ugly.

They love it.

Roadie, aka Surprise, was neutered and vaccinated today.   He was so happy to get back to the holding cage and to scarf down two more cans of wet food.  He's been eating like he has hollow legs that need filled.   

I went out to the bird feeder this morning.  Saw something under it.   It was a rat.  Just sitting there, half stunned.  I wondered if he'd been dropped by a bird of prey.  But then I saw the neighbors cat behind their fence, frantically searching.  Ah, I thought, he got chased under the fence by their cat and probably is injured from the cat.   I went back to get my phone to take a photo and when I turned back around, the rat had run right back under the fence to the neighbors.  Ok.   It's seriously suicidal to be a rat or mouse around here.  Several neighbors on the street behind me have free roamer cats who visit this block too.  And if a rat or mouse ventured into the cat yard---certain quick death would follow.   Then we have the swooping in Cooper's Hawk, after small birds but would never pass up on a mouse or rat.

The huge stump piece left on its side, after the maple was cut down, has rotted and is falling to pieces inside the cat yard.  I've begun the task of putting the chunks in a bucket and taking them to the yard debris.   It's tedius.  That was a massive piece of wood, almost four feet long and nearly 2 1/2 feet high, on its side as it was.

I filled in a few holes too, created when the former maple roots rotted and disintegrated.  They left behind perfect looking holes that run both horizontally and those can collapse under foot, and vertically.  Eventually they'll all just collapse on themselves.

There's always a lot of work to do here.  It's never ending.  One of the runs had developed a large hole, from age rot.  It wouldn't be long before the hole would be big enough for cats to exit through it.   I went to Home Depot and got a single osb 2'x4' board.  It was $5.  Once home, I covered the board in the vinyl stick on tiles I have in the garage, to replace the floor ones that have broken over the years.   It took 8 of them.  I then shoved the board into the cat run from a ladder and attached it in three places over the area with the two ragged holes.   At least that area of the run looks brand new now.

It's nice to get these long on the list projects off the list.  I have a lot of trapping coming up.   25 appointments in all.   3 different clinics.   10 of them are next week, from the trailer park.   The next week, five from south Albany, 2 from wherever the next day, then 8 more trailer park cat spots at FCCO.  I'm hoping with 18 more for the trailer park, maybe that will be close to getting them all.   It gets harder and harder with most of them fixed now.

I need to catch that lone Siamese way out there where I caught Roadie.  But the feeder lady would have fed Sunday, Monday and Tuesday so its jumping the gun to try today.   I'm chomping at the bit to try today, but I would likely not catch the cat, feel sorry for it and leave food, disrupting efforts tomorrow.   I need to wait one more day.

Costs of Living

 Cat food prices have increased drastically in the last month.

Walmart raised the price of a single Friskies can from $.78 to $.84.   

Walmart jumps its cat food prices

I found a coupon price sale at Bimart for 48 case can and jumped on it.  With the sale and the coupon, reduces the price to $.68 a can.

Human food prices are still high too.  I checked the internet for reasons cat food is so high.  Said the costs of production rose 25% between 2019 and 2022.  And now, I don't know, maybe tariffs play a part in increasing it more so fast.  Or just plain old greed.

All I know is the struggle to survive is real.   The neighbor gave up on buying a trailer here since her ID got stolen and now is hoping to move back to CA to be closer to family.   She said there are some trailer parks down there with space rent cheaper than here in town.  I believe it.  Housing costs here are out of control.

Getting chicken that's marked down for quick sale due to age on shelf, cooking and dicing it, that helps extend my cat food.   I used to get road kill calls from friends who then would bring me a wild turkey or other bird they had seen hit by a car.   For me to use it, I have to have credible witness on when hit.   I don't want to make my cats sick.  Lots of people eat roadkill around here.  It's perfectly safe if fresh enough and free.  Why not.

Surprise, (I'll figure out a better name) the gray tux kitty in the holding cage, is eating well.  Not aggressive at all, but also not tame, been on his own too long I suppose.  Maybe born there I wouldn't know.  I texted feeder lady his photo to ask if she knew him but all she said was "hope he looks better in person cause he looks like a rat".   Ok, I thought, that doesn't deserve a reply.  Then I went further and blocked her number. There is no reason to communicate with her.

I got a neurosurgeon consult appointment late February.  I was shocked really it didn't take months.  In the meantime I found exercises to strengthen back muscles on youtube and am starting slow to do them.   If I have to have surgery having some back muscle strength might make recovery faster.  Yesterday started out bad with back and leg pain, but I reminded myself "You are lucky to be alive at this age, so buck up and enjoy this day".   I have to lecture myself a lot on various issues.   It helps.

Today its back to raining here in Oregon.  February 1, finally its raining again.  Rather than cold and overcast.  Everyone I know is sick of winter.   If we don't get enough rain, with snow in the mountains, the summer could be bad, with low reservoir levels, and wildfires.  You never know, could be one of those summers where it rains through end of June and we barely get any sun.  That could be hard to take too.

Poof!

 I returned Poof and gave the lady two bags cat food.  We jawed about prices going up and getting old.  Then I drove off and decided to try for that Siamese, since I had an empty trap in the back.

And time.

Feeder lady isn't feeding today, nor did she yesterday.   She only feeds the cat three times a week.

I set the trap and dorked in my car on my phone, searched it for snacks, never found even one.

An hour was all I was giving it.   But then I heard it spring.  My ears aren't that old.  The trap was about 50 feet from my car, hidden from my view.  But I heard it spring all right.

I was so ready to see that Siamese in the trap.  And so unready for what I did see in the trap.

Excuse me, who is this?   

It's a boy.   And he's got a claw hole in his head which is not uncommon this time of year.

The hole in his forehead

The Siamese had joined the party.  I'd put out some food since I had just the one trap now occupied.

So I begin to wonder how many more that lady was feeding out in this very rural place.   She'd never tell.   

See ya Poof!

Freshly Neutered and Gorgeous and He Knows It

Poof Isn't Pregnant

 Poof is not pregnant.   Ha!  I knew Poof would be a boy.

I went and trapped him quickly anyhow, just in case when the residential lady, one of the folks who feeds him, told me "she" is pregnant.  These are folks who cannot describe a cat's color even, for the life of them.   Her adult son walks their dog routinely in the park, sometimes followed by a couple of cats.

They love animals.  But they don't actually ever help getting cats who show up at their place fixed.   We're talking three or four adults there, none of whom will lift a finger when one needs caught to be fixed.

So I prefer trapping them by myself in the park.  But now there's the parking fee, so unless I pay out, I can't.  People pull into the parking lot just across the dike trail from them and dump their cats.  Sometimes dogs too.  By the score.

Many people who move to this county are shocked by the number of stray cats and dogs.   

Poof was covered in fleas, poor fellow.  But they're dead and dying now.

The tech at Rad offered to take him over to the clinic yesterday with her.   I'd put out a plea.   I had to be in Salem with Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail at 8:30 a.m.  I couldn't do the Corvallis 7:15 check in too, for Poof.  They were the three trailer park cats I was holding for barn cat placement.   I ended up taking Poof up to the tech in Lebanon and putting him in her chicken/hay shed for the night.  She wasn't home yet.  She took him in to the clinic with her yesterday morning.

So he's had an experience!

The hand off went fine except Flopsy and Mospy, who are very bonded, (the two blacks) were in the same small carrier and one of them pooped on the drive up to Salem.   The SCR lady is always prepared for such incidents though.  She had extra carriers along.

The rest of the day I spent catching up.  I had to vacuum out the back of the dryer and its vent, to increase efficiency, which had decreased.   I need to switch from towel cage covers, that take forever to dry and increase the already expensive electric bill, to fleece.  Right now cheap fleece blankees are on sale at Walmart for under $4 each.  I need to make this switch now.  I struggled to pay the electric bill.  It was high from running a space heater in the garage during the freezing weather to keep group after group of trailer park cats warm as they awaited barn homes.  And from trying to dry the darn cage covers.  Towels take too long to dry.  The door switch on the washer is also going haywire.  I watched youtube videos on how to bypass it, so if it gets much worse, I'll do that.  The door switch lets the washer start when I close  the door and stops it if I open the door.   

I finally had time to repair my old cheap aluminum fold up cart.  I use it to bring heavy items in from the car or even from the store to the car.   It's super light weight.  I've had it a very long time.   One wheel, held by two plastic brackets, broke a few years ago and I was able to glue it together, since it broke only on one side and then reinforce that with a metal hardware piece, glued and screwed across the broken area.  That has held well.   But this time, the other wheel broke off completely.

I had a 360 castor and decided to use that even though it is smaller than the other wheel.   I used pipe brackets and screws to hold it in place.  And since its a 360 wheel, used long enough screws to run them down the outside and inside of the wheel hardware to keep so it wouldn't spin sideways.

Eventually I'll get a new hand truck, but when I do, I'll get one with bigger wheels and that can also be used as a pull cart sturdy enough to pull traps with cats in them.     I'm really broke right now.  The electric bill was a killer.  I hope cleaning out the dryer and vents of lint, no more space heater in the garage since the cold weather broke and no trailer park cats to hold right now, plus switching to fleece cage covers, will help in months to come.

Long screws down the sides of the wheel hardware keep it from spinning.  I use what I have.  Might not look great but it works and will keep the hand truck usable until I can get another.

Broken off wheel out front.  The bottom of the hand truck is all corroded but its been around a long time and has a right to show some age.

I loaned a couple of traps out to a farmer who will catch his own two barn cats and has an appointment for them himself.  One of my drop traps is now in Sweet Home with a lady trying to catch the last cat in her colony.  

I probably now loan out traps to people catching their own more than use them myself.  Well maybe not more.  But it does almost double the cats that can be helped.

Today I will clean my car and that's about it.   I'm not taking Poof back til tomorrow.  I want to be sure he's not tame.   He's set up in the holding cage.  I cleaned it yesterday after the three that had been in it left.  He's not acting tame so far at all.

Five More, Plus

 I went over to the trailer park late morning yesterday.  It had been down in the low 20's the night before and finally unfroze.  

I set up the drop trap in one lady's front area and sat across the street in a chair provided by another resident.    She gave up after awhile and went back to her place--too cold, she said.  The other lady left too.  I then moved the drop across the street to my side out in the grass.

The only one left unfixed where the drop trap had been was a teen black.   The other six hanging out there are now all fixed.

It wasn't long before I began picking them off, one by one, with the drop trap, the unfixed ones.  I caught a massive male I named Megatron.  Black tux.  I caught a little black tux too, who turned out to be a girl, named her Cottontail, for the records.  And then two more blacks, both young adults.  Flopsy and Mopsy.  Silverton Cat Rescue barn team will try to place the three young adults.

I picked up a kitten at another trailer.  There are four in all there.  She also has a bunch of unfixed dogs.   I told her to look up PAL, a Salem nonprofit that helps get dogs fixed.   

She told me the kitten was a girl.  I knew it wasn't but I said nothing.

I went home with the kitten and the four wild things for the five Salem appointments today.  There are no more appointments for the trailer park.  I"ve tried and tried to get folks to request appointments at the FCCO and or OHSS, since that's what needs to happen to get more.  I can't make more myself.   Rules, you know, at the clinics.

One resident has made all the FCCO and OHSS appointments for the cats fixed thus far.   But she's tired of it.  Rightly so.   

For now I can't do anything more there.   I returned the kitten and she'll keep him inside.  The big boy goes back tomorrow and the other three remain here for SCR placement.

After I took the cats to the clinic, I went to try to catch that lone Siamese way out the rural road.  This time I saw the cat but it never went for a trap.   I waited three hours.   Then I went to the park.  The residential lady said Poof, the buff bobtail long hair, is pregnant.  I had my doubts.  Looks male to me.  And these folks are known for not being able to even describe a cat by color, so I wasn't particularly believing them.  But I don't want anymore kittens born in the briars at the park.  Poof got dumped there months ago.  

 You got to have a parking pass to not be in violation at the park now.   Those cost $9 a day.   I don't have one.  So I circled through fast and saw the cat.  I looked around for park employees, didn't see any, set a trap, waited ten minutes, caught the cat, grabbed the trap and took off.  Whew!!!!   Doesn't matter I'm volunteering.  Not to the county.  

Poof's tail is really distinctive.  Looks like a hairy water fountain.   

Here are the five who were fixed today from the trailer park.

Cottontail, a girl, black tux

Mopsy, a girl

Flopsy, a boy

Megatron, a black tux huge boy

Atlas, a boy kitten

Here's Poof.  Since I was told its a pregnant she, the clinic agreed to work in Wednesday.  

Super beautiful Poof

I get home tonight and get a text, the first one in some time, from the Lebanon feeder lady.  Shes reprimending me for not telling her I would feed that Siamese out there, that it could have spared her a trip out.  WTF!!!  She never told me she was still feeding, in fact she said the opposite.   And she hasn't answered a call or text.  Not even about finding Moxie dead, a cat she fed.   She only texts me when  she wants something of me.   I responded it was up to her now, that I would not be back out there, and that I'd spent hours on three occasions trying to catch a cat that was being fed, because she'd told me she was "letting that spot go".   At least I'm done with it and at least she told me she's still feeding.   And I know why I couldn't catch that cat.   

Freezing Rain? Snow? Ice? Not Here.

 We are having sunny days.

But they are cold.  And at night, temps dip to nearly 20 degrees or mid 20's.  

This has been going on awhile.   Cuts my trapping hours, that's for sure.   When bait freezes over.

Last night it was down to 21 degrees.  Tonight, tomorrow, won't be warm enough for bait to stay unfrozen til about 11:00, then frozen again by 4:00, so those are my trapping hours, that five hour window, for the five spots Monday.  That's usually the time of day no respectable wild cat is out and about too.  

By the time I tried to get going late this afternoon to trap at the trailer park, it was already too cold.

A friend came down, thinking maybe she could help with feeding that poor Siamese left out there on her own.   I don't even know if she's still alive or not.   Haven't seen her in two weeks.  But to be fair I've only been up there 3 times in that time.  

I've tried to find someone closeby with a heart who could maybe even trap her.

Anyhow, she was going to get here at 11:00 a.m. then it didn't happen til after noon.  So I knew we would not see the cat at the time of day.  We went anyhow.  She wanted to see where it was.  No sign of life anywhere.

To come back, we drove through Waterloo and turned to head back to Lebanon and I thought I saw a dead cat along the road.  I had her turn around and go back.  I got out and went and looked.  This is a couple hundred feet from another place that Lebanon woman fed.  

Sure enough, it was Moxie, the black teen she fed, although he's pretty close to adult by now.   I had to turn him over to check for the right ear tip but there it was.   He'd been hit by a car.  I don't even know if she's still feeding the cats there.  She was, even after she quit the other place, because she was taking a bus there.   But I haven't heard from her again, since I drove her to feed last Sunday.  And she doesn't respond.  I sent her a text anyway, to tell her he's dead.   No response.  

He was born down along the river in the berry vines to Fluffy, a brown tabby girl.  I'd caught and fixed Fluffy's mom Growler.  I caught four of Fluffy's siblings when young and got them to rescue, but she and I had a falling out over her refusal to help trap, and I had nothing to do with her for months after, except to encourage her to catch the other two and get them fixed.  She didn't.   I finally caught one of the two, a girl.   

I didn't know she'd moved her feeding place for the cats, but she did and that Fluffy had kittens of her own.    Finally I went and caught Fluffy and her by now teen black boy, Moxie's brother, got them fixed and sent that pair off with SCR to a barn home.   Again, I encouraged her to catch the rest.  

She got Moxie and Julius, a big orange boy, into carriers a few months back, and I got them fixed.  SCR had a barn home for them and the two sisters.  I held the boys in the garage and encouraged her to get the girls but she didn't, then she came and wanted the boys back, said the sisters needed them there.   That was the last I knew of those four.  Until today.

So long Moxie

Moxie wasn't quite yet a year old.  He was hit by a car.  Sorry buddy.