Clean Up Days

 

Gigi likes to take over my lap when I watch TV.  She now tolerates the presence of old Fantasia, who also likes to be on the chair with me.   Fantasia has a constantly flicking very long tail.  Gigi exhibited extreme patience, I thought, with that tail whapping her in the face.

This morning I got one weekend chore out of the way and changed the cat hauler car cabin and engine air filters.  The cabin filter was especially overdo for change but I've put it off, because for some reason, those little thin filters cost a small fortune.

There was an unknown long hair black cat out front of my place when I got home from getting the cabin filter.   Oh no, I thought, not another.  The cat took off instantly when I just looked his way.  Another male, is my guess, out looking to get himself in trouble.

I've been involved in the big clean up, which takes me awhile.  Cleaning 19 traps.  Laundering all those cage covers.  Cleaning up in the garage where the cats were, before surgery.  Cleaning the car inside which is really stinky, after such a large number of cats caught a ride in it clear to Portland.  The 19 cats I took up were largely males, many were very large males.   So you can imagine.

I only have five more appointments this month, which is good, to take it a bit easy.   I start PT for my back end of the month.  I have to have at least six PT appointments before I see the neurosurgeon again.  Strangely, my back seems to be improving after a few weeks doing simple exercises I found on youtube.

I'm really happy about that and hope improvement continues.

Other than that, life goes on.  I read books, catch cats, enjoy my own cats and long for summer.  I lead a simple but busy in spurts life.  I do love helping people solve their cat issues.   But I also enjoy my home life, with my own cats, very very much.

I love youtube.   It's so helpful.   Today doing errands I got honked at twice, after red lights turned to green and I struggled to get the car into first gear.   It's been slipping out of gear, hard to get into first gear---linkage very very loose.  So I get on youtube and discover quick cheap fixes for a loose linkage cable or a broken or missing bushing where it attaches.   Hoping its that simple.  They don't sell the bushings, just a replacement cable so youtubers have all kinds of DIY's for that bushing.  One of them just uses plastic bumper clips.  Plastic screw anchor might work too, with a bit of remodeling.

Lots of Cats

 I made four trips to Sweet Home in the last two days.  

A lady up there got FCCO appointments and then asked me to help trap/transport.

The first evening's catch was 15 cats.  However, she caught 7 of those by hand inside her place.

Good thing too.  Yesterday morning, it was storming.  Pouring.  Got soaked through in a few minutes outside up there.

My raincoat isn't so waterproof anymore, turns out.

I got three more in the morning, then went back up in the evening for the last one.  She had 19 spots.  

Photo heavy post but these posts are for my records mainly.

She got 19 spots and 19 cats are headed to FCCO this morning.

Birthday

 I'm 70 now.  Great, eh?  Officially quite old.

My birthday was completely uneventful as usual.  I had slept a lot the day before, being exhausted from cat round ups galore, so I was up early on birthday.

I needed badly to change the oil in the cat carrier car.   I went to Walmart to get the filter and oil.  I get high mileage 5/30 weight oil.

On the way back I decided to get breakfast at Elmer's.   Sit down style.   I mentioned to the waiter it was my birthday and got a free strawberry crepe!   It would be the only celebration. 

Was really thrilled to get that.

I had so much to do at home.  Trap cleaning, etc.

Laundry.

First the car though, before the rain began again.   Oil change usually takes ten minutes.   I hadn't changed it since last fall and all the issues I had with that backyard mechanic.   He'd screwed this oil filter on and I couldn't get it off.  I tried and tried.  To reach it I had to reach way down behind the radiator and try to turn it from that angle.  Or remove the  mud protectors and try from underneath.  I had to give up in the end.  I'd already drained out the oil, so I put in the new oil without a new filter, which irked my ocd soul.  When I put a new oil filter on, I don't over tighten, so I can always get it off.  A friend in Lebanon said he had the filter wrenches and would get it off next weekend.  

A few years ago, a mechanic told me the key to keeping a high mileage car running was to frequently change fluids.  He was a good mechanic and I try to follow that advice.  Last months, being too busy, bad back, bad weather, have let some things go.

Sometimes I feel nothing is good enough.   

Today its still raining.   I'm not sure what the forecast is for the week.  I need to take traps up to the Sweet Home lady today who has 19 needing fixed.   FCCO trip Thursday with whomever is caught up there.  

My birthday came and went without ado as usual.   Officially another year older.

Summer can't come soon enough.  

Caught!

 I finally caught the young black yard stray, causing issues all over the neighborhood, with his yowling and fighting (mainly with old Fritter).

I spotted him trying to make friends with one of my cats through the cat yard fence this afternoon, so reset the trap I've had out there trying to catch him.  I really didn't think he'd go in.  He hasn't ever expressed interest in the trap or the food in it before.

But this time, I looked out 20 minutes later, and he was in it.

Finally.   At one time, after he showed up in my yard and neighbors yards, I went door to door, trying to find out if someone owns him.  I had no luck, although right when I was asking at one house down the block, another lady I'd talked to, yelled from her car, Is that him you're talking about?   Sure enough, he was frantically trotting down 30th street, but ducked into a backyard.

We now believe he's just another abandoned kitty.   A set of apartments had been vacated for remodel nearby.   Probably he lived there and got left.

Who knows though.

He can get neutered Tuesday.  In the meantime, he'll occupy the now empty holding cage.

Another War

 I wake up too early and discover we're in another war.   Yet another regime change sort of war.  And here I thought this admin was against international meddling and yet we've meddled like never before.

I don't know how this war is being paid for.   I still haven't opened my electric bill.  Last month's was scary high.  I don't want a heart attack just opening it to see the balance I owe.   All I'm saying is electric bills have skyrocketed since the current P took office.  Is there a connection?  I just don't know.  

Gas prices have shot up. Food is still high.   Where's affordability?   Gone to the shits.

Affordable life is gone for so many now.  Why?  

Gone to the war dogs spending every cent on troop deployments, propaganda kings gathered to gaggle and giggle and plot, and to the most elaborate and expensive weapons possible.  The golden sheen of power is too much for people, when there's no one to say no, and only feet licking neutered yes men all around.  Gone to the ICE machine, to the FBI head boozing it up at the Olympics, gone to the........just gone.

I can rant but nothing changes about human nature and hormones combined with entitled positions of power.    

Back to cats it is for me.  

Last week has been tough.  Caring for the three Berlin road cats, as they wait for homes, barn home in the case of Roadie and Mowgli.   Eleven, well she is a special loving wonderful kitty.

The tech at Rad came up with a home willing to take all three.  She vouched for the home, having adopted two cats to them already, who were supposed to be barn cats but ended up fat happy house cats.

I took the three up yesterday, with six others I took to FCCO.  I checked in the six cats, then handed over Eleven, Mowgli and Roadie to their new people.   After I did, I sat in my car and balled.

The long hours and days and effort that went in to getting all those cats safe along Berlin road when the feeder quit feeding and had not gotten any fixed, coupled with my desire to better their lives, not make them even worse, all that effort, physical, time, financial--broke free of my soul in tears.

The Seven Mile couple had ten more spots yesterday and a Halsey woman had six.   The Seven Mile couple really don't have any idea how many if any cats are still not fixed in their colony.  We'd already taken 20 in to be fixed a month or more ago.   I knew of two needing fixed at the hay barn, but the goat barn is a mystery since they live in the loft and come and go to yet another building too, but in the night.  

They set traps at the goat barn and the hay barn but caught nothing but a  couple already fixed cats.  Finally Thursday I went out and sat hours upon hours in a lawn chair forty feet from the hay barn with the drop trap set up.   Finally I caught one of the two unfixed ones out there.  It was near dark by then and my toes felt frozen.   

I left the trapping to them then, and headed to Halsey.  That caregiver had caught five of her six.   I went home with the six and later the Seven Mile couple texted to say they'd caught no more.   

I spent the day yesterday, while the cats were being fixed, at my friends place.  I got there about 9:15, laid down on her couch and was asleep by 9:30.  I only know this because I turned on a movie, on her TV, and remember only a few minutes of it.  I woke up just after noon.   She works during the day.  Being able to have a warm place, with bathroom, and comfortable couch have reduced the difficulty level of taking cats to Portland to be fixed in a big way.

Five of the six cats, when I picked them up, were still out cold, laid out.  I was worried.  What if they didn't come out of it ok.   It took over an hour to get to the rest area in the congestion traffic of Friday.  I stopped there and was horrified to find them still unresponsive.  I rubbed wet food liquid on their gums by flashlight, rubbed them and finally got three of the five to lift their heads.  I moved the other two in their traps to right behind the opening between the two front car seats so the heater could blow directly on them.

Once home, with them still not awake, I put them in the bathroom with heat frisbees and soon both were waking up.

That was a relief.  They were probably done last.

Now I am up for the day and find out we are at war.   Again.  

I can understand how tempting it must be to try to make things better for common folk in far off countries.    I get that urge everytime I hear of a cat situation that needs "fixed".   But.....they're hardly comparable endeavors, I know.

I took these photos stopped in the road down outside Halsey after I picked up the five cats there, on Thursday evening.

I'll add photos of the cats fixed later on.

Photos of the six fixed cats.   Five from Halsey are all black and all females.

This is the tabico girl from Seven Mile colony

There were eagles out all over the valley.  There were four in the tree across from the home of the five cats I returned.

The Winter Misery

 Whine whine whine.

Rain, damp, cold, algae, muck, mud, yuck.

It's been a depressing few days or has it been weeks, years?  February never seems to end.    Neither does the constant rain, drizzle, cloudiness, muck.

Mowgli the Siamese girl, along with Roadie, are finally leaving Friday, along with Eleven, to a home in Portland.

Brianna, the tech at the clinic, found this home for them.

The wild ones can be wild and Eleven can get the love she needs there, I'm told.

I hope so.

I am also scheduled to transport 16 cats to the FCCO that day from two different caregivers.  Both will trap their own.  I delivered the traps to both in the last days.  I'll take along the other three, going to the home, when I go on Friday.

I had left one of my drop traps at the trailer park.  It was used yesterday to catch another female needing fixed there.  She goes in today to Rad to be fixed, along with an owned tame Lebanon girl, plus two more I went and collected in LEbanon at a house I've been to before.   Years ago, I got about 40 cats fixed there.   Some of those are still alive.    

Fathead from Lebanon, allegedly a boy

Misty from Lebanon

Suzie from the trailer park

I don't have a photo yet of Burrito, the owned Lebanon girl getting fixed today.  Her owner is transporting her over to the clinic this morning.

All I want to do these last days is sleep, any chance I get.   I must be part bear.

Wonderful Day! The Uncaught is Caught

 What a great evening I had.

She's caught!!  That final Siamese out there along that rural road.  

I took the drop trap.   I had to add extra lengths of cord I had it set up so far from me.   

I couldn't believe it when she emerged from the brush and went right under it.  I yanked that cord with confidence.  I knew it was the night.

She's already fixed.  I caught her last July and got her fixed at Radpets and she would not have gone back then except she was lactating.  

All's well that ends well.  Now she can get a barn home with her colony mate Roadie, who has been patiently waiting in the garage.  SCR is on it!