Raccoon Adventure Morning

 I didn't want an early morning adventure.  But I got one.

I'd had an odd night.  First, just after I went to bed and was reading, there was what I thought to be a cat squall, under my bed.   I yelled at the cats, as i do when that happens, "Be Nice!" turned out the light and went to sleep.

I had a weird dream.  I thought I heard a large animal in the house, maybe a bear, but it wasn't a nightmare that woke me up, just a sleepy dreamlike memory.  But I do remember it clearly.  Maybe it wasn't a dream.

This morning I woke up.  It was 7:00 and that's when I usually wake up.  I heard a wheezing squeeling noise in the hall.  I half expected to see one of my elderly cats laying flat out dying.   But my most frail cats were not dead or dying.  I quickly checked.  But one of them was up on a cat run wide eyed.  That's not the usual I see mornings.   But I let it go, thinking there'd been a tiff of some sort between cats.  It happens this time of year.  Its been freezing nights, and the cats get active in different ways when the weather changes.

I don't have that many cats anymore.  In fact yesterday I was thinking I could remove one of my large plastic storage benches that I turned into litter box hiders.  Each one holds three litter boxes.  I cut holes in the sides so they're like three seater outhouses.   I have way more litter boxes than cats now.  I can downsize, I thought, and should.

I have way more beds for cats now too than cats.  Oh well.  I'll get around to it, I thought lazily, yesterday.

So about 7:30 this morning I take out some trash and glance up into the cat run under the eaves.  And my heart stopped.  

Three raccoons, two of them young, were eyeing me as they exited the house through the cat run into the  cat yard.  

I nearly croaked!

After initial panic subsided I knew I needed a plan to get them out.  At first I thought I'll set traps.  Nope, not a good plan.  They needed out immediately.  They're nocturnal and need to get to wherever they spend the night, before traffic starts up.   I bet they live in the neighbors garage or under their shed, I theorized.  Many people have slightly open garages, so their own cats can come and go, or because their garages are so packed in junk they no longer can close them.   Or sheds, on cross beams or cement blocks, to protect from rot, but that leaves gaps beneath them that animals use as access points to great hideouts.

I'd not seen raccoons around for a long time.  Doesn't mean they're not around, just that I don't see them.

Or see their poop.  Which is what generally alerts me to them.

I closed off the cat runs to the house.   Then I took out wire cutters and cut a small hole in the side of the cat yard wire up by a run, where the young pair had been huddled.   They'd moved off down the run.  And their mom was in the pergola in the cat yard, worn out and scared.  I went back into the cat yard and herded just by my presence, the young pair on the run towards the corner  where I'd cut out a hole.  One found the hole quickly and exited, then the other followed.   Now to get mom to that corner.

I tapped on the side of the cat yard pergola and she exited through a hole near the top and quickly scrambled up to a run but she kept bypassing the hole I'd cut.  Too scared to notice it.   I got a can of cat food from the garage cat room and put some at the hole.  Then I herded her just by moving slightly this way or that.  When she went by the hole she stopped, smelling the food, then saw the hole and exited.  Yes!!!

Well I hope that's all that got in.   I zip tied shut the hole, cleaned up some raccoon poop and that was that.  I hope.   I need to reinforce the top over the cat yard.  It's age old chicken wire held together with old brittle by now zip ties.   Raccoons are heavy and the cat yard top wire was never meant to hold their weight.  I didn't envision that need, when  I made it.  But over the years, I've had to catch both possums and stray cats who have dropped in through the top.   

This is a first for raccoons coming through!  And three of them no less.  I guess my dream wasn't a dream.  I did have a wild animal in my house last night, roaming around, scared maybe and maybe thought they'd found shangri la.

So that was my early morning raccoon adventure.  By 8:15, they were out of the cat yard.  By  8:45, the hole was patched and the mess cleaned up.   

Now for my coffee.

Fall Color

 

We had some dramatic lighting yesterday evening.

Otherwise, things are uneventful here.   A Lebanon friend again helped me change car oil.  He has a tool that is extremely helpful in loosening a tight oil filter in hard to access space.   I plan to get one soon.  He said I can still come over, after I do get the tool, because its fun to chat with him, and I can just change the oil there.  Despite having changed it a few weeks ago, although not the filter because I couldn't get it loose, the oil was black and dirty.  That's why I change it frequently in the cat carrier car, to extend its life, since it has hundreds of thousands of miles on the odometer.  Trying to keep it going long as I can because its really nice to have the other personal car that doesn't make my eyes water from carrying a zillion cats to spay neuter in it.   As long as I can keep the cat carrier car running, I only use it to transport cats, and keep my personal car nice smelling inside, to use for myself. 

 I dread the day the cat carrier car gives out.  It now belongs to the nonprofit, not to me.  I've had my personal car on a few long drives but not many.  I drove to my brothers southern Oregon place in it for Christmas day last year and took it to Waldo Lake several times.  But I haven't put a lot of miles on it thankfully since I don't do much personal driving. It already had about 150k on it when I got it.  I know a lot of people think its time to get rid of a car, not get a car, if it has 150k miles.  I wanted to go places out of the valley this summer but my bad knee prevented me driving a few months.

I replaced the master door lock/window control switches in both cars.  While it fixed all issues with doors not locking via the switch in the cat carrier car it didn't fix the problems with using the switch to lock all the doors in the personal car.  AI says this breed of car is notorious for actuator failure in the door lock systems so both front doors in the personal car could have had actuator failure but also it could be a broken wire.   I'm not worried about it much because I can manually lock the doors.   

The only other issue is the window in the cat carrier car often won't go all the way back up, if I open it.  It will go up a little, then I wait awhile and it will go up a little bit more, which is a problem with the window up/down motor inside the door.  The thermal safety coupler gets hot, when the motor isn't working well, breaks the switch circuit and it has to cool off a bit before allowing the window to go up a little more.  Anyhow, I watched video on how to replace it.  Doesn't look hard, just a bit time consuming and the new part is not very expensive on amazon.   Will I do it?  Probably not.  Car has too many miles to warrant much expense in replacing vanity parts. I can just not lower that window.  Wouldn't it be fun to see if I could convert it to manual operation!

I keep trying to find someone I can turn over the nonprofit to one of these days, who will continue its mission with gusto and integrity but that is not an easy task.  Doing what I've done the last few decades to help cats is hard on a person, mentally, physically and financially.  Normal people would never want to do it.   

Different

 Looking for something different?   In music?

How about a Quebec band who call themselves "Chest Pain".  In french of course.

Angine De Poitrine!

They dress in paper mache masks, like aliens.   

Darla, what do you think?

Our weather here is 'all in' fall.  The sun, so low in the our skies, blinds drivers with its glare.  The days start late and end early.

The animals and birds scramble to fatten up while they can before the hard season, the season of scarcity.

Kittens are still being born.  Yesterday the seed warehouse couple called and texted.  They'd found another kitten in the warehouse, screaming its distress.   I didn't see their texts for two hours, since I was snoozing in my chair.  By then, a friend of theirs helped them get the little guy into Safehaven.

This little guy's screams no doubt saved his life.  He looks pretty rough, like he could use a lot of chow and some fluids.

They had hoped to catch the other unfixed cats a few weeks back but were unsuccessful.  They already caught a mom and litter of six.   My nonprofit got the mom fixed and they tamed the kittens, who were just six weeks old when caught, the ideal age to be tamed, and got them into Safehaven eventually.

The mom cat turned out to be a terrific mouser, catchiing five or six voles per day, and returning to their house with them, for the kittens.  They kept her.

I'm sure they'll be successful catching the other adults at the warehouse too.

Not this week, but the week after, we have a total of 17 appointments at two clinics.    And approved 8 more cats, to be fixed, that the clinic tech knows need help, for just that--financial asistance.

When we have the money, cats get fixed, because the money isn't worth as much if we wait.  I'm talking cat inflation.  Get the cat fixed now or get six to ten or more fixed later that have resulted from that first cat not being fixed.

Yes Cat Inflation is a thing.

It's Sunday.  We had rain yesterday morning, then the sky cleared and it was cool but beautiful.  Today the sun is out, which I will go out and enjoy, even if its a cold sun because we don't know just when here in the PNW it will vanish mostly for months.

If you'd like to experience some Chest Pain, click that link at the first of this post.   

The Refuge of Waldo

 

Rip 

I drove up to Waldo Lake yesterday.  The weather was beautiful and over 80 degrees, unusual for mid October here.   

I stopped up where the motorcyclist died after the crash.  The road people had installed a new post on the stop sign.  Someone had put a makeshift cross and some flowers where he died.  

There were not a lot of people on the lake.   A few kayakers, a sailboat, a couple canoes.  A strong east wind probably was to blame.   Usually the afternoon winds are from the west but yesterday the winds were from east.

Kokanee still spawning to beat the band.   Large orgies of them.  When I saw them near I'd just drift over them like a log in the wind and they ignored me completely.   The lake level has dropped quite a lot from evaporation, run off into the north fork of the middle fork of the Willamette and lack of rain.  Waldo has no inlet and relies on rain and snow to maintain its level.  Its difficult to access the southwest beaches now from the water, or even navigate around the shore side of the island because the water level is low.

At times, the wind died out, and the lake was serene.

I passed a couple wooden kayaks with two men loading their gear.  "Leaving then" I said and they said yes, but they said the canoes nearby were people just arriving to camp.   South end has some very popular boat in campsites.

At the southwest long beaches I spotted movement near a log.  It looked, from a distance like a dog.  Then I spotted a man, alone, on the beach 50 feet east of the animal I'd seen and assumed he had a dog.  But he didn't.

He was camping with an A frame tarp held up by a rope between a couple trees.   Looked quite primitive.    He said he'd hung his food on a tree and I could see it behind him, about head height hooked on something sticking out of the trunk and thought what's he protecting it from. 

 Anyhow, he was enjoying himself and I probably shouldn't have told him about seeing a small animal farther up the beach from him and tried to dismiss it as nothing because it was probably nothing, maybe an otter or a fox. The guy seemed animal skittish and kept mentioning coyotes and a large pack of wolves.   I went on towards where I'd seen the small animal hoping it was an otter because I figured it would be swimming out to check out my kayak if it was.  But I saw nothing more.

Afterall, I can't be a critical snobby judge of primitive camping ways because when I was a kid, my parents decided it would be great to canoe the Bowren Lake chains in Canada even though we'd never backpacked and never canoed before and that's bear country.   And we slept in plastic tarp tube tents and it rained the entire time.

I paddled down the west side of the lake north but the wind was picking up badly and I thought I better  get this over with, paddling back to the east side, into a strong head wind.   So I buckled down and spent 20 or 30 minutes paddling hard getting splashed by waves coming at me and I had a blast doing it.

I've never seen a Great Blue Heron at Waldo Lake before but I did today.  That Heron somehow knew about the salmon spawning all over the place.   

Sailboat off in the distance

I left the boat ramp area to drive home about 5:15 p.m. and was back home a couple hours later.   Only to find out there'd been a school shooting in Bend and 3 kids and a teacher died.   A civilian with a gun ran after the shooter into the school and killed him.  Probably saved a lot of kids by doing that.   Shooter himself was a kid.  16 years old.   It's all horrifying.

I hope the beauty of Waldo Lake is protected forever as a refuge from the world for those who need it.  Like me.

Books

 I've been reading a series of books all summer by Lousie Penny.

Her inspector Gamache series.   I saw the author recommended on a tiktok book review site and got the first two in the Gamache series on thriftbooks.  Later this summer when attempting to continue the series I experienced two unfortunate errors with thriftbooks orders and am not so thrilled to use the site again to continue.

I find the series heartwarming and satisfyiing.   Inspector Gamache lives in Montreal and is the head of Quebecs celebrated surete homicide division.  But the surete are not perfect and corruption has creeped in, which plays a major role in several of the books when the inspector, honest to the core, attempts to clean out the rot in his own beloved department.  

He finds himself often solving murders in the idealic village of Three Pines, where there is no cell reception and  people gather in Oliver and Gabri's bistro evenings and get books at Myrna's bookstore.  She lives in the loft over the bookstore.  Peter and Clara are married artists.   And polar opposites.  Old as the hills sour grapes Ruth is a poet, who eventually hatches a rejected duckling egg and Rosa, the duck, is now always with Ruth, the cantakerous, vulgar old poet.  There's a woodworker in the village who swears trees talk and scream when cut.   He had been a forester but had to quit one day when he "heard the trees screaming".   Now he builds beautiful furniture from downed wood.  He is accepted matter of factly too, as a respected and helpful community member.

There are cozy descriptions of food and furnishings and chairs and fireplaces that make me feel the warmth of the village, comfort food and deep friendships that exist despite the faults of one another.  That is, if this perfect peaceful little village didn't have such a high murder rate.

Ha!!  Always something.

Gamache himself is kind, smart, fair and brave and always quoting poetry or history and loves Quebec with all his heart.

Eventually as the series progresses Gamache and his wife move to Three Pines, the village where he's spent so much time already and found such deep and lasting friendships.

You might like the series if you want something a little different, a little deeper, and a little quirkier than the average detective series.

This is the next in the series I'll read

This morning, Tempest, the mom of the river path kittens, who are now with a neighbor, left for a barn home found by Silverton Cat Rescue.  They worked hard to find a place for her and I appreciate that help so much.   I took her up to Salem to meet up with them and hand her over.   I got up at 4:00 a.m. and set a trap in the bathroom, with tuna.  And when my alarm went off again at 6:30, she was in it, sleeping by then.   I flea treated her through the trap, then transferred her from trap to carrier to head up to Salem.   

So long Tempest and good luck.

Fritter, a.k.a. Kujo, a.k.a. Devil Cat, the self proclaimed police unit of the block.  He chases off all other cats, comes up to people like he wants petted then swats the hell out of them....but we all take care of him.  He was first abandoned by his people in the apartments behind the block.  Then a man end of the block took care of him, but died after falling in his garage.  AFter that a young couple moved into the house and took care of him but divorced after a year and both moved.   So he's still got the rest of us looking after him.  He's not young.  

The Beautiful Days

 The weather has been simply beautiful.  Temps get up to mid 70's.

Today began with heavy fog.  I love fog.  It lays low in the valley like a blanket.

I lived my childhood near the Oregon coast where fog was common, shrouding the landscapes like a mystery.  Fog is comforting to me, like a secret, like deep cover.

When I put my garbage and recycling cans out last night I was dismayed to find the car lot neighbors cars obscuring my curb.  There was nowhere to put my garbage can.  Finally I rolled it way down the street, the only car free place I could find.   

I never know if their cars will be gone in the morning or not so I can't just put them on the curb with their cars in front of them, blocking access by the garbage truck.   It's a rude thing to do that.  They know its garbage can out night.   This morning most of the cars had left.  I had to leave early too, to take cats to the clinic.  When I came back a different neighbors car was in front of the cans.   Some people these days don't give a crap about neighbors.   Fortunately I have a couple really good neighbors so I don't feel that way about everyone in general.  Some people are rude and some people are not.

Yesterday I went out with my former neighbor and her sister to our favorite Mexican restaurant.  But this time, I became immediately sick to my stomach afterwards.   I'm better now though.   Whew!  It was nice to see her and catch up.   Her sister visits from either Arizona or New Mexico.  I can't remember which state it is.

After that, I had to lay down an hour, to try to feel better, before going to Lebanon to pick up more cats from the same household I took the 6 cats in from Tuesday.

They were supposed to have five adults.  We had six spots for them today.  But they couldn't catch one of the adults and then mentioned kittens.  I asked how big they are.  She responded by going to get one and walking down to my car, half block away, to show me, with me freaking out it would get away from her because she had it in her hands and it was squirming around.   

The kitten was plenty big to be fixed so I told her to get another one.  That way we had six to take afterall.

Cleo, muted torti

Princess, a girl

Stormy, a girl

Starlight, a girl

Sticks and Stones, the two kittens being fixed

I don't like to overnight tame cats in carriers because its hard to clean them safely, if they poop or pee in the night.   Currently my bathroom is still occupied by Tempest, so I can't take them in there to safely, in an enclosed space, change cats to a clean carrier.   Or just overnight them in there.

Tempest is leaving for a barn home tomorrow morning.  I'm so happy for her.  She is very lonely and bored in the bathroom by now, but the wait was worth it for her to have a chance at a new life.   She couldn't return to the river path where I trapped her as her feeder man, who was homeless, had died.

Her kittens are doing so well so fast with the neighbor.   They're even getting exposed to kids which is wonderful.  All five kittens are already fixed, so she may find homes for them herself and if not, we hope we can get them into Safehaven.  She's very patient.  

By noon tomorrow, I'll have my bathroom back again.   I can't wait.  

Today I have nothing more on the schedule, not officially, not appointments to be somewhere.  I do have a lot of cleaning up and yardwork needs done.  As usual.  And a nap to take.   And its the perfect day for an afternoon nap out in the sun on my zero gravity lawn chair.

Back at the Cats

 I'm back doing cats.  Not too much work on my part, however.

Today my nonprofit is paying for 8 to be fixed over in Corvallis.

Two of them, the owner took in, from Halsey.

The other six I picked up in Lebanon last night.  A couple were big huge males they had in very small carriers.   

They have a few more, who will be fixed Thursday.   They are picking up their cats themselves about right now.  One boy had a heart murmur and we scrambled to get the permission to proceed, if wanted, despite the risk.  I think it went fine.

The five river path kittens are now with a neighbor getting tamed up proper.  They have friends, kids, dogs, its perfect. They get exposure that way. She's also no novice to taming cats and kittens.  She's good at it.

Tempest the mom is still in my bathroom but SCR is working like crazy to find her a good barn home.

I only got photos of five of the six I took over from Lebanon.  

Its amazing we can keep plugging away but we got some very kind donations, one anonymous for $1500!!!  That fixes 15 cats alone!

8 fixed today, another 6 Thursday.  I know its a drop in the bucket of those needing fixed but it sure helps those who do get fixed and their people and their neighborhoods.

This morning felt like fall with clouded skies and temps that made me think maybe I'll have to get a coat out of the closet.  But nope.  Clouds cleared out and sun came out and its 75 outside now.

I don't like wearing a coat just like I don't like wearing shoes.   This summer I used barefoot waterproof shoes I got so cheap it was ridiculous.  I was only going to wear them kayaking as water shoes but I ended up wearing them everyday I had to have something on my feet to drive or go to a store.  They are barefoot style, a shoe type I did not know existed.  You don't wear them on sharp surfaces like rough gravel but otherwise anywhere else.    

Dixie and Angel

Loki

Max

Smokey

The boy fixed without a photo--Bandit, another buff tabby.

I should be done for the day.  Just cleaning and relaxing.

I've taken to eating cabbage and potato soup.   It's very cheap to make and I like it.  Prices for food, gas, everything really have gone up so high lately it requires ever changing behaviors to make it.  Just have to adapt to this reality.