You Know you Need a Break when.......

You know you need a break when you fall asleep on the couch in your clothes at 8:00 p.m. one night and wake up at 5:30 a.m. only to immediately begin cleaning litterboxes, washing dishes, and thinking about returning cats at that hour, in the same clothes.

I'm still in the same clothes, at 1:33 p.m. I just got back from the vet. I took Moby up. He has been very ill since I got home from eastern Oregon. I believed it to be hairball blockage caused.

I had been giving him sub cu fluids and a mash of nutrical, since he stopped eating two days ago, canned pumpkin and minced carrots with some a/d. I'd also give him lukewarm water by mouth with a syringe. Last night, finally, he was able to poop out two small round pieces of hard stool, surrounded in orangish diarrhea, from the carrots/pumpkin.

He's been off his feet, stumbling, meowing piteously. Today, since the vet will be closed until Monday, I took him up.

It is a relief to take him up and have a professional take care of him.

I'm worn out. I stopped by the Millersburg barn and returned Sunny, the orange tabby, the black tux mom of the kittens, now all gone, and the black female, who was pregnant at spay. And who should I see when there? Another cat not yet fixed. A big mostly white cat, with orange tabby tale and some orange on its head. I assume its a male but I didn't get a good rear view.

That family, who had said they would foster the three kittens I caught there, then weren't home when I took them over, have never even called and asked about them. They never called to ask about the last cat I caught either. They are non-involved with their barn cats, emotionally or financially.

I returned the Millersburg Country cats, too. But, alas, I'd forgotten one of them. So that poor boy is still in the garage in a trap. How'd I do that?

I had trapped five more there, some of the goat farmers cats, who moved out next door and left 22 unfixed cats behind. Of the five, two were females and both were pregnant. 11 of the 22 are now fixed or dead (two have been hit on the road and 9 fixed). Ten to go. I know what four of the ten look like and I'm after them.

I've been trying to make a patio the last two days, just out of stones. I have stones I brought with me from the old place, that I had bought over the years I lived there to make a little walkway. Now they're here.

So I measured out an area and looked up instructions online. The instructions said I'd need to lay four inches of gravel and dig out six inches total. It will be a small patio. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

But how am I going to get gravel here? I'm scratching my head trying to think of anybody who might have a pickup and help me haul some over. I won't need that much because the area is small. I almost have it dug out. I didn't have to dig out too much because the backyard is so slopey.

I need enough to fill 12 feet by 81 inches, at four inches deep. Then I got to compact it somehow, according to the internet, and lay some landscaping netting over the gravel, to prevent the weeds coming through, and then lay the stones out, and fill the cracks between the stones with sand or dry mortar, then just hose it down. Sure sounded simple and easy and cheap when I read it on the web, since I have almost enough stones. And I sure needed a patio.

Some sites said to overlay the gravel with sand, but only if the area is covered, because otherwise an inch or two of sand over gravel will impede drainage and I have a lot of drainage problems already back there. The website said to slope the patio one inch per 8 feet out away from the house, to keep water off of it. Course my patio won't be even 8 feet out into the yard, because a tree stump is in the way, but I'll slope it an inch anyhow. Won't hurt.

Maybe I'll make a walkway, too. But I better figure out the patio thing first. I better not get ahead of myself. Already my shoulders are swelling up from all the shovelling and making my hands numb if I move them just so.

I borrowed a rickety old wheel barrow from Millersburg Country colony people. It's really not up to the task of pushing around dirt, so carrying gravel would likely collapse the old rusty thing.

One ear is plugged up too, and now ringing.

I need a break.