Six Cats Being Fixed Today, Homeless Camp Thoughts, and a Badly Abused Angel

Owned tame male, being neutered today.
Abandoned mom and kitten, both being fixed today.
Mom and kitten again.
DSH gray tab on white, from 34th St. Baptist colony, being fixed today.
DSH black, unknown sex, from 34th st. Baptist colony, being fixed today.
Black stray male, fed by former boondoggies, being neutered today.

I took in six cats to be fixed today. One is an owned male teenager. I got a mom cat fixed for these folks last summer. By then, they had given away her kittens. But one, this male, was returned. Now, he too will be neutered.

Three more hail from the former Camp Boondoggies, the former homeless couple, now upstanding working citizens and spay/neuter advocates. A mother and her two kittens had been dumped off there a month ago. I trapped the mom and one of the kittens. Plus they have been feeding an abandoned stray male, so he too is being neutered today.

I have the injured white cat from same complex, in my bathroom, and am awaiting word from SafeHaven on when I can take him over to them. I am very happy there is some option for this poor male, who has been nothing but abused his entire life. Months and months ago, I was told one of his two owners, a couple of loser guys, tried to put this cat into their oven and turn it on. He was stopped from turning the oven on, with the cat inside it, by the other roommate.

However, when the pair were evicted, they abandoned him. I had heard they were going to do this, and went over and talked to them about responsible behavior, behaving like real men, but they did it anyway, because they're not real men at all.

I tried for a couple months then, to find someone who could take him on. SafeHaven was overloaded. So was KATA and so was I. So the former homeless couple agreed to feed him at least, outside on their porch. When they were low on cat food, I took them a bag.

I had not heard the white cat had been beaten by the two thug boys until I ran into the former Boondoggies a couple days ago. They told me. They were trying to get their landlord to take him to the pound to be euthanized. I knew I couldn't take on another cat here and so I e-mailed Christiana at SafeHaven, describing this cats' sad life and current injuries, and she said she'd find room at the inn there somehow. I am so happy about this.

He sat on my lap purring his head off last night, with his injured leg trembling and jerking. He is a living lesson in forgiveness and that all who are abused do not turn into abusers. Some forgive and give back only love.

This is an angelic cat who needs a safehaven, a sanctuary, a shield from the storm of evil, a loving heart and a warm lap.

So anyhow, three cats are up being fixed today from that complex. I have returned there and returned there, to get any and all cats fixed that show up. The former boondoggies do their best to make sure I know about any new unfixed strays, so they can be fixed. They proudly show off the healthy happy strays they've taken in after I got them fixed, and they are looking great, happy and loved.

This pair have changed so much since I first met them, when they were being evicted from the homeless camp. Someone stepped in to help them, because they were willing to try to change. That person---Mayor elect of Albany, Sharon Konopa.

When the city bulldozed the camp, she was allocated a mere $1000 by the city, to help the homeless who wanted to change, into homes and jobs. There was controversy in this town over allocating even that much. I think people figured it was money thrown down a pit, or burned.

But the person spending that money, Sharon Konopa, used it wisely, for only necessary services, to help these folks get jobs and only to help people committed to change. You can't force people to change if they don't want to. Won't work and there's no sense throwing money at that.

Nothing was given them, except temporary cell phones, so they could return calls after job interviews, some help with clothes, not new, befitting their new jobs, and she talked some acquaintances into giving some of them second chances at rental apartments. All had been evicted prior, so there was a lot of risk involved for any landlord willing.

There were few volunteers among the forty or so homeless living at the bulldozed camp. Most wanted to continue their lives as they have lived them---scrapping out an existence, feeding various addictions, and often involved in criminal behavior. But seven took her up on the offer. This couple were two of those seven. Now, the husband has moved up in his job and is making over $15 an hour. From homelessness, they soon, after old debts are paid, might be knocking on the door of the middle class.

I knew a lot of the homeless who lived along the river in Corvallis. Many died of alcohol hardened livers. Jake the Snake and Bobby were two of those who died whom I knew. I knew an old man too, who used to feed the cats along the river. Old Ray. He said in all the years he's known a lot of the homeless men who lived along the river, he only knew of one who successfully escaped the lifestyle of homelessness, drunkenness, addiction and crime. So not very many ever escape.

There are other reasons for homelessness. Finances. Divorce. Escape from spousal or parental abuse. But the people living homeless as a result of such circumstances usually scramble to find a way back into a home and work. They look for, seek out, opportunities to escape. The addicted don't. If they get housing, they lose it immediately, due to their addiction behaviors. They don't make good tenants and they don't make good neighbors. They serve one master--addiction, and that master looks out for himself and himself alone.

I have seen these men manipulate women or some kind man, usually mentally ill, into letting them stay at their place. They then take over the apartment, invite in their friends, steal everything the person has and that person ends up losing a place to live, and sometimes everything. These aren't nice people.

I see the city of Corvallis is bulldozing a homeless camp off 99W in Corvallis. I've been back in those filthy stinking camps. I had to wear boots and gloves and disinfect everything afterwards. I was after the cats they bring into the camps, do not fix, then abandon in the winter, when it gets too cold or wet to stay there. I took out 30 behind the Home Depot in Corvallis one year alone. I took three dozen out of Camp Boondoggle in Albany when it was bulldozed.

I waded through ankle deep water, with floating human feces in it, and needles. It is a health hazard back in there, and the city is right to run them out.

Of course the homeless could clean up after themselves. But they don't. The ones who keep quiet neat camps are the ones whose camps are not cleaned out by the police. Most trash everywhere they go. Most of the homeless are an environmental and health hazard to neighbors wherever they live.

Well anyhow, I don't know what cities can do about the addicted homeless. Some people say there should be more drug and alcohol treatment provided. Hey, these things don't work on people unless they want to change and will work themselves to change. So don't waste money forcing treatment on people.

I think there are two trains of thought. Give them a minimal place to live that can be monitored and kept clean, by providing dumpsters and a porta potty. That's one thought train. The idea is to keep them from trashing and destroying large areas of the city, and fouling it with human waste and needles.

The other train of thought is to give them nothing, to make it easier for them, so the theory goes, to make the decision to change, because their existence is so tough.

I don't know if either of these work, or if one works better than the other.

I do not believe, however, that it is kind or even compassionate in any way, to enable destructive lifestyles, by providing everything one needs to continue in that destructive lifestyle. What it is, is easy--the soft hide your eyes way, and it is destructive and complacent and the people who enable others to lead self-destructive lifestyles are in many ways guilty of the destruction this brings, not only to others, and, in the case of the homeless, to the environment that is trashed, but to that person also. Helping someone isn't easy, and it doesn't always involve just handing someone a free pass and free food. Wouldn't it be nice if that's all it involved?