Bailout Baloney Blues

I've got the bailout baloney blues. I do. I hear AIG might be using bailout money for bonuses. I think, in my opinion, those hundreds of billions of dollars vaporized. They're gone. History. Did they help the economy? Well, if you consider a handful of big fat cat execs and managers are part of America, I guess I'd have to say it helped the economics of a handful of fat cats.

I don't believe in a gold standard. I wouldn't weigh what anything is worth against gold.

I do weigh what something is worth against another standard, however.

In the past election year, I could have died listening to the money being thrown away on campaigning. I could have died. Each time I heard how much somebody raised, just to get votes, so they could run the country badly, as has been the case for a long time, I thought to myself "Man. How many cats could that money have fixed?"

And that would be a very good question. Because fixing cats uses money in tangible ways, ways that help in layer upon layer, from helping the individual cat to the person who cares for that cat to that neighborhood, to all cats, to the environment to halting disease vector spread. Now that's worth something.

So, that's my standard of how much something is worth compared to something else. How many cats would that money fix?

That vaporized $700 billion didn't produce anything tangible for our economy whatsoever. But boy, if it had been spent on fixing cats! Now do you understand what I mean? Big changes would have occured throughout communities across America.

We should have required that $700 billion produce as much change as if we used every last dime of it to fix cats. And anybody reading this blog would know what kind of massive change and good that would have produced.

But I bet nobody will ever know where the majority of that massive went. Can you imagine how stupid that is? We handed over all that money and nobody is overlooking it. That's about as stupid as things get. Somebody somewhere cashed in big time.

Bank of America got a big chunk of that money and now is laying of thousands upon thousands of little people, to celebrate. The big people win. You know, it's time for real change.

Obama, quit packing your cabinet with same olds. It's like you're just shuffling the cards, moving the same old people from one job to another and then I'll suppose they'll be an announcement for you to say, "Look! Change!" Some of us aren't that dumb. That shining hope on my face is dripping off as cold sweat.

I stopped in at some old friends place last night and asked for a few flakes of hay for some feral housing units. My car was kind of packed, with the cage for those folks, who thought they might cage the Siamese. Otherwise, Steve wanted to throw in an entire bale.

I hadn't seen the Smiths in awhile. It was years ago, I trapped cats there, right when my neck was bad. In the end, not long after my neck surgery, Steve called. He had 13 of them in a little double doored room he built. He built the room to catch the cats more easily. He fed them in it awhile, then pulled the first door shut with a string when all of them were inside it. He then closed the solid door on them.

Vicki of KATA and I went over. I was in a neck brace. Inside that little hay room in the barn the cats were literally flying the air. I'd net them and with Vicki's help, get them, one at a time, into a carrier or trap. That's how we got most of them, in one fell swoop. They were all fixed at an FCCO clinic.

I caught the stragglers afterwards one by one. Steve bet me $50 I'd never catch the wily calico. That was a bad bet on his part. I caught her all right, way up in the loft. I like those folks a lot. They work in the grass seed industry. He's the one who connected me up with the other big grass seed farmer, Roger, who had like 200 cats out at his warehouses.

I'd spend a couple years getting all them done and in. Then he sold the warehouses, being in hock with the bankers, who often showed up while I was trapping out there. I'd try to get them aside in the warehouses and tell them Roger is a good man, I don't know why I'd do that, hoping to plead them into a reprieve on him I guess. Him and the cats too. And I liked his workers, whom he just couldn't let go, even when trying to shut it all down. Roger is a good man.

There weren't too many left in the end. I tried to rehome them all! Maybe there were 30. But when I'd drive by, I'd see no eyes of cats in my lights, making the corner there. I knew the new owner likely shot them all, or his live in caretaker did. One or the other. They're gone. I guess I don't think much of the new owner as a result. I don't think of him like I think of Roger, as a good man.

I only talked to him once, over some cats one of his former workers left behind way in Airlee. I go up, intent on trapping them to be fixed, and all but one already had right eartips. A neighbor was feeding them. But I don't know what became of those cats either. That farmer told me he'd reimburse me but I never got a dime, so I don't think of him like I thought of Roger. Roger never reimbursed me either, but he told me he couldn't is the thing. Up front with that. He'd fill my gas tank to help when he could, from the farm pumps. I almost lived out there. I told him once I was his only unpaid employee. I was welcome anytime and was often out there in the night, stomping through those warehouses. Sometimes I'd roll into one of the warehouses, in the middle of some huge thunder and hailstorm, for refuge. The sound of hail hitting the tin roof was like thunder. I loved it.

More than once, alone, in the pitch black night, I climbed pallets stacked in grass seed bags to near the ceiling, flashlight in teeth, to net feral kittens way up at the top. Sometimes, I'd open an old warehouse door and have bats fly out in droves all around me, so I could feel the rush of their wind on my cheek.

I remember Engine Rider. See Roger had cats he fed at his home, too, from some neighbor man, who never fixed his cats and fancied himself a Siamese breeder (backyard). One kitten rode the engine of their pickup all the way from their home, to the warehouses, about ten miles. I caught him. And he got a home. That kittens' sister promptly got herself caught in a culvert during a sudden severe rainstorm. Roger's partner called him at the warehouse. I was there. We broke all speed records driving back to their place and fished her out of there, half drowned. She lived. I named her WaterBaby and she got a home too. Those were two crazy kamakazi kittens, that's for sure.

I used to sit half the night or more BSing with the night watchman, Herb. He was a great guy, had been the Brownsville chief of police in his younger years. He had the stories to tell, of his young days. He'd run away from home to get away from his drunk parents, at not much more than 12 years old. He even worked in a bakery, in exchange for a place to sleep and meals.

I remember once at the warehouse he was checking the traps early in the morning, was going to line the ones with cats up for me, to make it easier. I was headed with any I caught to an FCCO clinic. Well he didn't check one well, thought it was a black and white cat, when it was really a skunk who then sprayed him down. His wife made him take his clothes off outside, when he got home, and put them right in the burn barrel and light the fire.

Herb's wife died a year or so later. He was devastated. He just was lost. I haven't seen him for a long time now. Those were good times, sitting there, hearing Herb's stories.

I hurt my knee bad out there one night, coming out of a back porch on the caretaker house after returning cats late. I was coming out the porch door and a skunk was coming up the steps. It was really late at night.

The skunk raised its' tail. Instinctly I dove out of the way. But there was just concrete to land on and I hit with my knee first. The skunk ran off and I mocked him, briefly, for missing me. Then I lay on the cement in agony for a couple of hours. Fortunately, I had a fanny pack on and inside was Aleve. I took some. I had a whistle on my keychain and blew it over and over. The nightwatch, this time a woman with a pain med problem, was just inside the caretaker house, but out cold and dead to the world, aided and abetted by some "medication". I couldn't raise her.

I was finally able to crawl to my car and duct tape wrap my knee. I still couldn't raise that darn nightwatch lady. I wanted her to go open the gate at the road at least, so I wouldn't have to, with my freshly injured knee. I wasn't happy about her behavior that caused me a lot of time on some hard cement. She was paid to be watching that place. I made a stink about it too.

Well anyhow, it was nice to see the Smiths. They were happy to give me straw for the cats. Brought back old memories. All of them good.