It's Pouring

Oregon is getting drenched in warm rainstorm. This, after all the unaccustomed snow. But, I hear, temperatures may cool and the rain may stop in favor of more snow, by tomorrow night.

I think about the big trees out back. Well they hold up in saturated soil?

The soil back there is compacted clay. That should be helpful at least in holding fast the roots. One hybrid maple has roots solid and fast, under the garage floor. If it rips, it rips.

Maybe the cat yard wire will help hold them up, eh?

Well I don't want my next long about to be nap interrupted with a tree crashing in on the garage and house. That wouldn't be fun. My car's in that garage.

How would I visit my vacation home, the rest area, without a car to do so in? Or live at all, if homeless, without a car to sleep in? I think about that sometimes.

My housing situation has always been worse than shaky. I've lived homeless a couple times. Having a car to live in makes things so much warmer and safer.

When you end up homeless or moving constantly due to bad housing situations, you end up losing an attachment to most things material, like money and stuff. I've realized you can live without almost everything. But things alive become very very dear to heart, like these cats here. I guess they're about all I would worry about, should a tree come crashing through this house.

Right now I'm healthy and that's a good thing, because if you're homeless, if you're sick or in pain, then life is indeed extremely hard. It's a merciless scrap to the desperate end. Like that lost Siamese out there.

That shriek I heard, was it the second night, I can't even remember. I think it was the day I arrived early in the morning, around 3:00 a.m. I'd set a trap beneath the shed, then heard that shriek. It was metalic, yet there was animal to it also. That's when I saw the guy headed out of the woods, who then darted again behind a tree. He was smoking a joint. I got my pepper spray out and headed into the woods. I found the metal cat house someone put out there, on its side. The house has only one entrance, which makes it a danger to cats, since they can't escape.

I still wonder if that noise and that metal house on its side, had anything to do with the disappearance of the Siamese. I assume the man tripped onto it in the dark and ripped it upwards, but would it have landed perfectly, on its side like that and it was only seconds before I saw him come out from under that tree, which is a good forty feet through brush from that cat house. He claimed, however, to have heard no noise, which had to have been a lie. I heard it from several hundred feet beyond where he emerged.

I found no white fur, no blood, no evidence of struggle other than a slight spot of bare ground with leaves massed at one side of it, more like a human had slipped there, then hit that cat house. It was just moments after discovering the overturned cat house that I saw the tabby on white cat for the first time. Then I wondered if it was a cat fight I heard, the sudden shriek of surprise or shock, when two cats meet suddenly for the first time. Or was the tabby on white asleep in the cat house when the man stumbled into it?

I don't know, but seeing the tabby on white very nearby, rather soon after the shrief rather alleviated my fears that a predator had taken the Siamese. Surely the tabby on white would not be twenty feet from where a predator just grabbed and killed a cat.

I have seen canine prints, big ones, fifty pound dog or more, down at the boat ramp, and fresh ones this morning, along the road to the river, and under the overpass. It rained heavily in the night, most tracks would have been obscurred or have blurred out edges from the rainfall in soft silt. All these sets in various times, I have found, are the same size. Is this a coyote in the area? I've seen one frequently in the field just north of the rest area. But there are numerous dogs walked and let loose along there, at all times of the day and night. I"m still going with domestic canine on the track sets.

Canines leave four paw pad prints, like cats, but unlike cats, they leave claw marks above each paw pad print.

However, this morning also, I found fresh cat prints, down beneath the overpasses. I found a cat trail, too. I also climbed up the rocks between the two overpass bridges of the north and south bound lanes of I5 and popped my head up to be buffeted by the wind and rain between the travellers north and travelers south.

I have loved being out in the night again. I've always loved feeling the weather, the night, the cold, the storms. I have missed this. I guess this is also why I have returned over and over to the rest area. I like stalking the woods at night, tracking and feeling the storm against my face. If I have a rest area at least to do this, thank god. There are not many wild places in Albany, OR.