Couch Crash

The beautiful gray and white long hair male, thought by caretaker to be pregnant female, neutered yesterday.
This black male, who is super friendly and mischeivous, was one I got fixed early on there.The gray tabby unfixed male I caught is being fixed today.
Drop trapping at the Pink House colony, when after the gray tabby male and Blue Point Siamese male, yesterday morning. The gray tabby male I did end up trapping is in the center of the mob of cats there, eating under the drop trap. Seconds later, I yanked the cord, pulling the prop out, dropping the trap. I then released the cats, one by one, into a live trap through the lift up door on the front. The first one out was the smoke female, who wants to be mine. The second out, the gray tabby not yet fixed. I then just lifted up the frame of the drop trap, to let the other three go, although two didn't want to leave and continued to eat.

The gray tabby again. He is being neutered today, leaving only one unfixed cat, Mr. 13, at the Pink House colony. He is rarely there.


I fell asleep on my couch yesterday evening. Must have happened somewhere around 7:30 p.m. but I don't remember the time.

I woke up groggy at 2:00 a.m. My sleep habits are not the best. It can be difficult to sleep with cats chasing around at night.

Once again, I ended up with cats I didn't mean to end up with. I passed by the barn home for the four Jefferson cats abandoned by the DD woman when her house was condemned because Poppa's president said her friend, who has an adoption group, would take them on Monday.

Turns out, the woman instead had several emergency situations come up. Somebody who wanted help with some cats abandoned at an apartment complex had agreed to foster them until she could work them into her adoption venue at Petsmart. But, a home check revealed the woman's teen boys were throwing the kittens by grabbing them around their throats. The cats had to be immediately removed from this horrid family. Then, she also took in a dozen cats from LCARA, the Lane County shelter in Eugene, that they didn't want to have to kill.

My situation got put on hold and I didn't even know it until yesterday.

I've been trying to find the four homes. Yesterday, a woman responded and might take two. Might. UPDATE: today I don't think the home is suitable. They have two large dogs and she is worried the male will be aggressive towards the cats. I have asked what kind of dogs they have. No reply. I bet it's pitbulls. I don't know that, but when someone is slow to answer on what kind of dog they have, it's usually a pitbull. I'm not going to let these cats be an experiment, to see if their male dog kills cats. Why would someone want a cat if their dog might be aggressive towards it? Why not just be happy with the dogs, I wonder.

Nick, the FCCO coordinator, called to see if I could get a cat fixed for an older gentlemen who lives north of Corvallis. Originally, Nick was told by this man, who has narcolepsy Nick said, that the cat was pregnant and would give birth before the FCCO clinic. Nick finally went and trapped the cat. The old man is incapable, Nick said, of even lifting a trap. He brought the cat here. It was a male, not a pregnant female. He was neutered yesterday.

Nick's a nice guy. I don't see him much. He's also very busy. But somehow our conversation of the old guy and the cat turned to a news story in the Gazette Times, about the slummy condition of a boarding house in Corvallis.

The landlord, in a huff, after the city was asked in by a tenant fearful of fire, posted signs around town that the city was depriving him of his freedom to be a landlord. Or something. The story included a link to photos taken by a city inspector. Nick was laughing about them. I'd seen them too. The wiring was big time fire hazard stuff and the photos clearly showed the immense danger tenants were under living there. They have all moved out to dorms now.

Nick's father was a slumlord. When he was a kid, he'd have to do repairs on these slumhouses his father ran. He said the photos reminded him of his childhood, spent under the thumb of an abusive father, who also abused his tenants.

I've lived in slums too. Most of the places I've lived probably could have been classified as slums. Or projects. Or both. That last shack took the cake, over in Corvallis. No heat in the bedroom or bathroom. Little 380 sq. ft. shack house propped up on concrete blocks. Most of the time, ten or twelve inches of water stood under it.

I did all the repairs. I replaced the toilet myself. I tore out three layers of vinyl flooring in the bathroom, each holding water and mold between the next, and put in new vinyl. I also replaced some disintegrated bathroom boards, releasing, when I touched them, trillions of mold spores.

There was no hope for the bathroom without a vent fan and without heat.

I replaced the doorknob on the bathroom, too, after the old latch froze in place one night, locking me out of the only bathroom. The sewer line clogged once. I tried to snake it myself, but was not successful. The landlady finally hired someone. I had to go to a local store to use the bathroom for several days or go in a bucket, in the meantime. The problem was the old terra cotte sewer line falling apart, but it would have been too expensive to tear it all out and put in a proper line, so the plumber just cleared the line. He warned her that it would not be a lasting fix.

I remember when the place almost burned. The first time.

I'd just had surgery. I noticed the wall clock suddenly went dead, just as I was climbing into bed. I went over to investigate. The cord was hot. I felt the wall, which also was extremely hot. So I turned off the main and called the Fire Dept. The landlady screamed at me the next morning for calling them instead of her. She said it embarrassed her, because the neighbors had called her to see why the firetrucks came. I wonder what she told them.

The fire department found the wiring to be all on one circuit. To prevent the circuit from breaking, an extremely high amp fuse had been installed. The one circuit wiring was original. The shack was built in the 40's to house military personel out in Camp Adair. Many of these old Camp Adair houses remain around Corvallis. When the camp closed, they were sold for a dollar and the price of moving them. This is how some landlords got their start. But in the 40's people didn't have a lot of appliances, like a stove and stove vent fan and refrigerator and TV. So one circuit would do. It's a wonder the house hadn't burned before.

The landlords' husband got several quotes to rewire the house. He met me in the driveway one day and said, very loudly, "Well, the electrician says the problem is the whole place is dangerously and illegally wired." Duh. It got rewired.

Anyhow, I was very lucky not to have died in that place. I kept getting CO readings. I didn't trust the extremely old inefficient stand alone gas furnace, that blew only one direction, out towards the window. To be warm, you had to sit in front of it. The house lacked any insulation, so the moment the furnace shut off, the house went cold instantly.

In the end, I realized how close I probably came to death from CO. I noticed flames shooting at the bottom of the furnace. I quickly investigated, and took a photo, before shutting the furnace down.

The gas company came, and immediately shut down the furnace as dangerous. The heat exchange was completely blocked due to buildup, age and lack of maintenance. The inefficient burning of gas emits carbon monoxide. I am lucky to be out of there and lucky to be alive, too. I was without heat for a couple weeks. The furnace company came to replace the furnace and knocked part of the ceiling apart, since it, too, was rotted. All of these things angered the slumlady.

Then I found out she was coming in when I wasn't there. I couldn't take it anymore, the abuse from her, the threats, and the conditions. I'd had to grovel to live there and I was tired of grovelling. I was afraid for my cats but I was prepared, if she evicted me, to live under a rock by the river again, rather than take more abuse.

I called her and told her she needed to abide by landlord tenant rules. She told me what a horrible tenant I'd always been, then evicted me immediately. At first she said I had 72 hours, then when she found out she wouldn't get a HUD check then for that coming month, she changed it to 30 days.

Nick says his father was just like her. He said his father used threats, isolation and more of the same tactics this woman used, to keep me in a craphouse so she could get her HUD check. I don't think Nick misses his father who is dead. I know I don't miss my father and I don't miss that slumlady either. She was a piece of work.

On the way back, after I dropped Nick's trapped cat at the vets', I stopped at the Pink House and drop trapped one of the two males left unfixed there. The smoke female fixed ten days ago, was all over me, reaching up my leg with her front paws, begging to be held. So I put her on my shoulder and held her in my arms.

After picking up the male in the evening, who had just been neutered, I stopped by the Pink House again, hoping to catch the Blue Point Siamese, to be done with the catching of cats there. I set up the drop trap and within five minutes the husband came out, drunk, tripped over the drop trap line, briefly glanced my way, then sat down on an old bench ten feet from the drop trap. He had two more tall cans of beer clutched under his right arm and one he was still sucking from in his hand. One of the renters, also Mexican and drunk, sheepishly followed.

You can't talk to, reason with or argue with a drunk, so when the Pink House lady's husband and one boarder came out drunk to drink more, I knew the cats would vanish and I may as well just get going, which I did. I quickly picked up my drop trap and left.

I'm only going on the word of the Pink House lady that she actually is married to the old Mexican. Given her propensity to altering the truth, I'm not so sure they're married really.

I could have said something to the old man and his boarder, like, "Hey, could you guys go inside or to the other side of the house, to drink your beer, because I'm trying to catch the last of your cats," but I didn't bother.

I could have said "Look you ingrates, you haven't donated anything and I'm sitting here in a cold car trying to catch the 13th of your cats, to get fixed at no cost or effort on hour part, can you at least not sit by the trap?" I didn't say that either. No point to wasting the effort. He just would have waved me off, smiling crookedly, and said "come back some other time" but in Spanish, words I don't understand and that only would have miffed me. So I said nothing, collected my things and drove away.

I like the boarder. He's young and interested in the trapping. He's curious to know what it's all about and he is courteous and friendly. When he smiles at me, it is almost conspiratorial and takes me back to some other experience somewhere, that I can't quite remember.

The Pink House lady's brother has joined them in the house now. At least it looks that way to me. When she told me when I first met her that her brother just got a big back payment from a successful application for disability, I imagined I could see the drool sliding down out of one side of her mouth. She was glowing when she told me about that back payment. I figured she'd have her sites on it. It's because she tried to get the DD woman to sign over her property to her, not once, but five seperate times I figured this.

So last two times I've stopped by, it's been him there, huddled with a blanket around his over-sized body, in a space cleared of trash on one side of the couch. He watches TV all day like her. First time, it was him alone in there. Yesterday both of them were huddled there, him on the couch, her on her throne, that chair she lives in, in front of the TV.

I got a call from a recovering meth addict. She was concerned about the stray male she feeds. She says one eye is torn up, probably from fighting. I got a calico, owned by a friend of hers, fixed a couple weeks back, and prior to that, I got two adults and four kittens fixed for her when she lived over off Queen. She'd been evicted from that apartment, then gone into rehab. She still has the two adult cats fixed back last summer.

I told her to bring me the male and he could be fixed today. But, she said, she probably couldn't do that. Her ex was getting out of jail and she feared he'd be at her place immediately, wanting to get high on meth. She's been clean for half a year and has a restraining order against him, but she said that wouldn't stop him. She didn't want him pressuring or forcing her to go get him some meth and then to get high with him. To avoid the problem, she was taking off, going into hiding, she said.

I wasn't sure why she'd called.

It's 5:00 a.m. now, and I just have the one Pink House male to take up. Nick e-mailed me while I was crashed asleep on the couch that he was in job meetings and couldn't slip away to pick up the old man's male, but maybe he could later on. I wonder if he came over and rang the doorbell and I was so sound asleep I never heard. I bet he didn't come at all.

I think he gave me ten spots for the clinic just in case. I asked for only four. I don't have any colonies I'm trapping right now. I've got a couple left at a colony over on 13th. One of the two I have a chance at catching, because the cat hangs out there, but the other, allegedly a huge feral Siamese, shows only now and then.

The downtown colony, that included the male calico, had two more unfixed cats. But, after I returned the ten, caught one more, and returned him after he got fixed, they had tragedy strike. The neighbors dogs are unhappy and mostly ignored and broke through the fence into the cat feeders yard repeatedly, chasing the cats even under the house. The couple who feed the cats would hear cat screams and the baying of those dogs under their house. The dogs tore up insulation under their house also and many of the cats are no longer coming to eat and presumed killed by these dogs.

The couple has repeatedly complained to the negligant dog owner about his dogs breaking through the fence and coming into their yard, even under their house. He had promised them several times he would fix the fence, but that had never happened.

If I lived there, and that happened to my cats, those would be two dead dogs.

There is an equally uncared for pitbull two houses down who also at time free roams and kills cats. It is a very bad neighborhood, but things have improved slightly, the couple had told me before, when many of the druggees who frequent that area were evicted by landlords and the houses sold to working people.