Cat Photos

Mums in the sun.
Tugs in Flight!
Torti against green. (It's Tugs)
Vision, my old river cat, and the oldest cat here, currently. I don't know how old she is. I first trapped her for spay back in 1996, then released her again, to live along the river. Then came that horrible river front project. that threatened my river cat family's lives. I trapped Vision. She used to play at night, during the river project, on the city's bulldozers. At that time, I lived in a duplex. The man living behind me said his sister was a rescuer and would take Vision temporarily and hold her in a large containment cage on the back deck of her home. I did check this St. Helens woman out with FCCO volunteers out of Portland who placed lots of ferals with her. Did they not know, what I had to learn later? The woman was sick, a collector who lived in filth. When the woman picked up Vision from me, the duplex I lived in, had failed HUD inspections repeatedly and I had to find a new place to live.

For the next year, after I found out how horrible the place was, in St. Helens, where Vision had ended up, I went up there, braving a dysfunctional car, to work for that woman, to clean up the filth of too many dogs and too many cats on her acre of property in rural St. Helens. There was not a place you could step that wasn't fouled in dog and worm crawling cat poop. She'd immediately released Vision onto the contained acre. I searched and searched for her. For an entire year, while I went to work up there, in filth that would make most people run as far away from there as they could get, I tried to find Vision and worked on getting the woman to stop taking in animals.

I finally confided with a Salem man and FCCO volunteer, who used to be a cruelty investigator. He was set to turn her in, but confided in a Portland FCCO volunteer, whom I knew had a big mouth and was one who had placed ferals at this filthy location.

I was up there that day, when the woman got the call from the rat out FCCO volunteer. She came out on her porch screaming at me, threatening me, ordering me off her property for turning her in. For gosh sakes someone should have long before.

At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Vision. I had my net and I netted her by the grace of god, at the very last chance I would ever have had to get her out of that horrible place. Caked in filth I drove off, with Vision in my car, feeling horribly sad for the cats and dogs I was leaving at the mercy of a very distorted person who believed she was helping them. So ended a year long saga to save a part of my family. Vision is still here, still alive, old and tough and funny and beautiful. She is the granddaughter of Captain Courageous, the angel of the river.Gretal is one of three tortis here. Gretal has been with me for two and a half years. I'd spotted an orange tabby and a torti walking shoulder to shoulder along Highway 34, supporting each other, just teens, in a terrible windstorm that November. Turns out, someone had tried to get SafeHaven to take two torti teens and an orange tabby, a couple days before, and when they couldn't because they were full, the woman stormed out. Just an hour after that, they began getting calls about the cats alongside the road. It took me three days to catch both of them, in that horrendous freezing wind and rainstorm during which time, I basically camped out along that highway. Hansel was far more outgoing. I trapped him two days before finally finding the by then terrified Gretal. Both kittens were suffering from giardia and starvation. It was right during the time I had been evicted and didn't know where I was going to live either. But I could not leave those teens out there, after seeing them like that. I took a photo the first night I saw them, in freezing rain and searing wind, Hansel was laying over his sister, to protect her from the freezing storm, laying his life on the line. There was no way I was going to leave them.Hansel, the night I met them. Gretal, his sister, is actually under him. He is trying to keep her warm. I'd seen them that evening, walking shoulder to shoulder, leaning against each other for support, on the edge of Highway 34. I'd came back that night to find them.
The brother and sister rest after rescue. They then went to a Salem fosterer, since I had been evicted and didn't know where I was going to live. But in early January, just when I was trying to pack and move, the fosterer returned Gretal, who by that time, had turned extremely shy.
Cattyhop, the gray tux bobtail in the photo above, used to bully the elderly Electra, the brown tabby, whose broken jaw was recently repaired. But this has recently changed. Apparently sorry for past sins, Cattyhop has quit the bully gang and turned to love as the answer. Tain't it beautiful?
Cami again. She's been here since just after Christmas. I noticed another calico in the triangles between the on and off ramps of Highway 34 and 99E just before Christmas. She was desperately hunting out in the pouring rain. I began leaving food for her, crawling up under the Highway 34 overpass in the dark of night. When I began to trap for her, just after the first of the year, I first caught, unexpectedly, a huge gray male. He was neutered and went to a barn home near Brownsville, with Susie, the black young female I caught at the rest area when after Sophie the lost Siamese. About a week later, I caught Cami. It is not an easy place to trap, I'll tell you, that is for sure. I guess SafeHaven had known about this second calico for some time, even said she'd had kittens who had died one by one.