Booorrrriinnnnggggggg Day

I was utterly bored today. I'm practically speaking: broke. The collector situation and then my car repair, ate up my money. So there's not much you can do when broke. I need to create a reserve again, at least something. The gift card account at the vet is at absolute zero, which means, if I get any emergency with the rescued cats here, I'm up a creek.

So today I cleaned, did lots of cleaning, and milled around, cleaned some more, milled around, neighbor kid came over and zombied out in front of the TV. He was supposed to socialize kittens, like Honey and Calamity, but zombied out.

In the end, I turned it off in front of his zombied face, to see if he'd notice, then gave a stern lecture on how it was rotting his brain and his ability to be interesting and how wonderful the world out there is. Then I took him home to his mom and appealed to her, about him growing up in front of a TV, and she then brought me back to reality. She said, "When you say things like that to him, what he hears is "Wawawawaaaawawaaah" like the teacher who talks on Charlie Brown."

She then pointed out the possibilities for recreation in Albany. None. I had to agree and told him "Well, hope there's something good on to watch." He said "What'd you say?" Waaa wa wa waaa waaaaah.. That's what I said.

I came home and milled around again. Then I tried to continue pruning the Cherry Tree, with little success, since my sawzsall battery pack is only good now to cut about three 1 1/2 inch branches before dying once again. So I cut some by hand. I got halfway through a four inch branch that needed pruned off when the darn battery pack once again faded out.

I attached some dollar store clothes line to the branch, tied it off, so it would fall one way only, stood on a bucket and began hand sawing at it, then pounding it with a hammer to break it off. Finally it fell.

There were loud loud parties all over in the next block, sounded like riots going on, much of the evening. I took some of the wood I had cut from the cherry tree into pieces fit for a stove a month ago to a woman with a wood stove a few blocks over who says she hasn't been able to enjoy a quiet evening in her backyard forever, due to huge loud alcohol ridden parties that drift into the center of the street and this town is going to hell. She suggested that maybe everyone in town is an addict of some sort and maybe it should be walled off and everyone treated for addictions or at least seperated from affecting the rest of the world. I said I'd find a way to vault over that damn wall and get the hell out. She said maybe it's time to escape before the city gets walled off, like an infection I guess.

Safehaven took 45 cats from just another Albany collector. It's really sad, that before I knew where they took them from today, I could think of at least half dozen or more candidates just right off. Must be like a magic number for collectors: 45. The Lebanon collector had 45 cats.

Yes, of course the law went with them and the local paper covered and even the Oregonian has the story.

You know, I'm glad SafeHaven removed the cats, but it does make someone like me feel like some little slave ghost in a way and I bet KATA is feeling it, too. We got no such local support for the 45 cat collector situation from Lebanon just a couple weeks back. No law support. No local paper either.

If there is no way to get the word out, then you don't get the help needed to cover the costs and find them homes. Them having all those cats and now the publicity means adoptions will go down for the rest of the shelters and rescues in the valley, too, which is hard on the little guy. There's no way to avoid that, because those cats needed out of there, too. And I'm glad they are.

I kind of know the paper editor in Corvallis, merely from e-mails. I've never met her in person. When she said she'd forward the situation over there at the Lebanon collector to the DH, I said, "They won't cover it. They only cover SafeHaven." I made sort of a bet with her, that they wouldn't and they didn't, not even when KATA tried. So I'm trying to collect on that bet win, at least, although we never set a formal bet amount or prize for winning. I'm going for ice cream. Or pie. Or either. Ha! I'm trying to get something out of the whole thing. You can't blame me for that.

Makes a person feel like an outcaste, like a slave, unequal, like shit. Hey sheriff's department and police departments, I think your selective law enforcement is SHIT! Yup, I said SHIT! I am going to be flipping you all off in my head if I pass any of you, for your SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT OF ANIMAL LAWS. Sometimes I just get resentful of the injustice and blatant disregard of law by the law.

Well, I'm glad they got the cats out of there. People are pledging donations for SafeHaven. Good for them. But boy it can make a person like me feel like a tiny stomped on piece of garbage in this county, considering the situation of three weeks ago. I am going to try to just forget it all. You know, one way I do that, is when I see people, like cops who won't enforce law, or other certain people, I undress them in my mind, when I see them, then redress them in really funny ways. At least I can do that, with my imagination and it's fun and makes me laugh. Then I wave at them and grin and they have no clue why I'm smiling.

So I've still got the blind man's mom and kittens recuperating here in my bathroom. He wants to take me to coffee at Rogers to thank me and that's about the last thing on earth I'd want to spend time doing. I told him no thank you.

The old timers hang out there and tell each other the same stories and jokes. The coffee is bad but the food is even worse. It's a hang out for the medicare crowd and I'm glad they have a place to meet up but I don't want to hang out there. One time was enough, when the old man next door took me. The lunch was white bread with some thick floury brown gravy over it. Now that's not even food, if you ask me. It's glop.

I found a home for the little orange girl kitten of the two. He feeds them outside as strays and they live in berry vines and it's a bad life, but I can't hold the other two here. Some druggees who lived there abandoned her, he said, when she was pregnant or had just had the kittens. That's really really mean. He's got a lot of friends and I hope he finds someone to give them a real home.

So I have gone nowhere today, saving money you see. I have to. But boy, is life boring here in this little house, tuning out the riot style parties and the screaming kids out back, or trying too, and there's not much to such a life I know. I've been eating mainly squash from right out my front door, for several days, and that's been saving me money too, which is good, but I'm getting worn out trying to think of slight variations in preparing it. Oh well.

I have an active imagination and can pretty much tell myself "Wow, this is amazing squash," and believe myself. It is amazing squash, grown right out front by little old me, a non gardener with a very ungreen thumb. I can grow squash, however, because it takes no effort or talent whatsoever.

So that picture in the paper is causing a lot of people to talk, like oh my gawd, why would they put that in the paper, when she's hardly dressed and half buried in trash. So demeaning to the woman. The paper editor bemoans the meanness of online comments instead of people offering compassion but he himself seems completely unwilling to go up there and help. Always it's supposed to be somebody else, while somebody like him sits back bashing those who don't. Pathetic.

I remember the other Lebanon collector, cat shit piles three feet high. Nobody would help that man. Linn County mental health asked me to get the cats fixed. For gosh sakes, the man was a mental case and the trailer needed burned. Teh sheriff deputy who came choked from the smell and left and railed against animal people, claiming they only help animals and I yelled right back at that hyprocrit, that the only people helping him were animal people, not his church people, not his neighbors, not mental health, not his men with mental health issues support group, only the animal people. So, Mr. paper editor, bashing people who comment online about that photo for their lack of compassion, shut up and get over there to help. Words mean nothing.

I have been telling people maybe its to embarrass some agency into getting her into a care home, which is where she belongs. It's not happening and that trailer is a health hazard and it is very evident she cannot care for herself. Her plight is well known to social services, yet nothing happens, and that's probably a monetary thing.

I know that woman isn't easy to be around. She's angry and mean and filthy and a collector and manipulative but she could be committed as unable to care for herself and they know that. So maybe htat picture will speak a thousand words. And just maybe that's the only thing that might get her what she needs: out of there and into a mental institute or care home. Something. But people are sure talking about that photo, that's for sure.