Overnighter at Seed Palace



Elusive Siamese mom and kitten.  You can see the tail of the other kitten disappearing into a pallet to the left of the other kitten.



The kittens again eluded capture.

I am trying my best to finish the job I started over a year ago at the seed warehouse.  The costs however are high.  They have promised to reimburse my gas.  Guess I'm a skeptic, given what's gone on there before though.  I do deep down believe them when they say they will reimburse my gas and bait, and yet I can't get myself to act like I believe them.  So I spent 10 hours there, all night, to avoid going back and forth, with the gas involved, to check traps.

The night was unproductive. I've already caught and fixed 28 or so cats out there.   It is a vast complex of buildings.  The cats are free fed and come in when they feel like it to several locations.  Try to even figure out who is fixed and who isn't, with no real help onsight with that, and most of the cats black and hard to see in the dark to see if they have ear tips or not.  There's no drop trapping easy solution here, to nab the leftovers. This is a wait it out grit it out to the finish thing.  I thrive on finishing such difficult situations.

It was not what someone might call fun to spend the night cramped in a cold car.  But I'm not "someone".  I'm not normal.  I've come to grips with that.

I loved it!

Out under the black night, with stars shining above me, I felt like I was home again. No other lights took away from the stars.

A kestrel suddenly swooped down before my eyes to snatch a pigeons' life in mid flight.  The hordes of other birds out there, flocks of pigeons, swallows, starlings and blackbirds, went into a frenzy of rage and stormed the kestrel, who stoicly continued, despite the deluge of small birds dive bombing, plucking then eating the hapless pigeon.

I chased the Siamese mom's kittens in the dark, through farm machinery parts and pallets, in which they were at home but I was not, no way for me, large and clumsy, unlike a five week old kitten, to catch them in such piles of made to order kitten hide outs.  They were quick through the mazes of metal, pipe and wood.  I was not.

That Siamese mom keeps them from me.  She knows I'm out after them.  She doesn't know it's to save them.  Harvest is days or at most a couple weeks away.  The whole complex will be 24/7 chaos then and kittens often are overlooked and will get hit or crushed.  I think about harvest and the cats in the fields, how many will be mangled by the win rowers.  I had nightmares today about that, as I slept through today, making up in sleep for last night out under the stars at the warehouse, trapping ghosts.

I trapped, in the end, ten cats.  But nine of them already had ear tips.  NINE OF THEM!!!  Today, two more with ear tips in my traps.  I went out late and came back already, leaving it to fate now.  I can do nothing else.

Feather is gone from me, gone on.  She died Monday at the hands of a very kind vet.  She was so tired in the end, even before the first syringe hit, the one full of valium, she had laid her head down to sleep.  She raised it slightly when I rubbed her chin.  The vet said she probably would not have lived more than another day or two.  I let it go too far with her. I was queezy about playing god, always have been, don't like it. 

Feather was in kidney failure.

It was very hard on me to lose her.  I wanted a miracle for her.  I loved Feather dearly.

I love very hard.  I know death will be our fate, the price of living.  Feather is gone now but while she was alive I fought for her to stay alive and I gave her love with all my heart.

It was a pleasure and a joy to know my little Feather.

I have now trapped five more seed warehouse adults and two kittens, who are both now at Heartland.  I already returned their mothers, whom I netted coming out of pipes at the warehouse.   I wish that Siamese mom would go into a pipe so I could net her, but she is too smart.

I know there are two more big black males, one short hair, one long hair.  I've seen them.  I know there is a Lynx Point male, not fixed.  I know there is a teen black female, in heat, not fixed.  I know there are the two Siamese females, one with kittens, one in heat. And I know there are the two kittens.  Beyond that, I don't know how many more there may be.  But knowing even what I know, is pretty darn good when you consider the size of the area and the fact you rarely see the cats.

It's a clock race now.  Once the seed is ready to harvest, I won't be going out there until harvest is over with and the seed processed.  It'll be any day now.  The grass is laying over, with the weight of the seed heads.  Any day now.

Mainly, I want to catch the Siamese mom and her two kittens and the in heat Siamese.  The rest can wait.

Dawn at the seed warehouse.

Siamese mother cat nurses her two kittens on the gravel.

Kestrel eats a pigeon at the seed warehouse.



Tonight there was this glorious sunset.



An already fixed (ear tipped) seed warehouse cat.

When I look at this blurry very distant photo I got of the Lynx Point, I think he has an ear tip.  I got a Lynx Point fixed last year, but the workers thought this was a different one.  I don't think so.  Even at maximum zoom and blurred out, I think I see an ear tip.