Thanksgiving Day

I'm not much into celebrating the historical significance of Thanksgiving.   The Pilgrims and Indians may have eaten together once, but we all know how that turned out for native people's with the conquest of America by Europeans.

Also, I can't help it, when I see the warm fuzzy, often religious tinted gatherings of families around a big honking turkey carcass, but to see the people, dressed up and glowing, as growling bloody fanged wolves, snarling and jostling, anxious to rip apart that once living body.  We're dressed up animals, is all.

 I don't understand either why people think it was a miracle when the Brits and Germans stopped fighting briefly on Christmas Eve across the muddy trenches of WWI, then quickly resumed slaughtering one another the next day.   To me, it is a horrendous tragedy.   How can people quit fighting for one night and sing Christmas carols together, then just resume slaughtering one another the next day?  If they had then refused to continue to fight, that would have been the miracle.  Ah well, guess we have something to pretend, as the most vicious bloody species alive, that we can be peaceful for even one night.

What a downer I can be!  But it is depressing to be alone on the holidays.  Nothing says loser in America like having nobody during the holidays although there are millions of us out there.

I'm happy today, happy the colony cats are all back home, although I did miss catching one cat, the man told me.  He saw her the second evening, when the others were gone, laid out on the hay in the barn, dark gray he said.   After I returned the first batch then, I told him to set a trap, figuring the others were unlikely to enter a trap again so soon.

He called late Tuesday evening.  He was happy, he'd caught her he thought.   I was just in bed, and unconvinced, but I dressed and drove out.  I saw a black kitten by my trap who ran off as I drove up and even while still in the car, I could see the cat in the trap was black not gray.  I went to look.

It was a black kitten in the trap and ear tipped too.  He apologized profusely.

It was OK.  He wants to catch that last one.  

I picked up the 14 still in Portland Wednesday morning.  I'd not been able to fit all 23 fixed Monday into my car on Tuesday, after I dropped off the nine unfixed ones at the FCCO clinic.  So I took 18 back and left 5 there, in my friends' recovery garage.  So Wednesday morning, I had 14 to pick up.

She also offered me up a trap that had been donated.  It's a Little Giant, my least favorite of all the trap brands.  They are poorly made and poorly designed, with a steep narrow trigger plate.  When I've had them, I would modify them to use, because I don't tolerate useless difficult equipment.

I was going to decline the trap, then I asked if I could give it to the colony caretakers.  They will need a trap, to keep tied open, feed inside it, to catch any that are not fixed or show up not fixed.  She said that would be a great use for this Little Giant.  So when I dropped off the 14, I also left them the trap.  But for now, they wanted to keep my large tomahawk, because it's so easy to use and I said "fine".

I will bring that Little Giant home and modify it for them.

They were very happy that all but one of the cats are now fixed, vaccinated, flea treated and wormed.  They said they could now enjoy Thanksgiving with their family.   They have a huge extended family in the area.

I thought I was going to die on the way to the colony with the 14.  I had seen a vehicle behind me, that concerned me on the highway.  The black SUV would come super close to my rear bumper then drop way back, and was not maintaining a lane.  I always think "cell phone" or "impaired" when I see this, so I was worried, but I made the turn down the truck route and hoped they would be no problem.

But as I turned off it up the two lane street leading to the colony, I was in for a shock.  I saw the black vehicle loom up on my rear bumper as I made the turn.  I sucked in my breath because I thought they would slam into me.  Instead, she took the oncoming car lane, while turning and came up beside me, then remained beside me on the two lane street, in the wrong lane, refusing to either get behind me or ahead of me. and there was a pickup coming in the other lane, straight at her.

I was honking to beat the band, thinking she must be impaired and not even realize she was in the wrong lane and a car was coming straight at her.  This all happened in seconds.   I slammed on my brakes finally to get out of the wreck about to happen.  And she finally swerved into the right lane.

This all happened so fast I was in shock as I turned down the driveway into the cats home, shook up, realizing I'd just about been a headline, like that of the day before, when a drunk Salem woman proceeded north on the interstate in the southbound lanes, finally hitting another car and killing one of the occupants of that car.

I did not get the make or plate number or I would have called the police.  It happened too fast.  It was a black SUV or Explorer type vehicle and she was fairly young, fairly large, with long curly hair.

Well, happy to be alive, was I then, and for the cats, also.  They were happy to be home, to join the others I had returned already.

I'm done for now with the colony.  It's up to them to feed under the drop trap until he sees the unfixed gray one going under.  Up to him, to make that happen, after they get comfortable again.

It was a whirlwind two days of trapping and caring for a lot of extra cats here.  Lots of work involved in keeping them clean and fed, while trapping more.   Then Monday and Tuesday it moved to the transport stage, which was easy by comparison, thanks to the help of my friend, who recuperated them up there.  I just dropped them off on MOnday, with nine left here to care for in my garage.  Then Tuesday I dropped off the nine and picked up 18 of the 23 fixed Monday and returned them.

After that, I did cleaning of traps and carriers, and laundry, til I dropped from exhaustion.  Then yesterday, I went to pick up the last 14 and return them, then more cleaning and laundry although I didn't get it all done and will do the rest today because I wore myself out.

But it's that easy, to quickly turn a breeding colony into a fixed and vaccinated one.  Four days basically and one person job.

The couple couldn't believe it was that quick and easy.

Believe it!  No excuses people!   For none out there feeding but not fixing.  Get it done!  Then relax and enjoy life because its done.  No more worries!

Kitten, happy to be home after getting fixed.

Messy car, full of carriers and traps full of fixed cats, about to be set free at their home.

In all 17 males and 15 females were fixed from the colony.  All three adult Siamese were females, while the little kitten Siamese was a boy.  Both of the adult grays were girls, too.

In other news, my comcast year's deal that was supposed to be just internet for $30 per month but that crept up, through modem rental increases to just over $40 per month in the year I had it, ended.  Suddenly my bill jumped $20.  I was shocked and called Comcast.   I can't afford $60 per month for just internet.  It's already their slowest speed offer.

I endured a lengthy useless computer voice generated phone tree, where the computer voice repeatedly failed to register my input, which was really really frustrating.  It bothers me, to get computer generated "people" who try to "listen".  I end up yelling in frustration into the phone "I want to talk to a human!"  which is a phrase that does not compute with the computer generated voice.

Finally I get a human, but I can't understand her accent for the life of me.   I tried but I couldn't.  Finally she says, "Oh, you want a downgrade.  I will transfer to downgrade department."  I was incredulous.  Comcast has a downgrade department?

I get a really nice person there, but she says it's not called the downgrade department, it's called the loyalty department.  Hmmm.  Ok.  Apples and oranges.

"I'd like to downgrade," I say, "because the price just shot up $20 and I can't do that."   She starts in about upgrade possibilities.  I stop her and say, "I know you have to do that, that it is part of your job, but I'm one of those people going the other direction, stretching very little money farther and farther."  She said, "Ok."

But I'm already at their bottom end, is the problem.  She finds some deal that will make my cost $5 more per month than it used to be and I take it, because its better than $20 more a month but I am skeptical however, that I will actually be switched to that.  My speed will be lowered.

She recommended I buy my own modem, to stop the ever increasing comcast modem rental fees, but says you have to go to this website, and gives me a comcast one, to match the modem I buy, with the internet package I have from them.  This made me think if I ever changed the package, I bet the purchased modem then wouldn't even work.   But the modem rental now exceeds $10 per month, so I might try to find a cheap modem somewhere  that comcast will "approve".

She told me to go to Best Buy or Radio Shack for the modem.  Radio Shack is the most overpriced store in the world I am thinking to myself as she is saying this.

I wonder to myself, "Is it worth it?"  I do no business online anymore, now that I am virtually unemployed, and only use the net for this blog and facebook, on which I have a few friends, but no real friends, with whom I do things, see, talk to in analog life.   I do fund raising for the cats here, with mixed success.  I could do it all from the 15 minutes you get at the library, I would guess.  I don't have a library card here.  I don't particularly like going to libraries.   It's like going to a video store, you first have to know what you want to rent, or you will wander for a very long time looking.    I don't like using internet at the library because, from experience doing so in Corvallis, lots of people come to use them to watch porn and its awkward to be next to some homeless guy watching porn and you know he wants to jack off right there.

So I think back and forth, should I, shouldn't I.  Internet is an expensive luxury, but I have so little contact now with anyone or even the outside world.  I like the internet.  So I guess I can squeeze out $5 a month more for expensive comcast.  But its a grudging thing and anger rises in me when I even see a comcast truck now.