My place is buried! In leaves. The maple shed them early. The maple always does.
These piles are leaves I shook through from the cat yard wire above. We're about to get some heavy rains. Cleaning up dry leaves is a whole lot easier than cleaning up wet ones. Today I spent hours bagging them, then piling them out front on the street. Our city has limited leaf pickup and picks up only 3 times in the fall but the first pick up is not til second week of November which is a bit ridiculous. Each of the three pick ups covers about 12 days. You do not know when they might come during that particular pick up time span. The first span is November 6 to 17. At some point during that time, the truck will come pick them up. I hope it is sooner rather than later.
The fall colors have been beautiful. Here's a few shots from the county park.
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| Paws, a.k.a. Goliath, one of the cats I got fixed up there over a year ago. |
When I went to the coast with Miss Daisy, her last trip, I saw elk in Hammond, not an uncommon sight there, but still....
The two boy kittens I caught out on Harvest, along with their mom and a half sister who is now a teen, are doing just fine. Gypsy, the mom, had to be returned, since I never caught her last two kittens. Jakarta is still here too, waiting on a barn home. She's a funny one and sure loves to interact with the cats in and out of the garage, waiting to be fixed. She's now in the foster cage inside. My barn cat placing friend is really full so we are waiting. A friend in Philomath would take her if she hadn't badly hurt her knee, so bad she needed surgery and recovery is two more months. Darn it, because that would have been a great place for Jakarta.
Blizz and Rabbit, the two boy kittens, are close to tame, at least to me, and likely will head to Animal Rescue and Care Fund very soon.
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| Blizz on top, Rabbit on bottom. They're Gypsy's boys. |
Meanwhile, I took five cats to be fixed in Salem Monday. Two were ones a friend in Brownsville rounded up somewhere, two brothers, boy kittens, Calvin and Hobbs.
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| Calvin, from Brownsville, fixed Monday |
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| Hobbs, Calvin's brother, fixed now too. |
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| Smokey, another boy kitten, was fixed. He's from Lebanon and the last kitten needing fixed from that situation. |
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| This handsome boy kitty Nuts was also fixed, from a Sweet Home trailer park. |
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| And so was Sweet Pea, from same trailer park. She'd shown as a stray, but she turned out already fixed, with a very long spay scar. |
While they were all up at the clinic, I was called by the Circle K clerk, who lives south of town. She'd seen eight or ten kittens in the middle of a rural road the night before and she was terribly worried for them and thought they had likely been dumped.
Well I rushed down there, and immediately saw a little muted torti on the edge of the road, just sitting there. Cold winds were whipping through and I thought "My gawd, that poor thing." I caught her and another little torti then found a third long hair torti dead farther up the road. Looked in every culvert because the culverts were the only place they could hide, the fields being short and bare right now. Everywhere hawks of all sorts cruised above the short grass, that is next summers' crop of grass seed, looking for prey.
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| The muted torti is so thin and was so cold and dehydrated I wasn't sure she'd make it. She was the one sitting at the edge of the road in the cold wind. It was like she had given up. |
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| This little gal at first was a bit fiesty but she's a sweetie! |
The muted torti was so cold I put her down my shirt against my skin to warm her faster down along that country road.
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| Trying to get a very cold kitten warm |
I brought the two home, after the long search looking for any others alive. They are both severely dehydrated, cold, and skinny. I am still giving them fluids, but by today, they are much better. Besides getting fluids, I syringe feed them warm KMR and they sleep on heat frisbees. Had not that clerk seen them, these two would have not made it another night. At least two were saved.
I had to go pick up the five who were fixed then, leaving the latest two on a heating pad, finally safe and finally warm. I haven't named them yet. Got ideas?
That is a LOT of leaves. Our council doesn't pick them up. It is up to us.
ReplyDeleteThank you for all that you do. I am so glad that two of those babies could be saved.
What do you do with them though? We get yard debris picked up every other week, then the 3x they come to pick up the leaves people pile in the streets.
DeleteGreen waste is the resident's responsibility. Either put it with the normal garbage (which we are not supposed to do) or take it to the dump yourself. Which isn't possible for everyone. Or pay someone else to do it. Which also isn't possible.
DeleteWell that's asking for it to be put in the regular garbage. Here, the garbage company charges fairly high rates for weekly pickup of garbage and recycling. Then every other week yard debris pickup. However, they have a mulching site, where they mulch the yard debris after grinding it down, then sell it back to people (their customers who were already charged by them to pick it up) who want yard mulch or compost for a rather high rate. Nice thing they got going, I'd say, but it is nice they recycle the yard debris compost rather than sending it off to the dump, where it would revert itself to mulch, just not get sold.
DeleteHow heartbreaking it must be to find deceased cats anytime. I hope your friend recovers well. How is YOUR knee? Dealing with all those leaves can't be fun even if you're not in pain. I was just telling my partner not ten minutes ago how amazed I am that you keep finding new names for cats, on top of your courageous efforts in rescuing. Hearing the story of these two I thought of Hope and Faith, though those might be names you've already used. ~hugs~ Thank you for the boost sight unseen toward my writing efforts. ~grin~ I don't know if you'd care for my oversexed characters. ~shakes head~ I write erotica very heavy on the action. As for posting online, I haven't shared my original tales in case I ever get up the nerve to try getting them published. My "Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter" fan fiction used to be available online. Unfortunately, the 'Pomme da Sang' website got hacked into oblivion. It's sad since so many kind and talented folks remained active long after I moved on. I do have copies of all those tales, much of it gay romance between favorite characters. They aren't as polished as some later stuff, but I'm still happy with a lot of them. Hope you are well this evening!
ReplyDeleteI especially enjoyed your pictures today. Our leaves are having a lackluster year, but they are still pretty.
ReplyDeleteWe had some trees that the leaves went from green, to looking dead. But then other places, the trees were glorious and I wish I'd gotten more photos (I always do) because now most are looking dead if still on the trees. Colors are mostly gone.
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