Comment Loss

I found unpublished comments to my blog today by chance in my spam folder.  Then somehow ended up in the comment log on blogger.  I had not even realized there was one.  In that folder, a lot of comments that were never published.  I'm so sorry folks.

I'm supposed to get email notification about comments.  Obviously I'm not for most readers who comment.   I don't now why.  From now on I'll check the comment folder instead of email.

In other news, I started the new colony by going over there Wednesday morning.  They had already trapped the pregnant female they feed.  I set up the drop trap there for them to feed under til this weekend, when trapping would occur for the rest of the cats.  Meanwhile I set up the pregnant cat in a cage in my garage and eventually, the next day actually, the pregnant black kitty went north to Animal Rescue and Care Fund.  She is feral and they will foster her and her kittens when they are born.

Guess which one the pregnant kitty is?

In the meantime, Tuesday evening, I brought Quinn into the garage.  He's been eating at the stray feeder off and on for almost two years and sleeping days in a shelter out back.  He showed up in June of 2016 as a teenager who some folks had tried to catch on another block too, after seeing him being taunted and chased by a group of kids.  But the work on the house next door when the flippers had it, then new neighbors moving in kept Quinn away from here.  He became very skinny.  A neighbor came over, asked if I'd seen the skinny gray kitty running down the street.  I knew she was talking about Quinn.  The new neighbors behind me have four cats who free roam and often spend their days in my yard, making it much more difficult to catch a stray.  But Tuesday night he wanted in my garage and I was happy to let him in.  He was here five days then Heartland said they'd take him in.  Quinn is there now.  He'll be on stray hold, get neutered, the whole bit.  Good luck Quinn.

See ya around Quinn.  Hope you gain some weight!  

I went out to the new colony again to trap yesterday morning.  The cats had swarmed around me when I was there Wednesday when the man fed them so I expected this to be easy.  But there were no cats in sight and he said another cat had come around and was fighting with them.

Did catch four finally, then left the rest up to him.   There would have been six more to catch, unless he also caught the trouble maker.  I figured the trouble maker would be an unfixed male.  The woman went to neighbors asking if it was their cat, to keep it in, but nobody claimed the black cat with a white chest spot.

In the end he caught six more, including the trouble maker.  Leaving one of the cats they feed not caught yet.  They'll be gone all day today but have an empty trap and I hope they leave it set for the hold out there.  The trouble maker is not an unfixed male.  It's a girl, in fact.  Maybe she's in heat is the issue, that may have caused fighting among the unfixed males.  I don't know.  Nor do I know where she came from or if she might belong to someone.  It's really hard to know when there is a tame cat mixed into a feral colony you're trapping.  The colonies are often a mix of tame and wild and part wild.

There was an ignorant article in the local papers a couple days ago.  The article said the western governors conference had declared feral cats, among other species, invasive and that these aren't house cats but many generations down the line feral cat who can survive completely on their own.  I thought "what a fricking idiot."  Seriously?  How many times have you been out in the wilderness and come across a feral cat living completely on its own?  How about NEVER in all my years of getting them fixed. Maybe in climates more conducive to survival.  You know who is invasive and causing problems to birds and the environment?  Um, like obviously, humans.

Sometimes I think we may not have not enough cats roaming when I see rats and mice around trashed out houses and dumpsters all the time in town here.   We got lots of invasive birds for sure in town.  Starlings, English sparrows, you name it.  Mourning doves have taken over town along with ducks and geese who make walking in some parks like walking through a farmyard, droppings everywhere, and create a green stench around the fake lakes we have in town.  People like the ducks.  This is a freeway town, growing by leaps and bounds in endless sprawl.  It's really hard on me to watch the sprawl fingering out and filling in every space.  I think cats might be the least of our worries.

We're going through a tragic (in my opinion) development boom here.  Every space is getting built on, wetlands filled in.  Now a street I use almost daily will be closed for two months so developers can put a new sewer line under the road because they bought some former farmland and putting in hundreds of houses.  This is happening all over this town and on its edges.  I think about the herons that every day hunt that wet field.  Where they going to go?  But hey, you idiots declaring cats invasive, lets overlook the human component in environmental degradation.  Let's blame everything on cats!!!!~   Fricktards.

Every new development in town means more cars, more jammed up traffic, more people to contend with even trying to go to the lake to row my raft around, more fees and costs, for everything, including new schools, more cops, more everything.  The only thing there's less of is space and privacy and anywhere to glimpse the natural world.   Human colonies should be fixed too, I think, and we should be looking at human populations as we do animal ones, in terms of damage to resources and the environment and population control.

So that's my rant for the day.

Tomorrow these ten cats, at least, will be fixed.  The tame one of the bunch plus one other, will be done at Heartland while the rest will go to Willamette Humane to be fixed.  As of yesterday the black pregnant female now in Portland still had not had her kittens.  I hope the trap catches the last colony cat today or this evening.

Or even tomorrow and I'll hold it til the next fixing day.

In the meantime I'd like to suggest to wildlife people at the governors conference to shut the fuck up about cats and start looking at human destruction because your opinions are laughable until you do.  I have to say I'm about fed up anyway.   We already have here in this town one of the highest water/sewer rates in the state.  Now they're raising storm water fees by 5%, and water rates are going up again in July and the public works department wants to raise these fees by 13% every single year.  How in the world is your average senior citizen living on SS supposed to absorb that, I'd like to know.  And for water?  Water that consistently reeks of chlorine in the summer. 

Now they're trying to increase gas taxes here in town too, to pay for street repair.  Let the streets go to hell is my opinion and maybe so many damn people wouldn't move here.  And while I'm at it I'm going to rant about the $7 per year fee I have to pay and carry with me out on a raft that takes on water.  If I don't have that with me, I get a ticket.   So I have to carry it in a plastic bag and try to keep it dry somewhere and when deputies come up to my raft, because I row, I don't have a motor to out run them, I have to produce it.  They don't seem to care if I have a life jacket.  I get a little plastic whistle when I produce the damn thing.  I have three of those now.  The permit is for invasive species or something, that i might get on my raft (NOT).  The state does something with that money but I bet it would be really hard to find out just what.   And I bet it has nothing to do with some state person out there arresting someone for having feral cats stuck to the bottom of their boats.   LOL.  Now I'm cracking myself up.

All the fees and taxes on everything are sure making it tough to survive around here and really tough to find a way to have a little fun now and then if you're on a tight budget.