And Another Six!

I was really exhausted yesterday, with people calling me, wanting more of me, or even for small questions, and I was not up to talk to people.

I ran the torti mom and the last two kittens I caught there behind the bar, up to Portland, to meet ARCF foster person Lori in a parking lot and hand her and the kittens off.  This was incredibly helpful, to have them out of here.   I wanted to hug her in thanks and for helping that mom and her seven kittens.   One of the first kittens caught, the little tin black and white girl died, not long after she went to ARCF.   She had a terrible heart defect, a hole in her heart, that only became bigger as she tried to grow and in the end, she didn't make it.

I still say torti mom should be up for mom of the year, raising that many kittens under such extremely difficult circumstance.

See ya, Miss Awesome!

After delivering them, I still had to fill five reservations I had today at the spay neuter clinic.   Two cats that were supposed to be trapped by others never arrived.

That laid it all on me again.  Even exhaustion cannot keep me from my appointed duty.  Neither can downpours and we got them here yesterday.  It's like we skipped from summer to winter, no Fall season to be seen.

I headed to the trailer park down Riverside Drive.   I caught six cats within a couple hours, maybe less, wading, in my rubber sandals through puddles three inches deep from the down pours, to check traps.  Being out of the loop lately, having no time for news reports or weather reports or much of anything else, I did not have a rain coat along.

The old woman who fed the cats may have died in the night. She'd gone into hospice care a month ago.  Her daughter texted me she had been called to her mother's bedside, as it would not be long now. 

That old lady was mean, when I briefly knew her, getting 23 cats fixed for her three years back.   Her daughter confirms how difficult and mean she has been during her life.   Well, good luck in the hereafter, is all I can say about that.  I don't believe in that stuff, but she did, was an avid church goer, which hardly makes sense.  Didn't seem to affect her in the way you'd expect church would.  But that would hardly shock me.

She had a soft side for cats, that's for sure, but saw little need to get them fixed.  It was her daughter who tried to get help getting them fixed three years ago, not her.   I tried to get them all before her mother ran me off, in fits of rage and blame on neighbors and boy you wouldn't believe the pent up anger in that old woman.

Thus the mess she has left, the legacy of suffering.   You can't just feed cats, that's mean too if you don't fix them.

My barn cat placement friend is full until she places some cats.  She took six of the trailer park cats on Monday, putting her at capacity until she places more.   I have two more still in the garage and now six more, three of them kittens, so its getting cut down out there, the numbers, which is good.  But I got a referral to someone who likely will take four of these and I'm on a wait list with Meow Village too.

Well here are the six up getting fixed today.  There are two young adults---Seguro and Tescato.

Seguro

Tescato

Then there is the mom, Juliet, of some of the kittens.  She is gorgeous!

And the three kittens, two of whom may have colds.  Chowder and Skeeter are tabby tuxes while Bugsy is a black tux.

Chowder

Skeeter

Bugsy

So anyhow, been helping a lot of cats lately but then there are just more and more I find in need.  I do what I can.  I wish people would fix their cats.  It's drop dead stupid and irresponsible not to do that.

Speaking of cats, a hiker went missing out near Mt. Hood, well Mt. Hood is a vast wilderness area, but I think her car was in Zigzag.  She was finally found.  Dead.  And then it came out she was killed by a cougar.  That's an Oregon "hasn't happened in a million years" sort of event, outside of a woman who was killed at a sanctuary for wild cats by a cougar, when inside cleaning.  A few months ago two men in WA state were chased and attacked by a cougar too, one of them killed.  I think they've decided we taste good.   Anyhow, the woman killed in descriptions from the news, sounds like she was really very nice.  It's too bad.

I've always wondered if maybe a lot of missing hikers weren't really killed by bears or cougars.  Often missing hikers are never found.  I also always wondered why bears and cougars don't prey on humans more frequently.  We're really not very alert in the woods and very easy prey.  I always figured we must smell bad or something.

Some people seem to have this attitude that we humans are something special and no predator will kill us to eat.   Yet we kill them and we kill deer and elk and cows and goats and pigs and pretty much nothing is off limits for us to kill, maim, abuse (like calves made to not move then slaughtered), lambs, for gosh sakes we are so blood thirsty.  Dripping blood.  A cougar kills one human and we all panic and scream for its blood.  Too bad that cougar didn't rip the throat out of some asshole though, a damn shame.  We could use lots less assholes but the woman killed sounds like she was a nice soul.  There's no rime nor reason to luck or fate at all.  An old woman lives to be mid 80's, mean and bitter to the end.

You can live to a ripe old bitter age sitting around in a trailer though, every now and then throwing out some cat food into a crusty moldy pan.  If you are out in the woods, living life, falling trees, fighting wildfires, hiking alone, you might die a little younger.  But the stories you've had to tell and your family will tell about you....does that make it worth it?   Living to the last day, like Miss Daisy did.  I remember her standing in her carrier, wobbly, but standing, to see the ocean, on her last day alive.  I want to be like the hiker lady and like Miss Daisy.