The Early Days of Spring

Once we had a couple of nice days, my spirits soared and for some reason, I imagined it was all over, this long wait we've endured, here, for sunshine and brightness and warmth.

But as quickly as the weather changed, for only a handful of days, and only part of those days, it was back to the damp and the rain and the misery of it all.

Cheery forest products company commercials tell us to be happy its raining because the rain grows trees.  Grows their fat banks accounts is more like it.  Does nothing for me by this time of year but start the grumbles grumbling.

By now in my life I am starkly aware of my age and that I am completely irrelevant to everyone else.  I am reminded of this almost daily, in eye rolls at check out stands if I'm slow at all, at the doctors office, pretty much everywhere.  I don't even try to engage any longer.

In reverse, I think often how irrelevant we all are, among the billions of people on the planet and within the vastness of space and time.    When people are short with me or I feel especially alone, I think of that and I feel peace with it.

When I returned the four big boys to the Salem colony on Tuesday, the little Siamese, among the first fixed two weeks prior, was meowing and meowing, as she wandered the property and then trotted to the barn.  The old woman said she was lonely for her friends.  I tried to get a video of her angst but my camera wasn't working right, so I followed her to the barn to try to use my cell phone for the video.   There to my surprise, I found this:

I'd left traps for her, to try to catch the last couple cats.  I'd set one myself in the barn Monday morning, when I picked up another cat there.  She'd put the traps up, on a tractor and a little trailer, to keep the skunks from them, at some point on Monday.   But she didn't close them.  At some point, this cat, one I hadn't seen, got into the trap, even sitting as it was, across the small trailer full of brush and the back of a mower.  How long the cat was in there, I don't know.

I brought him home and put him in with the other cat still here---all black Snuffles, who had a bad cold.  I named him Westerly.

Heartland Humane was doing some cat fixing yesterday.   I was in a rush to get moving yesterday morning and Westerly would not enter a trap from the holding cage, he had shared with his colony mate Snuffles.  I had removed Snuffles already, since she's tame and then usually just put a set trap in a holding cage, and uncover the cage and the cat goes in the set trap for privacy.  Not Westerly.

So I began trying to push him from behind, through the holding cage mesh, but instead of being afraid, he started purring.  Oh gosh, I thought.  So I opened the cage door, reached in, and began to pet the skinny little thing and he arched his back and leaned into it and purred. 

Thankfully Heartland agreed to help him find a real home too.   Good luck Westerly and Snuffles.

Snuffles has had a URI going on for some time, and would sleep in a box at the colony.  I had to find her a way to get antibiotics and help and was ecstatic when Heartland Humane offered to take her.

The other three I took to be fixed were all girls.   I remembered a Lebanon woman who had two girls inside.  I"d gotten a black tux they cared for on their front porch fixed but they hadn't the money to get the girls done.  I called her and she was very happy to have the option.  She loves the sisters, Cinder and Ember.  These photos are bad.  I'd left my camera in the car and it was cold in the car.  I then brought it into the warm bathroom and the lens fogged over.  I wiped it with tissue but it would fog again and I was out of time, needed to get somewhere, and took the photos anyhow.  Ember had decided to go under my sink, to escape the nonsense.

 

Cinder, fixed yesterday.  

Ember

The third cat had been living outside at someone's place, abandoned by someone else, and the lady said she was pregnant but thought she had several weeks to go.  She didn't want kittens born under the house.   So I picked her up yesterday morning, after the woman finally got her into a carrier late Wednesday evening.   She wants to make her an indoor cat and her own, now that she is fixed.  Zoey is lucky!   She is recuperating here for a couple of days, since the surgery was a little rough on her.  She is the sweetest kitty and how someone could leave her behind to fend on her own, well it makes me think bad thoughts about people who do such things.

Zoey, a very sweet torbi girl, still here, but she'll go home today.

So after the effort of Saturday through Tuesday, getting 19, mostly from Salem, caught and fixed and returned, trying to clean up, catch up, and then the five more yesterday, I'm still a little frayed around the edges.  But 24 more cats helped this week.

Someday the sun will return.