Multiple Frustration Day

Let it all go, I told myself last night, over and over.

Yesterday I experienced too much stress. Most of it I could have avoided or ignored if I wasn't already stressed.   So I let little things bother me more.  Last night, I let them all go.

First up was getting up early and loading seven cats into the car, to go get fixed.

Six of them were from that large impossible Lebanon colony.  There are now four mothers with kittens inside their house.  Probably more to come.  I really don't know who needs fixed and who doesn't, since they got maybe twenty fixed over the years themselves.

I ask each time for a list of unfixed cats left, but I don't think they know.

All I know is now there are four mothers with 15 kittens.

I know of three more males ready to be fixed, if I get them, and seven more females, including the four moms.  But there is one adult male and one adult female, in addition, who need fixed, but first must overcome URI.   So that would make 12 more adults and I bet I don't know all the adult cats left needing fixed.  I've now gotten 17 fixed in the last 8 days.   With the 15 kittens and 12 adults I know of still needing fixed, there are still at least 27 unfixed cats and kittens there.  With 20 already fixed and 17 just recently fixed, that is one large cat colony.

But...I'm getting there.

Foxy was the only boy of the six fixed yesterday.

Pickles is a cute little girl, spayed yesterday.

Poppy, another calico, and she was pregnant at spay the clinic said. 

Sweetie, a very under sized adult female, spayed yesterday.

Viv, another calico fixed yesterday.

Topaz, just a teenage medium hair orange tux girl, but she was pregnant.  I love this girl.

Besides the six from the Lebanon colony, I took in an Albany female.  Emily, a torbi.

Emily of Albany

After dropping the cats at the clinic, I drove the ten minutes to the Salem colony, where I recently got nearly 30 or so fixed.  There is one more, and I took her a trap to feed in.  However, she announced, at her door in her robe, that the black tux little one still needing fixed, has an ear tip now (like magic).  I said "No it doesn't.  She is not fixed."  I know she wants it done and over with and this was her way of trying to warp reality to her liking, but I was adamant about her working to get her caught.  I took her a full water bottle with cord attached and set up the trap, tied open with a bungee, to feed in.  I told her "put wet food in the back of the trap every morning and when she's eating in it, take off the bungee and hold the trap door up with a  water bottle and go in the house with the cord.  Yank it when she's all the way in."  That's because I did return 7 fixed cats and a couple of them like to go in traps now and know they'll be let out.  So to avoid all the problems and delay that creates I want her to catch one specific cat.   I don't know if she'll do it or not.  I never do know with people.

Here's a photo of the cat who still needs caught.

I get home.   KATA is supposed to bring over six cats, all in traps, with their records, from one of their foster ladies, whose rental burned two weeks ago.   I guess she had 33 cats in the cattery, all fosters, which was not affected by the fire. They have to go somewhere, as the house was condemned after the fire and will be demolished and she doesn't know if she'll ever be back on that property, owned by her daughter.

Well true to form, the cats arrive, but one is in a carrier not a trap, a really terrible carrier, whose handle comes off when I try to pick it up.  It has a plastic door, broken long ago, with tape to hold it together.  Really?  Seriously?  You bring a feral cat in a carrier like that?  Several of the cats have pooped in their traps and I'm not a happy camper.  Doing them a favor and they don't even put in fresh paper before bringing them over.  I let this ferment in me, because I'm tired, when I should have let it go.

A Lebanon woman messages me that her friend had a tenant whom he kicked out, but he left six cats, one with newborn kittens, what should she do.  This is a woman who rarely responds, only communicates by messenger and herself lives in a falling apart camp trailer beside a falling apart house that has been used as a drug house in Lebanon.    Ah shit, I think.  I tell her to have him call the police, that its a crime to abandon animals, and maybe the police will take pity, go the extra mile, get Safehaven to take the cats and kittens.   She says she will do that but I bet she doesn't.  When I ask for her friends contact information or location, she goes silent.

This situation lingers in my brain also.

I get an email from a business I bought some pet supplies from last October.   My email exchange with the employee is below a new message that my bank account is going to get charged $3000 some dollars for an order from this same business that same day (yesterday).   I can tell her employee email was likely hacked.  I call them up and sure enough, employee email was hacked at that company and apologies all around.  They claim a manager will call, but a manager never does call.  See I didn't click on the link in that phishing email but I still don't know what information the hacker got from taking over their company emails.  They have assured me customer account information is secure, but obviously that isn't exactly true when they have all customer emails.  I don't know whether internally in their company emails, which the hacker now could see, if they've discussed account stuff or passwords to their server stuff, anything like that.  As a precaution I call my bank who cancel my business debit card. 

I go to the bank and get another.   Then at least I can forget that one.

I also get about a five page packet from Samaritan Health.    I'm fed up with Samaritan Health after one brief doctor visit and blood draw, for my yearly prescription renewal, has resulted in mounds upon mounds of paper sent me, about every little charge.   This new packet, five pages in length, tells me I've been auto enrolled in some care manager program and that to un enroll, I'd have to call them up.  I'm not happy.

You don't enroll people in programs without asking.  That's rude and probably illegal.   I also am immediately convinced this is a scam being pulled on taxpayers, to auto enroll people in services they don't use or want, then bill medicare or medicaid.  Scams make me furious.  They drive up costs to everyone and take precious taxpayer dollars that could be used effectively elsewhere.

I try to call the number given, so I can un enroll.  I'm put on hold after a complicated phone tree of options.   The call is not answered and they come on to say we can't help you right now, leave a message.  I leave a message telling I want to un enroll and to not call me back, just un enroll me.  I then call Good Samaritan's customer service number, angry, and finally get transferred to the Samaratin Advantage HMO customer service.  See, they're both my provider and insurance company.  Seems like a direct conflict of interest to me, but today's health care world is completely insane.

They claim they cannot un enroll me, but they'll send it to a complaint department or something, and they'll call me.  They haven't.

Yesterday, when driving, I get a phone call from what looks like a scam number, when I check later.  Then I get a call again from same number, but I'm busy and it goes to voicemail.  I listen to the voicemail and its that stupid program calling me back, not un enrolling me.   And its some "I want to run your life" sort of sugary sweet a hole woman leaving the message, not about un enrolling me, about how I'm doing.  Fuck this, I thought.  I leave another message, because they again do not answer when I call back, this time more explicitly stating I want un enrolled in their bogus auto enroll program and not to call me back.  Then I block the number.

It's hard to let this go at that.  It's wrong to scam medicare and medicaid and its wrong to auto enroll people in programs like this that are completely useless and unwanted.

Finally, I load the cats from KATA into my car and head out to the Salem clinic.  My barn cat placement friend is taking them on, because I asked her for help helping the KATA volunteer whose house burned.   This was very wonderful of her to do since she's about to have joint replacement surgery. Well, in a month.  She can only take a few cats she can place, until after she recovers from surgery.

I pick up the seven fixed cats too, and load them into my car.  There's now already five huge empty KATA traps, and one of their carriers in my car.  So it's a tight fit to get everything in.

I get home, set up everyone for the night, take home Emily, the Albany cat, set the KATA traps and carrier out for them to pick up today and call it a night.

I went to bed early, read a little first and completely let yesterday go away in my mind.