The Simple Life

With no appointments for weeks, for spay neuter, my normal life of cat round ups that begin with calling and visiting colonies to be trapped on Thursday and Fridays, trapping on Saturdays and Sundays, culminate with taking cats to be fixed on Mondays, then returning them Tuesdays along with clean up, resting on Wednesday's---its stopped now.

My appointments resume first of December but only for two weeks of it, since the clinic takes time off end of December for all the holidays. 

Life has slowed now, for a time, fine by me.

I'm working on another round of flea treating all the cats here, which isn't that easy.   Yesterday I cleaned gutters, repaired an eave board, the part underneath, that is sagging, leaving a space, and also fixed some broken parts of the cat yard.  Nothing major.

The weather here is abnormally dry, although there was a bit of rain in the morning yesterday.  After a miserably cold start to fall, we've had fog, some sun (but not warmth) and strangely, very little rain, in the last couple of weeks.

A new cat has showed up here, an older buff tabby tux.  The cat is beautiful and spends a great deal of time in my yard.  So I wonder, did someone move in nearby with him or has he too been left behind.

The cat seems to know me, but I can't remember him, although he seems familiar.

I feel dull that I can't remember where I've known him.  Maybe I don't know him.

I got some more dental appointments for three of the cats here who need it again.   Button, Alexi and Haley all show signs of needing mouth work.  Button is the oldest of those three, quite elderly in fact and very wild.   But she is working her jaw.  I saw her doing so in the under eaves cat run, from my car, before I got out of it after getting home from the store and called the clinic right then.  I was surprised to get one day in December for all three.  Only a month out!  Later on, I thought, that's New Year's Eve.  Should I be out on the road that evening.  Then I thought I'll be home by 8:00 p.m. before people are all drunk and unruly, so it should be fine.

And I thought to myself too, nobody will be camping then, that I might be able to get a spot and can camp out the night before the appointments.  And I think I will do that, to make life easier on me.  Those campsites all now have electrical since hardly anyone camps in a tent anymore in Oregon.  The cats can be in my pop up cages in the back of the car and I can use my tent and take a cord and heater since it will likely be cold at night and be very very comfortable, for a tent camper.  I've done that before, camped out with the cats. I drove through snow on the way that one time, in the coast range, sleet on the coast, rain in the campground and my cheap walmart tent held up under sometimes pounding rain just fine.  The cats I took that trip, and I believe one of them then was Haley, were very comfortable in the cage in the car.  Makes the next day easier, that's for sure.

I can't take cats camping in the summer because if its hot they cannot be in the car, like during the day, if one has an appointment one day, and the other the next.

I'm excited to think about it.

I saw my brother and his wife.  They called unexpectedly yesterday.  They were driving and just south of Eugene, headed to Portland, for the night.  Then they fly to Chicago.  My brother is going with a church friend to El Salvador, at the request of his friend.  The trip will be paid for by their church.  He will be scoping out building sites down there, for some project the church has going.  His wife thinks they will want him to lead a construction team later on to actually do the building and he says no, that's not the case because he's too busy with his own business to go for that long, to build something quite extensive so far away.

He doesn't do well in heat so I hope he'll be ok.  I think he's going for a week, but I don't really know for sure.  They wanted to have supper along the way so we met up at the House of Noodle.  I ate there once before, a couple of years ago, with their son and his fiancee, who had given it a good review to them.

The food was delicious and I had a chance to practice chewing only on one side.  It wasn't pretty to behold I'm sure, at first.  But I am getting the hang of it.  I don't have the teeth anymore to chew on the other side.   What I learned is in public I should not be eating finger type food, like the vegetable rolls we had, that you have to bite in two because I can't do that anymore without quite a mess.  Here at home though, who cares if I make a mess.  Maybe I'll learn how to do that too with some practice without a scene of food dropping out.

My missing teeth do show now if I smile, but I'm learning to close mouth smile, trying to remember to smile with my mouth closed.

You can change habits in a week I'm told, if you try.

It is embarrassing, losing my teeth one by one, but getting older is all about embarrassment really.  I had to go to the new resident I've been assigned, to get my bp medicine renewed, and she is the type who wants to know my history.  So I gave her a brief recap and also of what I do now because I told her about my very sore shoulder.  I could immediately see the doubt creep across her face.  I do have quite a fantastic sounding history, I admit, but it is all very true.  The abuse I endured in the mental system, the beating I took at the hands of a church run hospital that ruptured my neck, etc etc.

She leaves and comes back in and says that medicare now pays for a yearly mental acuity test and I think "oh brother" but go through it. I should never have said a word to her of my history, I realized. I am afraid of doctors, the power they have over you to ruin your life.  After the horrors that befell me......if I get a whiff of that coming off a doctor I'm gone.

My brother and his wife and I had a brief conversation about homelessness, how bad it is and the causes.  My brother shocked me with his candid statement that part of the problem with "helping" homeless populations is that the homeless exist in communities of homeless folks and when they're taken out and plugged into these sterile low income one room converted hotels, they lose all community and belonging.  I couldn't agree more.  It's the same as taking one cat from a colony, how they grieve their friends and family, that they would rather live hard in a junkyard with their friends and family, then be "rescued" and live in a cage or alone somewhere.  "There will always be homeless folks," he said.  "Why not just allot land, provide a dumpster, bathrooms, maybe some tiny houses, let them be.  You can't fix everyone or fit everyone into the same mold and the problem is too big otherwise.  The ones who want out, will get out, if the chance is laid out to them on how."  I thought "oh my, my brother is wise."

I used to say, when I was entrenched in the horrors, loneliness and uselessness of the mental system, that Nami folk treated us like wild animals that they would  beat down, drug, cage and control and every now and then parade in public on leashes with choke collars, to get rounds of applause for controlling such wild beasts so well.

Gunnie is back home now.  I took him back home on Tuesday.  It had been a week since he had the 8 extractions and he was very cage weary.   I hope he and Pirate and all the others I got fixed at that colony will do all right.  There are two more cats who came from the colony, who went to relatives, whom I will get fixed as soon as I get spay neuter space again.  Then there are also the three boys across the tracks who need fixed too.

Gunnie.  His mouth is all cleaned up and he went home Tuesday.   He gained weight in the month he was here.  I do worry though as sometimes those folks over there just forget to feed the cats or something.

There are five more kittens at the trailer park, where I trapped before my break, teens now, who need caught and fixed.  They are a priority too.  There are two more in Waterloo and three in Sodaville (teen kittens of the mom cat I got fixed a couple weeks back) and two more at that Sweet Home colony I trapped also a few weeks ago and caught 7.   And others.

I get to feeling a little frantic when I have no spay neuter reservations and lists of cats who need fixed.  A little frustrated.