Big Weekend

Well, it will be a big cat catching weekend.

I think.

Karen from Portland had 25 reservations and asked me to find colonies to fill those reservations.  She intended to come down Saturday to help trap for a  Sunday FCCO clinic in Portland.  Then I have the usual 7 reservations Monday in Salem. 

I found two colonies not a mile apart in Sweet Home (not hard to do in Sweet Home).   One colony is fed by an older couple eager to get it done.  The other is a colony fed by a younger couple, who don't really communicate.  So that one is quite difficult, given the lack of apparent enthusiasm on the younger couple's part, to get it done.

They're not communicating at all, currently, so whether they even will participate or want it done, who knows now.   Why do people behave this way?  Make it not easy, I guess I'd call it?  I don't know. 

Anyhow, the older couple wanted to get started early and thought they could catch up by hand three or more of the cats.   When I drove up there yesterday, they'd already called me that they had failed miserably at getting the three they can pet contained.   That usually never goes as planned, trying to contain outside cats who have never before been in a carrier. 

It's beautiful up on the ridge where they live.   The mists hung low, partly shrouding the deep green of the forest below me as I gained altitude.  I saw cats in two spots as I drove down their long driveway.  A young orange tabby huddled in the grass against another cat, a girl, who looked just as young.  Teenagers.  Their mother vanished, I was later told.

I guess its not hard to know why.   The woman just a bit farther on, for whom I trapped seven a few months back, told me they saw cougar tracks in the left over snow by their front gate a few days ago.  The man at this house joked about how the renter has a 135 lb cat.   I looked at him funny and said "the cougar?".   She feeds too on her front porch and opened her door to find herself face to face with the big cat, who was munching down cat food.

And yet there are free roaming chickens, goats, you name it, nearby, and I saw no fewer than five deer roaming around just above their house.  How bad a hunter is this cougar, I thought to myself.

Usually its the very old cougars and the very young ones who are not much good at normal hunting.  EVen though the clinic is not til Sunday and I really wanted to hold only the younger tamer ones, I went ahead and trapped six cats, three of them very large males.   I enjoyed my short time up there, chatting with those folks.  The lady who worked in nursing homes cutting hair for a very very long time cut my bangs for me and they needed cut.  The man told me of his long career as a gypo logger and then a log truck driver.   We traded stories about the woods and my upbringing in a logging town in southern Oregon.

  We have logging in our blood, our family.  My grandfather on my father's side was a millwright.  He and his wife brought up their kids, including my father, in the company town of WestFir.  Everything was owned and run by the timber company, who ran the logging operation and mill and provided workers housing, a store, a school for the kids, even a company doctor.  They were paid in mill script, that they then spent in the company run stores, to pay rent to the company for their shack, etc. 

One of my father's brothers died in the mill pond at Westfir.  He was driving around the edge of the pond, probably not safely because he was 17 years old, and ended up in the mill pond. My father said the mill whistle blew and when the whistle blows and its not the end or start of a shift, somethings terribly wrong.  We grew up in southern Oregon to the sounds of the mill whistle blowing shift ends.  But it blew too when something was wrong.

When I went to my brother's for Christmas, he played a DVD made from an old movie, my mother's father made, in 1936 no less, of his friends logging operation not far from my home town.   It was even in color.  My brother had to look up whether that was even possible that long ago, but it was.  They were cutting Cedar which would be made at the local mill into battery seperators and Venetian blinds.  The equipment used to log back then was a lot more dangerous and very demanding.  The loggers worked from springboards (standing on bouncing boards jammed into a  cut made into the side of the tree) and used two man saws to cut the huge trees.  The log trucks, traversing down muddy winding steep roads back to the mills, with heavy loads, cooled their brakes with streams of water jetting from water tanks.

My mother's maiden family name has a very long history in southern Oregon.  It was only when Trump made his loud ridiculous accusations against Obama not being born in the US that my brother found out, through another relative who does ancestry, that we are distantly related to Barack Obama and have black blood in our ancestry.  I guess ancestry or some site published Obama's ancestry line and a name in that line caught the attention of a cousin who has researched my mothers' sides ancestry.  In Oregon, by law, if you have one drop of black blood in you, you are considered black.  My brother says he thinks that old racist law is still on the books in Oregon.  I said "So we're black then?"  "I guess so," he said with a wink and a shrug.  "Fine by me," I said.

I guess we have American native blood too, but that's from my father's side.  We don't know what type.  Allegedly some mid America plains tribe.  Maybe from near Missouri.  Or Illinois even I've heard.  But it's all rumor.  My aunt used to lament, I remember, that she and her siblings should've gotten Indian money, whatever that meant, but allegedly and maybe its a myth, if you're a quarter native you would be entitled to some sort of compensation, she would say.  So I guess she knew something of our heritage on that side and thought she was a quarter native.  She sure looked native American.  So did my father, to be honest.  Jet black hair too.  I used to have black hair but I went gray really early, as is a family trait.  My aunt hated her father for whatever went on in her childhood.  He was mean, I know.  She burned everything she had of his when he died.

Anyhow, the colony man showed me lots of old logging tools he still has.  He also authored a children's book, selling over 1000 copies.  Very interesting couple!

I came home the back roads after spending just over an hour at the colony to catch the cats, get my hair trimmed and hear some great stories.   There was snow on the sides of upper Berlin road still, from a couple days ago.  I don't know how many cats in all are at that colony, at least 12 they think.  I seriously don't want to run into that cougar while trapping however, as it sounds like he or she would rather eat cat food than hunt.   I suggested to the couple they better get one of those little plastic round kid wading pools, put it up on the corner and fill it with cat food every night for that cougar.  I was joking.  Sort of.  If I could TNR some cougars I would. 

I'm going up there again later this afternoon, to take them traps for the rest.  The other lady a few houses from them, who I trapped for a couple months back, told me to come to her place after I drop off the traps or set them, for a cold beer.  I'm not turning that down.   I just hope her place isn't so hot as last time (her husband gets cold easy), because I nearly fainted from the heat inside before combined with too much coffee.

Then Karen is coming down tomorrow but I may have this half of the cats caught by then, this colony up on the ridge.  The other one, closer to town,. I don't know about those folks, if they'll even let us fix their cats, as like I say, they're not communicating.  Karen's the one trying to get in touch to set up times with them.   Nothing but silence though.  They did contact the FCCO though, as is required, to get cats fixed there, so maybe the lady works nights.  I bet that's it.

Well, here's photos of the first six I caught up there on the ridge.

The six are scared and I had only two big cages for them and since three are big males, who should not be together, one of the six is still in a trap, although I switched him over to my biggest trap, so he'd be more comfortable.  I'm trying to make them feel less frightened over what may happen to them.   They always think they're going to be killed, so I try to make them understand that is not at all what is going to happen.  Sometimes it eases their mind if I pet a tame cat in front of them.   Today my friends from Lacomb are returning my other big cage.  They took in three of those Albany colony teens who have acclimated well and the cage isn't needed anymore for them.  So that will help and the other guy will be more comfortable then.