Uninformed

I've discovered many people don't know coronavirus is out there.  Or would not care if they did.

One person I trapped for out in Sweet Home said her neighbors knew nothing of it until they discovered all the restaurants were closed.  She said they would even drive to the coast simply to eat at some restaurant.

Now this elderly couple hang out constantly at their place, bored to death minus their usual routine of travel to eat.

My brother poo poo's it too and the distancing but that's easy to do where he lives.  There's no virus in that entire area.  I hope it stays that way.  I told him they ought to block off access to his county on all the roads in with loaded log trucks and armed guards and they'd never get it there.   Our mobile society is to blame for the spread.  If nobody infected comes into your area, you're golden.

How'd our county get it?  A few people in this county have money and travel, maybe that's how, but mostly likely it started at the veterans home because sometimes they are transported to Portland for care and Portland already had it and someone at the Veterans center had it because a patient there had died of it.  Or maybe its because we are on the corridor of infection---the interstate, or because many people in this county work in other counties, even in Portland, then come back here.

Now there are social media entitled brats encouraging stunts like licking things to make fun of the virus. Someone was arrested somewhere for licking items at a walmart and filming himself doing it.   There are always those, the brain dead in love with themselves crowd.

Yesterday, the mite lady and her husband came here twice.  The first time I wasn't home and she blocked my garage door with a chair so I'd see her note with a phone number.  The mite lady is the one with sores all over her face that she believes are because she's infected with mites, even though neither her dog nor her cat have them and the doctor says she doesn't either.  Several bug exterminators have found nothing in their place that could be biting her.   Anyhow, I thought I'd seen the last of them, but now here's this note, not at the front door, but at the back.

I felt violated for some reason, that they'd come around to the back of my place.  The note said she wanted me to take a cat she'd found.   If they could get on the internet to see my facebook page and realize I don't take in cats because I am not an adoption group, it would be easier.  They are virtually internet illiterate and now with libraries closed, a good share of people don't have access to internet around here.  The poor people that is.  They have a phone and left the number but don't seem to know how to use it either or it doesn't work well.  I left a detailed message on their options and left it at that.  Besides the voicemail I left, I texted them their options also.

But then late, I saw their car out front again.  I headed to avert them, knowing the garage door was open, knowing they'd just barge in and figuring they might also have no understanding of the virus going around.  They don't.  It freaked me out quite a lot to hear her, from inside, yell to her husband there's a door in the back.  I pounded on the window to try to stop her.

I'm no virus freak out, but I knew these folks were not going to keep any personal space.  My only option this time was to be very very clear.  So I was and stern in the end.

 I told them I'd left them a detailed message, about their options with the stray, repeated them, told them again I don't take in cats, and suggested they keep their distance because of the virus.   To this the husband headed towards the car but not the woman.    She was fumbling to write down the options for the stray but her husband yelled he could remember.   Finally they left.

What do you do when you encounter people who either don't know about the distancing due to the virus or just don't take it seriously?

I've encountered a lot of them.  People who want me to come over for coffee, who want me to come in, because they're lonely.   I hate all this.  I don't want to be unfriendly, but I also do not want to get the virus and end up in the hospital.  There's no one going to take care of my cats if that happens. 

I left the bird lady a trap and she caught the little stray girl she's been feeding.   I then went and picked up the cat in the trap.  But KATA took her immediately for which I was grateful.  They had an opening.  Lisa handed me a carrier at arms length and I put her in it, inside the garage, then handed it back.    Little Kitty was here less than an hour.

She's very young and shy, but also tame.   They'll scan her and all that, but she's at the bird lady's house all the time, so something has happened to her home in the last months.

I went for a walk yesterday and sat by the river and watched the ducks.   I didn't see another soul.  But then it was raining, like today its raining.

We have just under 500 corona cases in Oregon and officials here are optimistic we can keep it curbed in this state at least.  To our north, Washington state has several thousand cases as does California to our south.   By comparison, Oregon is doing well.

There was a story in the Oregonian newspaper about workers in the Lebanon veterans home, how two or three and now maybe more, have become infected.  The story detailed how they attempted to get tested when they first came down with congestion in sinuses and lungs, but were turned down because they did not have fevers and continued to work, but then became sicker.  The article told of their struggles.  One of them lives in Albany but can't come home after getting infected because she lives with her mother, who has health issues, along with a nephew who has cystic fibrosis.   So she was living temporarily in a motel room with three other workers (nurses aids) near the Veterans Home.  Now I think all four in that one hotel apartment have the virus.  But they were not diagnosed for awhile and in the  meantime went to work and probably shopping too, infecting how many others, one might wonder.   So it goes here.  The nurses aids are in the line of fire more than any nurse or doctor and get paid the least.  I salute the nurses aids.  They really don't get much mention but its them doing the close patient care all the time.

Articles like that one in the paper about those struggling nurses aids, they make me want to go find those people and hug them.  That's my automatic internal response.   Now we can't hug anybody.

Here are a few cat photos. 

Teddy, an old man now, originally from a Corvallis homeless camp.

Teddy's sister, Starr, also from the homeless camp originally.

Kona came here last summer, when I was allegedly on a break, after having kittens in a ditch out on Knox Butte.  People had trapped her and just left her in a trap down in the brush, so a neighbor called.   She had four kittens with her but Heartland took them.  I thought her just nearly a baby herself but at spay, she was judged at four or five years old.  Well now she's a year older than that and just loves it here.  She has the cutest face.

Shaulin is the old gal with attitude here, who still loves to play.  She went to a couple different homes and cried so much she'd be returned, once the next day.  So here she stayed.  She has asthma now, remains fiesty and still loves to play like a kitten.