Fun in the Sun

 The covid situation is dire here in Oregon.  Hospitals are full and there's nowhere for sick people to go, I hear.  In Roseburg, a covid patient died in the ER, waiting for a bed.  

I couldn't get to sleep after hearing that, worried maybe it was one of my relatives who got Covid.  Two of them live in Roseburg.   I tossed and turned and had terrible dreams.   

I wish they'd all gotten vaccinated promptly but they didn't, and there's nothing I can do to change that.  I just want them all to be ok.

Anyhow, all the gloom and doom out there isn't good for a person.  So yesterday I went to the lake, determined to get my mind off things.  There's not much time before the corp of Engineers will drop the level down.

   I posted the above photos on facebook and invited anyone and everyone to come, to join me on the beach, as it was empty except for me.  None of my facebook folks, most of whom I don't know really or barely know, came to join me in some fun.  This did not surprise me.  Sometimes I think many of them are much happier posting dire dirges in the dark on facebook than doing anything fun.  But mostly I don't know them very well and certainly not well enough that they would ever do anything with me.  Facebook friends are not friends in that kind of sense.   I have no idea what they are.

A Lebanon woman I knew did come up, after I texted her, and said, "You gotta come, it's so beautiful."  She did come and lazed in the water, used my inner tube, which is so comfortable for just floating around.  We had a good time.  Then she said she'd go with me to see the new Cascadia colony I'd been told about.  I also wanted to check in on the lady allegedly trapping for the 2nd Siamese kitten.

First we went to Bimart and I bought three bags of dry cat food and some wet food, to take to the big new colony people.  Bimart was almost out of wet food and only had some flats of Fancy Feast, so I got a flat of that.

We left her truck there, with my kayak in the back, and took off to Cascadia.   The new colony is overloaded in cats and kittens.   I was stunned.  They look healthy but they are starving.  I gave the couple the cat food.  It won't last  very long for all those cats.  I took some photos too and grabbed three small kittens.  There were four or five more same age, and I wish I'd gotten all 8 of those at least.

Isn't this little boy beautiful!   He loves having all the food he can eat.   He's only a pound in weight!

I'd love to get the five others this age out of there too.  They're darling kittens and deserve a chance.

Orphan Paws Project, a Corvallis TNR vet student group, took the three kittens early this morning.  I'm trying to scrounge spay neuter spots sooner than the 22nd of September for this group.  And more places that will take the kittens.

After we left that colony I stopped at Shorty's place.   Her truck was there, but the trap was not set under the mobile, where the first kitten and mom had been caught.   I yelled and yelled for Shorty and finally she roused from inside the camp trailer.  And I saw my trap, thrown onto a pile of trash.  I couldn't believe it.  There was a cat collar inside it.   She had no explanation for why it was thrown onto a trash pile or why there was a collar in the trap other than she thought the collar would attract the kitten.   

I took my trap, that seemed undamaged from its treatment, and the net I'd left there, but left her my carrier, for her unfixed male, who is allegedly inside her camp trailer somewhere.  I really doubt she could find and catch him inside her camp trailer. I told her I'd be back Sunday for him.  But she's lost her cell phone and says she doesn't keep track of what day it is.  I tried to call her phone, hoping it would ring and she could find it but no luck that way.  So I left--horrified really, for that last kitten, and for the kittens mom, in my garage, because I don't want to take her back to such a situation.

We stopped in town, where Mary got in her truck, and followed me home, where we unloaded my kayak and the kittens.  

It was a good day really.  The lake was so warm and pleasant.  I was there for two hours before Mary showed up and then another hour with her there, before delivering lifesaving cat food up to Cascadia and grabbing three kittens.  The kittens are already gone and I'm today trying to find places for more along with spay neuter spots.  And maybe a place for Mama Siamese, too, because that isn't a place to go back to up there.