Challenges Continue

 My friend died.   She was my best friend for a lot of years.   Over two decades actually.

I hadn't seen her much the last two years, due to Covid and then her health issues that had gone rather extreme.  She had developed leaky leg syndrome, from poor circulation, along with that terribly bad back, for which she took oxy, which messed up her stomach terribly.  She'd become addicted to oxy too.  So mostly she stayed to herself the last two years.  Every now and then I'd get a response to a text.  A few weeks ago she even called, wanting a ride home very late from the Salem hospital ER.  So I went and it was like old times.  She wanted to get something to eat after I picked her up, huddled outside in the cold after 11:00 p.m.

We got something at a fast food joint and sat in the parking lot like old times, eating and laughing.

I never heard from her again.  She never answered my texts or calls and yesterday her husband said she'd had a big stroke and was in the hospice house.  I went over to see her but it was kind of busy with her adult kids, a couple of grandkids and husband there too.  She was gone by that evening.

She went very fast, just like she'd wanted.  She hated nursing homes.  They're so horrible.   

She was 78 or 79 I think.  She was awesome, outrageous and funny, irreverent, cussed a lot too.  Very real, no bullshit type of friend.  

The best kind of friend.   Will miss you.

I got five cats rounded up to fill some gifted spay neuter reservations for today.

Two were Siamese girl kittens from two different places.  However, they may have been sisters.  

Both had suffered some already in their young lives.  The people with one had tweezed a BB out of her when they first took her from some girls walking around.   The other had a big bruise on her belly.  The woman at that homeless camp said the kitten was climbing and something fell on her.  I did stop on the way home and asked a deputy about the legalities of not returning her because the vet thought it looked like she'd been kicked.  He advised I couldn't really do that, since the cat was spoken for and I'd just picked her up to take to be fixed and couldn't prove anything, and the liklihood of something falling on her at that camp was fairly high.  I gave her two bags of kitten food for that darling kitten.  

I caught one of the two left out at the rural Lebanon place where five got fixed last week.   At least I caught the female.  The only one left escaped the drop trap.   Darn it.  I would have been done there.

Then some folks with kittens in their barn trapped the cat they believed to be the mom.  They don't know where she came from.  It was late, dark and raining when I crossed over a cattle guard and got out of the car, to greet an old dog who ran out of the dark and looked a bit like a wolf coming at me.  When we went in the barn to get the female in the trap, I glimpsed an adult brown tabby slinking away.   I mentioned the cat and the man said no, that was a kitten. I said I don't think so but if it is, that's one big kittten.  

So I pick up the cats this afternoon at the clinic and turns out the torbi tux from the barn is already spayed and even microchipped.  Whoa!  They don't know where she came from, like I said, and in the meantime, they saw the other adult who must be the real mom of the kittens.  So we have to trap her too.  They'll probably call the chip company to report her found, and see if the owers turn up, which I seriously doubt.

The last cat I took is from a huge colony, 30 some unfixed cats, and I only had the one spot, to fix one lone cat from that one.  The starter cat there is a young black male.

That's about it.  

Midnight, the only boy, and the starter cat from the 30 cat colony.

The already fixed and chipped girl from the barn.

Mom of all, from the rural Lebanon group.

Meo, the girl from Waterloo fixed today

Jinx from Lebanon fixed today