Oddities

 Today was cat round up day and also end of pet sitting day.  Yahoo!  Free!

I left about 9:00 a.m. with traps in the car and went off to Lebanon.  This is my first time out of town in awhile, except for the last trip to Salem with cats.

I set two traps at the apartment complex, hoping to catch the female who had kittens on the run a few weeks back, whom KKR took in, as bottle babes.  I haven't heard how they are doing.   I did catch two other cats there, a teen female and an adult male, not long after the mom had those kittens.  But not the mom of the kittens, or the teens brother.

A tenant there agreed to check the traps.   I picked up Mary then, who wanted to go to Cascadia with me to pick up the homeless folks female and male.  Mary gets carsick easy if she isn't driving so I think I made her miserable on that curvy road.  

We were beyond Sweet Home on the way when I got a call from the Cascadia homeless man who said he'd like to cancel since their female is pregnant.  I wanted to say "And you didn't know that four days ago?" because of course they would have known that then.  I said "we're almost there, we can take your male at least."

So I finally find the place, and he comes walking over with a soft shell carrier and I think it will be the adult male.  Instead its a kitten, maybe 8 weeks.  I say "Where's the male?" And he says "oh, I think maybe he lives in Lebanon now."   Ok what?   

I didn't even know there was a kitten.

I wanted to say "um, ten minutes ago you said you'd have the male ready to go" but I locked my mouth shut because this is par for the course behavior from Cascadians.   I took the kitten into the car and handed off two bags of dry cat food and a box of wet food.  WTF?  Who knows.   Roll with the flow, its the only way up there.  However, this will be the last time I'll drive all that way.  Some things can't be fixed.

Polly the Kiten

There's no cell phone connection beyond Foster Reservoir on up to Cascadia, except in odd spots here and there and depending on your carrier where.  When we left the homeless camp and got back down to Foster Reservoir, which is terribly low on water, the lowest I've ever seen in fact, cell connection kicked back on and I get a message from the Lebanon apartment tenant that the mom cat is in one of the traps.   I am ecstatic.   

The vet student has also messaged that she's caught three.  That's five cats so cat round up over.

Like I said, I've never seen Foster Reservoir so low in my life.   It's at least 20 or more feet down.  Maybe more.  Usually they start filling it in February.  We've had plenty of rain, so what gives, I thought.  Well, once home, I did a search and what gives is an environmental group in conjunction with a sport fishing group sued and got an injunction so they can't start filling Willamette Basin reservoirs til about now.   It's all over spring Chinook and steelhead, so there will be more of them for the fishermen to kill and throw in a freezer.  

They'll never fill Foster with rainwater run off this late by June.   The article said they'd try to fill it with water from Green Peter dam, above it, which means Green Peter will be depleted very early and also said low water levels may make the lake dangerous for boaters to please be sure to carry a life jacket.

The whole thing sent me into terrible depression.  Going to the lake is pretty much the only thing I look forward to.  We really don't have any other recreational opportunities nearby other than the reservoir.  I don't like fishermen much after encountering too much of their fishing trash around and in the lakes and rivers.   Now I really don't like them.

What you are looking at is the first part of the boat ramp in the foreground, then grass, rock, wood debris that is usually underwater, and island spots that are usually many feet underwater.  Those cars out there drove along an area usually several feet underwater.

That is the concrete end of the boat ramp, followed by big rocks usually many feet underwater.  There's a water channel and a sand island also usually many feet underwater.

To see water levels like this in May, because of a lawsuit, is incredibly depressing to me.

So I'll take the five in tomorrow to be fixed and then end of May I have five more spots and I gave them to the vet student for the trailer park already.   Just because she doesn't run me in circles and does the trapping herself.  Its better to give over spots to someone like that.   

Ok, I got their photos.

Here's the Lebanon girl.

Star, the Lebanon apartment girl

Tabby boy, big one

Liam, a tabby on white

Melody, a young tabby tux female

And then the Cascadian.    She's so cute.

Polly they call her

Night night.  Only one more day, end of May, with appointments.  Well except for the 15 FCCO appointments the 13th.  Summer break!  Lets hope by some miracle they find a way to fill that reservoir.

Yesterday it didn't rain, well not too much, a little in the morning, and then evening it started up again.  But during the day, the sun was out.  Was in the mid 60's.  Today its back to cold and lots of rain, more snow in the mountains.  We are not lacking for rain this year in the mid valley of Oregon, or snow in the mountains.   It can stop at any time.  Please stop!  We did end up breaking the April rain record.  Ok, so lets break a record in May of lack of rain with sunshine.  I would not mind at all.