Back to Normal

 Back to normal here.  All ten cats I caught last weekend are out of here.

I took the final five up to the FCCO Thursday morning.  Traffic was very very heavy and congested from south of Wilsonville on, so it took me almost two hours to get there.  Four kittens and the adult torti made the trip.

The calico, now in foster, hope she tames

The calico's litter mate, a black and white boy, also now in foster

Black female kitten

Siamese male kitten

The Siamese kitten is a male, turns out, while his litter mate, the all black, is a girl.   Strangely, he is only 2.7 lbs while his alleged litter mate was 4 lbs and some oz'es.   It's possible he's from another mother.  There's a third sibling, also all black, I need to catch still.  

The little calico girl was the sad case, so skinny, only 2.5 lbs.  The clinic gave her a B12 injection to trigger appetite.  Guess what--she needs nothing to trigger her appetite.  In the time she spent in my garage in a cage with the torti and her litter mate, a black and white boy, she and the other two ate an incredible amount of food.  She just wasn't getting enough at the colony.

I made a dramatic plea for help for her, not wanting her to go back to the colony and suffer.   There are probably six to eight more kittens about her age there plus adults.  Lisa and her daughter, former KATA volunteers, said they'd be happy to foster and find homes for that pair.   So I met her yesterday with them in Lebanon and was so thrilled I couldn't stop being thrilled over it.   

The colony man asked for cat food when I took the torti back.   I knew he figured I was pleased he finally helped out with some trapping and I'd want to reward that and motivate him to help get the rest.   Knowing that even, I took him cat food, 3 bags plus a box of wet food. I do wish I could provide more to help people.  The price of wet food has skyrocketed horrendously in the last year.  It's terrifying to me, actually.   A box of 40 cans that two years ago would cost about $19 is now $29.  I can do much less now to help and just always hope I can keep the cats here in the food.  Vet care too has skyrocketed in price.  

When I go to the grocery store, for food for myself, I wander in shock, at the prices.  But yesterday I found some good deals on marked down cheese and will freeze most of it.  I was lucky to have blackberries from my small yard patch.   I got a handful of them a day for over a month.  Same with raspberries.  And now cherry tomatoes.  I also have volunteer potatoes and green onions in my yard.  The price of gas is once again climbing, after falling a little the last month.   I pretty much stay home all the time, unless trapping.  I'd like to get out and away more but there's the costs of gas and then the problems of an old car, like tire and brake wear and tear, and the dash lights now on constantly and wondering wtf with that.   I told my brother, who wishes I were rich, he really does, that I stretch what I have to the max and there's only so much I can fix and do, but I'm ok.

I returned the Siamese and the black kittens and the adult torti.  All is back to normal here.  I have a total of 15 spots in October and so many calls requesting assistance, but I really do have to finish this Albany colony and a Lebanon one before I embark on starting anymore.  It's also much more difficult to trap colonies piecemeal, when I get only a few spots now and then.   You catch the same already fixed cats, or sit hours, using selective trapping methods.   But that's life now.   Just got to get smarter and be better at it than when all could be done in one or two days when spots were more plentiful.

It didn't used to be this way.

We might get three days of warmth again, this weekend and Monday, and after that rain next week.

I think the reservoir is probably too low to take the kayak up for a last spin on the water.  I just checked the levels however and they're normal if the data is good on the site I use for that.  So yeah, I'm heading up today or tomorrow.  Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer.  Mid 80's.

Monday when its suppose to be mid 80's also, I'll use my pool for the last time, before draining it.

Hallabaloo going on in Lebanon over maybe a cougar sighting off the highway on the outskirts of town, at a storage place.   I looked and looked at the blurry distant photos, that were supposed to be an Oregon Wildlife Department confirmed cougar.  In one side view, blurry from distance and poor camera, I could see the telltale long tail curled up at the end.  And in another, the dark splotches either side of the nose that are typical cougar.  What I couldn't get over was the size.  How could a cougar be that small, house cat size looked like, in relation to the fence.  Someone asked in comments on their post how tall that fence was and how high off the ground was the first wire, which would have been interesting to know.  No answer to that.  Cougars stay with their moms up to two years, so if that was a cougar cub, where was the mom.  Cougar cubs retain their spots to at least six months at which  time they're close to 50 pounds.  Anyhow, now some woman is claimiing to have seen one on a nearby street, which goes right by the plant where a neighbor works, so I'm going to ask him the low down.

Want to see some distant blurry photos of what's supposed to be a cougar?   From the storage place.

It's hard to tell what you're looking at but allegedly its a cougar looking through the fence, sitting upright, by the dark fence post on the right hand side of the photo.  Consider that's probably a fence maximum height six feet and those posts look 6"x 6" maybe (if not the usual 4"x4")---little teeny cougar if a cougar.  I have house cats bigger.

And in this side view you can see the reason it is thought to be a cougar, the long tail curled up at the end, but what a rough looking teensy cat.   However, bad cameras distort color, size, distance and slope, so you never know.

Anyhow, I'm happy the ten cats were fixed.  I'm happy the little starving girl is safe now and getting all she wants to eat.   Onward!