Rogue and Sissy

 My two caretake cats, Rogue in the bathroom and Sissy in the cage in the living room, will both soon move on.   Sissy will return to her home tomorrow, after four extra days here recuperating from the hernia surgery.  Then I'll take down that cage, and let Rogue out of the bathroom.  

He has improved vastly but he won't recall that cage being there and I don't want to confuse him in any way.   He is moving around the bathroom in fine fashion the last few days, no stumbles or fall overs.

I've got another neighbor cat routinely in my yard.  I don't know if he belongs to the people behind me or the blue house people, two houses down from them.   But now, he's in my yard a lot of the time.  Can you spot him in the photo below?

I said "no" last night to taking in the calico from the RV park above Sweet Home.  She has earmites so bad she's scratching the backs of her ears off, one of the two ladies texted me.  I can't take in every cat who has been neglected by her owners or caretakers.   I told them repeatedly she needed to be earmite treated.  All the cats I took to be fixed from that corner of the RV park, most tame, had severe earmites that easily could have been properly treated there, but they didn't and even stopped me from putting flea treatment on cats that were already fixed, for what reason, I don't know.   I told them where she could be euthanized affordably.   Because at this point, with her ears destroyed, if they're not going to take care of her, she'd be better off euthanized.  One of the women had been "grooming" me again for an ask.  I know when I'm getting set up. 

 I do feel bad for the calico, but they can do the right thing.  It's their cat and their responsibility.  I've already got one cat from that corner of the RV park here, from two or three years ago, when I was there the first time trying to get cats fixed and one of the two same women was going to be evicted if she didn't give up some of her five or six cats and seven dogs, all of them unfixed, in her tiny camp trailer.  I took five of her otherwise condemned cats, but took her back a male when she was given permission to keep him.  The other four went to Heartland but Little Thunder ended up here when she shut down at Heartland.   I went and retrieved her.  I thought the RV park pair of women would have learned by now, and was horrified to see more unfixed cats there in that corner this year.

I spent yesterday afternoon cutting open a bag of mix up cement that had been in my garage for a year.   I couldn't find my garden trowel, which was frustrating, to use for mixing.   Where on earth did I put it?   I mixed the cement with water in one of my old plastic grocery bags.  I find its easiest to do it that way.  Then I carried it out and smeared/poured it over the dirt and gravel I'd leveled out on the floor inside that cat shelter I've worked on now for a long time, (now and then).  I put wet rags atop the drying cement to keep the cats off it.  It's late in the year to be doing cement anything, with the cold nights, but I wanted the bag finally out of my garage and the cat shelter project to move along.   This morning once light I'll find out if it set.  It did freeze last night but it should have set long before the temps went below freezing.

It's all scrounged or given-to-me scrap I've used to enclose it partly so far, but I hope soon it will be mostly enclosed.  I may have to buy a few fence boards to finish  though.  They too have drastically increased in price, like everything.

There's little time during the day to do anything now, the light is so short.

If you want to be shocked, watch this KGW news expose on the magnitude of shoplifting at Portland stores.  There are no consequences for their actions, so what's to stop them.  Many shoplifters are drug addicts who steal enough to sell to a fence for their daily drug fix.  The story says a lot of the stolen goods are sold under-priced on ebay, Offer Up and craigslist.  

KGW's story on shoplifting in Portland.