Thursday, March 30, 2023

Winter Ick

 We have no spring yet.

Nada.  Just yuck and ick weather.

Cold and wet and blah blah blah.

Another rain event coming tomorrow and in the meantime----cold, damp and depressing.

My new neighbors from California, so enthusiastic about the area at first, are feeling it now and longing for sun.  Ha! 

My forsythia out front has bloomed in little spurts that die off then another branch will bloom.   Not the usual fabulous bloom all at once.  That brightens everything.


The birds try to keep up their optimism but even the bird fights of spring, when the males go at each other, have diminished as every living thing waits and hopes and dreams of warmer days.

My homemade seed cakes remain popular out front with the sparrows and finches and sometimes the chickadees.


The OR legislature passed a bill to spend a lot on homelessness, mostly to increase housing.  Sometimes I wonder how out of touch they might be.  Most of the homeless I encounter are deep into drugs.  I don't know how society can cure that.   It's everywhere.   Rural areas may have a worse problem per capita than even the cities, with the drugs.  Sometimes I think about that when I drive backroads and so many properties have turned into run down junk yards.   In one week, four people died in our county alone of drug overdoses.  There was a paper article about the scope of the problem around here.  It's bad.

Anyhow, I have the first five of my ten April spay neuter spots next Monday.   The weather will be lousy this weekend for trapping.  There are three or four more needing fixed over where the five came from who were fixed Monday.   

There are four more needing fixed associated with the gas station cats too, all offspring of the female the guy living in the trailer handed out unfixed.  The three still at the gas station are fixed now but I am trying to get the four others, three of them girls, in somewhere.  All are with gas station employees who felt sorry for them and took them home.  

At least three are not tame enough really for house cat appointments.   I referred the lady with the male who is tame enough for a house cat fix, to the local shelter site.  They will fix public owned tame cats for $100 each when they have room after fixing animals they're adopting out.  She registered him yesterday and I don't know how long it may take to get in there, but I told her Happy Cat Club will pay.  Then I hope to get the two girls she has from the gas station in Monday with three from the other place, if I catch them, as one or two of them may be females and all the females are now in heat, pregnant or lactating.  The other girl, from the gas station, taken home by a different employee, well I am scrounging to try to find somewhere she can be fixed. She also is too shy for a tame cat appointment.

Poor old Buffy keeps on keeping on.   She and Peeman Sam are now my most frail old kitties.

Shaulin, on the right, is one of my older girls but she in no way acts her age and although still quite wild after all these years is one of the most playful cats here.

Vino, the gray, and Jenny, who is an affable girl, peer at me this morning.  Slurpy, who is beginning a decline, is behind Jenny.  Slurpy and Vino are both elderly while Jenny is middle aged.

While most of the cats left here are wildish, except for Sam and a couple others, I still love them dearly and its hard to watch them get so old.  Time has gone so fast.  Seems like yesterday I looked horrified at the abandoned trailer out in Millersburg, where the people, when they left, shoved their cats out the door to fend on their own.  The two who did not get homes from that effort there to save them were Sam and Oci.  The vet warned me Oci, who was young, was very ill and asked me to keep her, please.  So I did and Sam too, mainly because my brother wanted him so badly.  In the end, he never adopted Sam.  Sam has such a following here of cats who adore him, even in his old age, when he mostly sleeps.  Oci died a couple years ago.

I have begun to remind people on HCC's social media page, that HCC is not a cat rescue or adoption center, that we do not take in cats nor do we adopt out cats.  It's kitten season already and soon everyone who doesn't have their cat fixed will be calling wanting me or anyone else to take their kittens.  I'm hoping to get it into heads before it starts not to bother with calling me.     It's also extremely hard on my mental health.

10 comments:

  1. You are incredibly kind to help others so much. ~hugs~ We've been watching The Lion Whisperer channel on Youtube and it made me think you deserve something similar. :) With today's technology, we could almost do it together even hundreds of miles apart. :P Anyway, I'm sure you're too busy but wish you got proper recognition and respect. ~nods~ The drug addiction and mental illness epidemics are heartbreaking. Be well, my dear, and give my love to your precious colony.

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  2. I will certainly give my colony cats your love. The Family, I call them. They're my everything. My today, with their purrs and beautiful eyes and funny ways and the everyday cleaning and chores, and my history, wrapped all up in them with me and our colliding pasts.

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  3. I loved your cat photos--as I always do--although the ones of cats in cages always make me sad. I know that the cages are absolutely necessary, and that one of the reasons that you post photos of caged cats is to document your work, but of course the cages wouldn't be necessary if people didn't treat cats so badly that people like yourself have to rescue them (the cats not the people). Not a day goes by but what I don't look at my five cats who were abandoned in kittenhood and feel grateful for cat rescuers.They've been safe, happy, and healthy for so many years that no one would suspect that they started life so badly.

    "Most of the homeless I encounter are deep into drugs.  I don't know how society can cure that."

    It is my understanding that the lead causes of homelessness are first drugs and then mental health problems, and of course there's an overlap because people in poor mental health often self-medicate with things that give them temporary relief, but lead to worse problems in the long term... The last time I posted about homelessness, I lost a good friend, because he thought I should be okay with the hundreds of tent campers who were within ten blocks of my house, but I will never, ever be okay with that.

    Spring. I'm enjoying it when the sun comes out, but as to wanting warmer weather, I'm concerned that every summer will see Oregon breaking its previous record for heat waves and forest fires. My favorite days are days when the sun is out, the air is clear, lots of flowers are in bloom, the wind isn't blowing, and the temperature is in the mid-sixties.

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    Replies
    1. Summer sure has changed around here, with the weather going often from rain to 90 degrees, none of our pleasant 80 degree days that used to be the hallmark of July and August and even September. In the fall, the weather seems to change more instantly now too, back to winter.

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  4. Darla has an idea. Have you considered videoing some of what you do and posting it to YouTube. It's too bad you don't have a camera crew following you around. What you do to catch cats (and the constant of it all) would make a fascinating TV series. (It would require lots of editing, I'm sure.)

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    Replies
    1. I do have a youtube channel. Catweedhigh. I haven't added to it in years. I'm very shy, so that would not be something I could do.

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    2. I love cats and I love helping them but I rather like to do so in the dark. Dark of night, even better.

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  5. Wildish or not they are much loved. And mourned when their time comes. Thank you.

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    Replies
    1. They sure are much loved here. I am surprised all the time about how happy we are all (myself and my family of cats). Even when we do nothing more than the daily chores and cooking (which I love to do) and reading in bed.

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Round Up

Today is cat round up for tomorrow's five spots.  Two more came up from the vet student in Harrisburg late this morning.  Over 60 fixed ...