Boring Days

 I generally don't see anyone I know for long periods of time.  It does get boring, to have no social life.  I'm going to have to make myself a fake family.  Out of sticks and foam and such, dress them up, chat with them.  Been threatening to do so for years.  Would really give the neighbors something to talk about.

Sprite and Skippy are doing fine.   As soon as I can get ahold of Sprite to give her a second vaccination, they will be free to roam the cat house here.   They're teenagers now and I can't find a home for two shy teens.  I've tried but finding a tame kitten a home is hard currently, with rescues and shelters overloaded and people still giving away free kittens.  Skippy loves to be held and cuddled.

I paid for a facebook acquantance's cat to see the vet after seeing on her page the cat had a tumor.   The tumor had been around awhile.  The woman had no money to take her to the vet.  Vet trips are extremely expensive.  A couple weeks ago the cat bit off part of the  tumor.  The lady posted about her doing that, and still no trip to vet.  It horrified me the cat had done that, making me think she was suffering badly.   That's the only reason a cat would take to doing something so extreme.  I offered to pay if she took her to the affordable coast clinic.  The lady says she'll pay me back.  I never know if that will happen but I don't care right now, because the cat needed help so badly.

Her parents took the cat yesterday and it turned out to be extensive breast cancer and she was euthanized.  I'm happy she's out of misery.  But I had hoped somehow maybe it was a very old closed over abscess, something treatable.

The other thing I did yesterday was go to Lebanon. I'd loaned a trap to a very sweet kind older couple.  I'd helped catch and fix the cats they fed years and years ago.  Well one of them, Patches, had been in terrible decline with age but they had been unable to catch him.  They'd made vet appointment after vet appointment only to have him not show up or not go in the trap.  Then they found him drowned in their small pond.   He may have already been dead when he fell into it.  I don't know.  They confessed they were too squeemish to pull out his body.  So I went over and pulled him out of the pond.   I saw the cancer that had eaten away a lot of one ear, too.  

Anyhow, here, I went to vacuum out the ducts under the vents.  I used to do this once a year at least.  Well I was horrified to see the duct beneath this vent had rusted into hanging pieces of rusted sheet metal and there was clear vision to underneath the house.  Great.  I recall seeing rusting before when I vacuumed  below the vent covers, just to where the duct curves. 

I called my brother who says he'll send up one of his workers first chance.  I'll let my contractor brother take care of this one.   He says there is easy to install ducting now that is like heavy plastic that bends and comes in rolls and is already insulated.   The ducts under this place are original 70's sheet metal I guess.  I don't understand how a duct can rust to nothing when a lot of the year hot dry air is blowing through it.  Age, I guess.   I haven't been under the house for a very long time.  I don't bend that easy anymore.  It gets standing water winters.   He's also going to install a sump pump.  The neighbor has  one.  Clay soil around here doesn't absorb water very well.

At least no natural disasters have struck around here recently.    The wildfires, sure, of 2020, but nothing really since then.   We're lucky.  The death tolls in Morocco and Libya from the earthquake and  the flooding are astounding.   

I have five spots for Monday, the only five spots I have this month at the Salem clinic.   Four are given to the Albany colony where so far 13 have been fixed and the 5th to a very very prolific Lebanon female.