Cans for Cats

 I had another great day.

I'd been discouraged about the nonprofit budget and know I'm not that great of a fundraiser.  It makes me nervous to fundraise even online.  And I always worry if someone will go without something they need if they donate.   Everything is so expensive now and people struggle to make it, pay the bills.   I know this from experience lately.    

But I thought "a can drive".   We have $.10 deposits on most cans and bottles.  That's a lot.   I have applied for a nonprofit bottle drop account.   Bottle drop is a business in Oregon where you redeem your cans and bottles.

In the meantime I asked if anyone had extras I could return.   I got a lot of response.  A lady in Albany had two bags then told me her mom had some out for me.  Those bags, four 1/2, produced $23 in returns!   I returned them right away.   

I had to go to Lebanon to deliver traps, then to Sweet Home to do the same.  I delivered promised gas money to a lady taking up a bunch of Lebanon cats and kittens to the FCCO Saturday.  She can drive them all up, round them up, but just needed the gas money to do it.  That's a bargain to get more local cats fixed.  

On to Sweet Home to deliver two traps to that Sweet Home colony.  She has two adult females in cages in her carport after closing the garage door from the outside when they were inside eating.  It then took her quite a long time to catch them in traps in the garage.   I'd told her I'd come up with my drop trap and catch whomever was left needing fixed but she wanted to do it the hard way.   When I was there in the driveway, taking out the traps, I saw an unfixed torti adult outside the garage.  She had thought the others had "run off".  Not that one.  I took a picture for her, knew she wouldn't otherwise believe me, but its kind of distant.   When will I learn to take the regular camera when visiting colonies.  I had to fix it too, last night, because the LCD screen was not working.  Many youtube videos later, I got it working again.   I left her cat food also.  

The need for cat food assistance has increased by several fold in the last months.  If I have it, I take it to people who need it.  It's that simple.

Anyhow I had more cans to pick up on the way home in Lebanon and cut over to River road going through Waterloo to get back to Lebanon.  Coincidence beyond coincidence, I was passing the upper part of the park, not down in it where cats usually are dumped and there's a young torti coming out of the lower park and crossing the road by the bridge.  Was nearly hit by a car.  I was shocked!  It looked exactly like Brindi, the torti the lady hand grabbed in the park who went to the clinic a week or so ago, but the lady who fed her kept her.   So there was another, I thought.

But, turns out, the feeder lady, had already seen her and this torti has at least one kitten whom she describes as a fuzzball, maybe 8 weeks old, black tux.   I didn't see the kitten but followed her.  She jumped down to the boat ramp, crossed it and vanished into thick deep berry vines.

Our rivers are high, muddy and full of debris from the intense rain we're experiencing, near historic amounts I think in some places.   It's also turned incredibly warm.  For instance its 11:00 p.m. and 56 degrees out.  It was over 60 today I think.   The coast is getting the worst of the flooding.

I picked up cans in four more spots.   I had long conversations at two of the places.   Both really kind hearted interesting women.   Tomorrow morning I pick up more cans and return cans too.  They add up fast and can really help with the gas bill.   Going to Sweet Home three times and back to deliver traps, pick up cats and return cats is not cheap on the gas.  And then on to Portland with all the cats.  I felt very encouraged to get all the cans offered up and the added bonus is chatting with people.  

I think I'll be taking 9 cats in to be fixed Friday, up at the FCCO.  I'm taking my coziest blankets along, to nap in the back of the car.   It will be an excellent napping sort of day, with more rain coming in and I hope to remember to take a book.