The Empty House

 Ah, I'm lying.  House is not empty.  Just empty of extra cats.

I drove the Gills Landing family, Torti and her Kittens, to Portland Friday.   I bought lunch for the lady who was taking them in, at Qdoba, a fast food build it yourself Mexican place.   Whatever you want to order, as you go along the line choosing ingredients, is placed by the worker into a small paper bowl.  So...nothing fancy, nothing complicated, but more affordable than most fast food places.  Plus you don't stuff yourself.  At most you have a small paper bowl from the food choices.

I got a carrier back I loaned to her months ago, plus some others I can use.   Many of my carriers are broken I discovered, not secure for any transport.  When the plastic becomes brittle, especially cracking and breaking off around the door area, they are no longer carriers.  I can often turn what's usable of them into something useful, but not a transporter of cats.  For that, secure is essential.

My neighbor got home from her trip to visit family and friends down in south central valley CA and along the coast below San Fran.   Long hours she had--driving!  She's been gone a week or maybe its been ten days more like.

The car lot neighbors had their usual cram the cul de sac with cars weekly get together.  Sure it burns me inside, to hear and see their big muscle cars and LOUD trucks 15 feet from my bedroom, knowing they will wake me in the night roaring off.   Nothing I can do about it though.

I'm still cleaning up here, from the bathroom, where Torti and her kittens lived a few days, to the cages I had in the garage to hold the cats heading to barn homes, to the traps, to the laundry of cage covers, carrier bedding, all from the effort for the Gills Landing cats.  Lots of work.

When my stray feeder collapsed when two neighbor cats got into a big fight atop it, I had to innovate from junk here to replace it.   I elevated an old card table using 2x2 pieces inside cut lengths of PVC from the old stray feeder.  I just put the 2x2 piecec, four of them cut same length, inside the PVC pipe, then the table legs inside the PVC pipe too, with the bottom of the table legs resting on the 2x2's.  I elevated it I think ten inches.  I filled the area around the table legs, nested in the pipe pieces, with gravel, to help stablize the legs.

Not fancy, but--does the job of keeping the rain off a small bowl of cat food.

So I was just putting the food dish atop  the table but rain has been ruining it.  Yesterday I changed out the plastic storage bin inside that held extra dry cat food.  The lid had cracked then broken open, leaving the food inside vulnerable to bacteria and ick that could fall into the food from the torn hole.   

I had two other unused storage containers that had held Christmas items of my friends, who had moved to Michigan and been unable to fit their Christmas bins into the van.  I got those items, dear to them, sent back to them finally, bit by bit so the storage bins that had held them are free for new use.   

I cleaned one of those good storage bins and dried it and made it the new extra dry cat food holder.  I cleaned the bottom bin part of the old one, and cut out the ends and screwed it upside down to the stray feeder table.  That will protect the food from rain.  I have barely any takers anymore for that stray feeder food, but my cats like to watch the neighbor cats come through and the feeder stalls them out so my cats, watching through the cat yard wire, like voyeurs, have entertainment.  If the feeder is high enough with unclimbable legs, it won't be bothered by coons, possums or skunks none of whom can jump vertically as cats can.

I suppose I will glue the torn lid to that bin and then use it to rain protect the entrance to a cat yard cat house.

Smudge, from the Blue Ox colony

Smudge has this grudge feud with Tball from Waterloo.   Constantly they chase each other, not in play either.  The other cat who goes after Smudge is Jenny.  Jenny likes to bully but loves her best friends--Slurpy, Tugs and Juno.  

Tball can be a meanie to some of the cats here.  He's one of the Cougar Bait Waterloo four.  I'd trapped them, returned them as too old to tame.  The feeder lady, as usual, was silent that she was feeding them til it was too late.  But, when I was warned about a cougar seen on the trail above the bushes where the teens lived, I went back the next night and retrapped all four.   I hadn't been able to sleep as a result of that warning, thinking of them being eaten half alive by a cougar.  I was paying for the food that fed them anyhow, may as well be here and safe was my reasoning.

Mona Lisa, from the Olsen Lane colony

  There are not many of the Olsen Lane colony cats still alive but Mona is one of them, very happy and content here with many friends, including Haley, the lone surviving female from the mobile home manufacture place.   All the Olsen Lane colony cats still alive are quite elderly.  Haley is very old too.  

Machi, from the 7-11 colony, is getting big.  I swear his brother Pistachio looks so much like Comet, whom I lost a couple summers back, that I call him that sometimes.   Maybe I should call Pistachio Comet2 or Cometose or Little Comet.  Or Young Comet.   

Off to deliver some flea treatment to someone who found a kitten who is overloaded in them.  And also with worms.