Fall Colors?

 I've laxed in taking fall color photos this year.   I don't know why.  

Last night, coming home, I thought I better get something and clicked to on, my phone, sitting up in the dash cam holder.   

It was too dark and the phone tried to compensate so not that terrific.

We're more an evergreen state, with tree type, than a decidious one, by and large.  Cities that plant trees along streets are often best bet for fall color photos.

Yesterday morning, I lounged in bed.  Four of my cats wanted to lounge with me.  Three of the four are very elderly.  Teddy only recently decided to be tame.  He's from a Corvallis homeless camp years upon years ago.  His sister, Starr, died last summer of age related kidney fail.   Fantasia too is very old and her sister, Echo, also died last summer.   Teddy is experiencing signs of IBS, as sometimes happens in old age with cats.   This is not a fun syndrome to deal with, as a pet carer, cleaning up and also watching the rapid decline.  Slinko is aging out too, my little shadow, now old, not so uppity to the other cats, and has softened to include cat friends in his life, laxing on his self appointed guard me at all times duties to cuddle with new best buddies Teddy and Fantasia, as they also decline.  By contrast, Otto, on far left, is only middle aged.

Otto, Fantasia, Slinko and Teddy, on a lazy Sunday morning

I was sent photos yesterday of two more kittens dumped at the park.   Sure, I'd like to get them out of there and fixed, but there is nobody going to take them on right now.  The system is overtaxed with unwanted kittens and cats, dogs and puppies, and those trying to fix them wait in lines, virtual or otherwise, fretting and counting dollars frantically.    Crises mode has settled over the animal welfare world.  The big rich shelters do almost nothing to help.  The little people scramble and scrabble to do the work instead.  The animals suffer.

Here are the two latest littles in the park.

Buggyboo is sick, the kitten from the drug property colony fixed last week.  Diarrhea.  I've got to get him in to see a vet.

I think this week I'll trap a 13 cat colony up in Waterloo, to turn off the faucet there fast.   It's important there, in that tiny cute little town.  I like Waterloo, been there trapping so much over the years, right by the Santiam, would like to live there to be honest.  Before the disease of gentrification ruins it too.  It's already begun.

The kid there is five, a talker, funny.  He followed me to see where the cats were hiding and when I sat down on a log to rest my knee he climbed up beside me.   He told me "I like to destroy things" and quickly jumped down to prove it.  He picked up a hammer and smashed an apple half rotted near my foot.  I moved my foot.  I envisioned my toe like that apple is why.   His mother shooed him back towards his father and the house.  I watched him go, thinking here at least a boy can smash apples.

Sometimes I like feeling dirty and badly dressed in this world where such things are so looked down upon.  I want to be a wild animal, lashing back.  I want to defacate on a glowing green weedless lawn.  Ah, the dreams of an old woman.

Buggyboo, in the video, this morning, before I packed him up and took him over to the vet.  Drop off appointment.  They'll figure out his diarrhea issue, I have no doubt.