The Bad Example

 I was the bad example yesterday evening.

I got in a public yelling match in a parking lot by FCCO.

That was at pickup.  After a very bad day.

I did not get enough sleep the night before driving 9 LEbanon cats to Portland.

Traffic was awful, worse than usual.

I drank too much caffiene to try to compensate, always a bad mistake for me.

At the rest area, I couldn't sleep.  The car was so stinky.  Made my nose run.  

Finally I was back at the clinic.   I was 40 minutes early and only the second car to arrive.

Yet I was late in the phone line, probably because others called to get in line before they got there.

I'd seen I5 south on the way back from the rest area, already seriously clogged in bumper to bumper traffic and was dismayed.

The FCCO called to come get my cats.   I asked if there was space in front, where I don't have to carry them far to my car and they said one spot.  So I tried to back out of the parking lot to get to that spot before it got taken.   Instead a big huge SUV was manuevering behind me.  I could clearly see it in my mirrors and knew also I could back out behind it and whip around to its far side to get out, since my car is so small and manueverable.  Instead two woman stepped wagging their fingers at me to stop.  I tried to tell them I had to get to the parking spot out front but they didn't care.

When I got out onto the street the spot was now taken.  I had to then do a tight Uturn to get back to the parking lot and also tried to call the fCCO that I couldn't park to get my cats at this time.   I stopped in the parking lot after backing partway into a spot when FCCO called back to answer the call.  I was trying to answer that call at the same two ladies got out of their big old SUV that now they were in, and leaving the parking lot, to yell at me, that I needed to get out of their way.  I again tried to tell them I was on the phone with FCCO, but the yelling escalated, me doing my part.  

They did need yelled at, sorry to say.   But I was too tired to properly enunciate anything other than insults.   They were what I call me first patronistic interferers.   Like old people or disabled people caregivers or social workers who treat their clients like retarded children.

Anyhow, after they left I broke down crying uncontrollably.   With my back issues, I am currently unable to carry traps from the front of FCCO to the parking lot to load.  It's too far.   But FCCO folks had carried out two of my cats to the parking lot and put them in the back of my car, and I bent over hugging one trap and sobbed.  I was too tired, too stressed from weeks of car and finance worry, all the pressures and stresses and horrors burst forth.   Finally I got myself together and drove home.  Yes, traffic was very bad and having a stick shift makes driving in bumper to bumper for lengthy periods very tough.

Anyhow, am about to get the cats back to Lebanon, then do nothing for the weekend.

The calico turned out to be already fixed.  I had asked the feeder lady about her, thought I saw an eartip, but she assured me she'd been born to another of the cats and I never checked after she was trapped.  But I thought it odd to see one calico in a mix of tabbies and black/whites.

I was certainly a bad example to any kids who could have witnessed three adults engaged in useless name calling.   But in a way, it felt rather cathartic.  I get used all the time.  Manipulated.  Treated like a slave. Demanded of.  Like I"m not even human.   To yell back, well maybe it wasn't pretty or useful or anything else, but it was a start.  I put up with too much.

This is the calico, who was already fixed and had a right eartip.  I hadn't looked once she was trapped.

She is from the Sisters house, two houses down and over.   I found a photo of her when I got her fixed in April of 2019, at that house.  She was an adult then.  They called her Poppy.

I  found photos of the fixed boy too from the Sisters house who now hangs out with Studley and Babalou.  

He too was fixed back in April of 2019.

They call him Tuxie.  He was a big adult back then, missing an eye from herpes.

Tuxie and a calico named Viv who was by then fixed, trying to make more cats.   This was way back in spring 2019.