Buffers Leaving Today

Buffers is leaving today, going to a home with a family in south Corvallis. Good luck, Buffers.

Unbelievably, Wrecking Yard mom is now nursing all the kittens, except for the Three Amigos. Eleven kittens she's nursing. So I'm supplementing them all with KMR. She's an unbelievable mom. She's also fairly feral, although it's clear, long ago she was owned by someone.

Once the kittens are grown and adopted out (cross my fingers they'll get homes), I'll need to find some very special place for her. She's awesome and needs respected as awesome.

14 Coccidia Kittens

Just when you think it might work out ok, taking all those kittens in, backfire! The Gang of Four Tabbies were not that well, although they are negative on FIV/Felk. Diarrhea that did not go away even after I wormed them. Then, I saw the bright yellow dribble. It began with the brown tabbies, then one, then two of the little Bad Black Mom boys got it also. I took action immediately. All 14 kittens, including the Wrecking yard Crew, who may not be infected, and the Three Amigo SafeHaven fosters, are on Albon.

If I had space, I'd seperate the Poohcow seven kittens from the two mothers, from the Three Amigos and the Wrecking Yard Crew kittens. But I have no space. I have one spare room and that's where they all are. That's it. This reinforces my assessment of my own stupidity for taking them in. Dumbshit move on my part.

Will the coccidia spread to my own cats? Probably not. Some have had it before, back when I lived in the bad well rental that was always testing positive for fecal coliform.

In my garage, I have housed the BS colony male, under treatment for severe URI, that has gone on untreated out there, where he lives, for six months or more. If improvement was not seen, on Baytril, in six days, the vet thought it might be hopeless. He had bloody snot and was on death's door. But, with daily Baytril and steaming and good food, his snot is no longer bloody, not even green. He still snarfles but his improvement is significant. So his treatment has been extended for another ten days here. After that, for better or worse, he will return to the BS and those folks, with far too many animals to care for even one of them properly.

He is also getting an internal antifungal, to help his long term ringworm. They named him "Ringworm" in fact. They've had chronic outbreaks out there, in mold city, with too many animals crowded together and sleeping together in unclean conditions.

I am being as careful as is humanely possible with him and his ringworm, because having an outbreak of ringworm also, among the kittens, would be disasterous. I took him in, albeit in a garage cage, before I had any foster kittens here. I wear clothes I shed before coming back inside, after handling him and spray the area beneath the cage he is in, with clorox mix, and wash my hands and feet too before coming back inside. The spores, which are microscopic, can be airborne or attach anywhere on clothing or body and then shed anywhere again, like into the air or on the floor and picked up on the pad or nose of a curious kitten, whose immune system isn't fully formed until four months of age.

I have taken an aggressive step in hopes of keeping ringworm off the kitten crowd and that is I'm bathing them also once a week in antifungal shampoo, just as a precaution. Maybe that sounds extreme, but extreme would be trying to treat 14 kittens with ringworm for a month or two, bathing them three times a week---hell on earth.

I am restless and can't sleep tonight. Pain. It's too hot in here. Stress, too, is taking a toll on me. I have no life anymore at all and I need to get a life back. I have been trying to find a cheap rental in Corvallis again. It is so much healthier to live over there, than to live here. I got so much more exercise there, could get away into the woods. Here, I do nothing at all, unless I'm out trapping cats. I can't afford to go anywhere. With gas prices skyhigh, I am more worried than ever about getting stuck in this concrete town.

I don't walk, because it's just concrete, roaring cars and disgusting, no hills, nothing. I know it's killing me, too and I can't figure a way out except to try to find a rental back in Corvallis. I know I likely can't find one I can afford. But I want to move back home, so I am trying to find one.

Injection

A sign on the lab door said "Dragons Be Behind These Doors". Or something like that. I checked in at the main office desk and was directed down the hall to the lab. There was an open door and a woman walking around inside the lab room. I asked some people sitting there on the benches outside the lab door, too "Do they just call you, when they're ready, or should I knock on the wall or something?"

The woman and her daughter, both will deep blue cell phones that kept ringing, said "She'll come get you." So I waited. And I waited and waited and waited.

Finally, a labcoated woman who had been by several times asked me how long I'd been there. I said "Awhile." She said "Does the lab lady know you are here?" I said "I think so." The labcoat lady said "Go wiggle those chimes hanging from the door jam."

There were some small windchimes hanging off the top of the door. Just as I was about to give them a good swat, the lab woman came into view inside the room and asks "What are you doing?"

"Um, ringing the chimes?"

"I've been waiting and..." She cut me off and told me to come in. She asked for my lab orders. "Um, I don't have any. I am here for a tetanus shot."

She said she doesn't have any orders and I should have gotten them at my appointment. I said "Um, I didn't have an appointment with a doctor."

She scowled. I was fidgety, not knowing how to make this woman happy about giving me a shot of whatever she chose to draw up, into my arm. My mind began to flick, like a movie projector slows down to the point where you can see individual frames, just before the film melts, beginning with a small creamy gray spot in the center of the frame that rapidly expands to destroy the film.

So I asked about the shot itself, was it just for tetanus. I'd read up on the vaccines online and knew there were various variations. She turned and looked at me, without cracking an expression, although it was there, implied, the simmering rage wanting to explode like an atom bomb, if only some event, some perhaps dangerous person, something, would let her let loose, release it, righteously, so she could still retain her job in the fiery bloody aftermath.

I knew this was not about me. Except, in that she was going to inject something in my arm.

"You came for a tetanus shot. It's a tetanus shot then," she barked. I stupidly persisted.."Well, does it also contain diptheria vaccine," I harped on, when my mouth should have been sealed tightly shut.

I don't recall her answer. I was trying to see around her body, as she filled the syringe, to see what she might really be putting in it, but she kept moving so her body blocked my view. I was getting nervous now, boy. Maybe I've seen too many crime shows on TV.

She was coming at me, with the syringe and needle. I was looking at the door, thinking "I could run for it now. I could make it. I'm not going to get tetanus anyway. I mean, what are the chances. Run for it, Jody, while you still can." My legs didn't move.

I barely felt the needle plunged into my upper left arm. She's damn good at giving shots.

Did you ever see Little Shop of Horrors? If so, I guess the most memorable scene was the dental event--a sadist and masochist paired up, in the right positions, too! I guess I was thinking of that movie too, as I left, in awe of this woman's talent to both evoke fear, mystery and give a painfree injection. Very cool. What talent! I'm not kidding.

Cats Fixed Today--boys boys boys!

From Elm street kids, black and white, unknown sex. Actually, turned out she was a pregnant female.
Brown tab on white Elm's street big boy.
Flamepoint boy from Elm street.
And the smoke male from Shedd, daddy to Smokes, one of Bad Black Mom's bottle boys.

Cold

I think I might be getting the evil cold, that caused so many people last winter misery and lost voices. My throat began to hurt only on one side last night. My neck has been extremely sore, doing too much heavy labor and also my right shoulder is again inflamed and useless. So, since I've had great trouble before, when inflamed nerves cause mouth and face pain, I figured it was probably an inflamed nerve in my throat and mouth.

Then I began to lose my voice. Then I began to have "drippage" down the back of my throat and feel sick. Darn it all.

I went out trapping this evening. I first went to Farley Felines. They were supposed to, promised to have their two fixed males inside. I set up the drop trap and who should show up but one of their dominant fixed males. Two other cats showed up briefly, but their male slapped and snarled them off. I put in the bathroom of the trailer but then he howled incessantly. I finally put him in a trap in my car and was just getting going again, when their other already fixed male arrived to repeat the same thing.

They were off at church and had promised to have these two males contained. I kicked myself for even bothering to go there, but if I don't get the rest fixed, they'll shoot them.

A neighbor told me someone who lived there a few years back, connected to these same people, shot the leg off her cat. And that they used to let the cats have kittens, for the kids, then kill the kittens by hitting them over the head with a hammer. I guess they believe, in their religion, that animals are here for us to do with as we please, even if it is to abuse them. Man alive. All the above is heresay, of course, and hearing things from neighbors, well you just never know if it is true or not, if you don't witness it.

This is just a real good reason for me to stay clear of all these man made up religions.

So anyhow, I decided I was wasting time there and headed off to the Elm streeters. There, with the help of the ten year old twins, and a neighbor, I caught three more with the drop trap. So I have four cats in hand, including the smoke male from Poohcow. That man still has one trap of mine. I left him a message today, asking him to use it, as I showed him, to attempt to catch the last cat left unfixed there. I did not hear back from him. Tomorrow, I'll just get my trap.

After dropping the cats at the vet tomorrow morning, I am headed in to get my tetanus shot. I have to get it within 48 hours of my rusty screw stabbing foot injury.

Today, I built a little raised bed for some tomato plants and planted them, along with a couple yams I sprouted in a cup of water. It's not very raised because I didn't have much dirt. I had to screen it in with chicken wire because the Mexicans living behind me have a free roaming house rabbit who would destroy my plants very quickly. I wish they'd keep their rabbit in their own yard. He is very cute, however.

I can complain to high heaven about all the kittens I currently have here, but I love them all. They are so much fun.

Buffers is leaving on Tuesday. We will miss him here. Thumbs is leaving on Sunday. Ditto for missing him, too. That will end the reign of the polydactyls here. The Three Amigos, Scrappy, Spits and Hissy, will likely take over the reign of play. Or will it be the Gang of Four Tabbies? Or Bad Black Mom's boys? Or the Wrecking yard crew kittens?

Won't be more than another week before Scrappy, Spits and Hissy will make the two pound mark and be going back to SafeHaven for adoption. I will miss them, too.

Cute Kitten Photos!

Don't you want one of these kittens in your pocket? They will need homes. Reserve one now! You know you want to. And, coincidentally, I want you to.

Pokey, one of Bad Black Mom's three boys, invades Wrecking Yard Mom's rabbit hutch.
Smokes and Rocket nap in a carrier.
Smokes wakes from his nap. That's Joytoy, one of wrecking yard mom's kids, enjoying her sleepover with the boys, in the background.Smokes, one of Bad Black Mom's boys, rolls in delight. These boys are still on the bottle.
Scrappy, one of the Wild Three I am fostering from SafeHaven, thwarts an attack from Silver, a Gang of Four Tabby's member.
Black and white wrecking yard kitten.
Joytoy, the very intrepid gray tabby on white female wrecking yard kitten. This morning, I found she had exited the rabbit hutch on her own, for the first time, leaving mom, for a sleepover in a carrier with the Bad black Mom boys.
Teetlatch, Joytoy's lookalike littermate, who just will not give up his lockjaw on the nipple.
From Poohcow, one of the Gang of Four Tabby's. Three of the four are brown tabby boys.
the fourth is Silver, a silver tabby female.

The Little Barn That Could--Poppa's Recycled Gardens, Closes Today

Poppa Inc's fundraiser Recycled Gardens closed today. Volunteer burn out is the main cause. Keni, Poppa's president, spent upwards of 80 hours per week running RG, in its hayday. RG was well loved by plant lovers and animal lovers alike.

I love Recycled Gardens. When I could afford the gas money and when my car was actually running, I used to go up once or twice a month to mow the lawns at RG. Keni and I would go off to McMinnamins at Rock Creek, filthy from weeding and labor, for a beer drenched lunch.

I have the utmost respect for the volunteers that come out one or two days every single week to weed, pot, and sell plants to make money for spay/neuter. Steve and Diana, I'm talking about you. I wonder what they will do now.

I called it the little barn that could. That barn made such a difference for me. The money made there gave me something purposeful and useful to do with my life, allowed me to do something I was good at doing, the only thing I knew/know how to do.

Recyled Gardens made a huge difference to the cats and their caretakers in the mid valley. I can't tell you how many tens of thousands of dollars Poppa poured into the mid valley to fix cats here--money made by the hard work of volunteers.

Recycled Gardens began with a simple concept. Volunteers would collect unwanted plants, even dig them up at sites slated for development, repot and care for them, then sell them at Recycled Gardens to make money to prevent unwanted pets. A circle.

Keni, the director, had to quit running the nursery due to personal issues over a year ago. RG was going to close a year ago, but there was outcry over it. So, a plan was worked out so a woman was paid a salary to run it. But, that really didn't work out at all. The nursery fell into the red. The board, three long time dedicated wonderful volunteers, voted to close it. Today was the final sale day.

What will become of my Poppa funding now? I don't know. For now, they have some savings to carry on. But, we will need to find other ways to raise funds and write grants or my cat fixing days will be over. For a couple years, I spent over $20K of Poppa's money a year, fixing mid valley cats. And yet there are still thousands of unfixed cats in the mid valley needing fixed.

Why is Poppa's approach better than the FCCO's? For one thing, I use the money at private vet clinics, making it far easier than using the three or four FCCO clinics per year in this area.

For another thing, I take in more house cats to be fixed than ferals, using Poppa money. This is of prime importance. Fixing ferals is after the fact, after cats have been abandoned or dumped by their owners unfixed and begun feral colonies. Fixing house cats prevents feral colonies from beginning in the first place so it is highly effective, when paired with fixing existing feral colonies, too. The FCCO only fixes ferals.

The amount of money I used from Poppa yearly, at the time I got the highest allowance, although it was always paid directly to a vet, not to me, I still spent far less than any salaried shelter worker draws in pay each year.

Think about that. Think about the "what if", if far more money were donated and spent on spay/neuter than to pay just the salaries and overhead at shelters. Then change would happen.

I remember a few years ago, a volunteer party, public welcome. Keni's husband has a rock band. He's so shy but man can he and his friends ever beat out the rock. About 6 or 8 of us women, half drunk, up in the gravel below the steps into the barn. The band was on the porch of the barn, blasting rock. All of us women, old and young, but mostly middle aged and over, dancing wildly beneath the stars in the warm night air. We couldn't get any of the men to join us. They'd watch, leaning against the railings, but we couldn't get them to join in the dancing. What a time that was. And boy was I sore the next day.

Goodbye Recycled Gardens. What a wonderful nursery it was.