Tilly NoTail Black (TNT) is Tame. Home Wanted!

UPDATE:  Tilly Notail Black went directly from surgery at Heartland Humane Society in Corvallis, to remove what was left of her tail, a skinned section about six inches long, to a grand new life and home with a friend of mine who lives near Corvallis.  Heartland was so good to that little girl, doing that surgery, providing pain meds and antibiotics afterwards, it is heart warming to think about it now.  Tilly has her home!  Also, three more Albany cats were fixed today, two girls, a long hair calico, Nala, with a severe heart murmur, and a chubby brown tabby teen, plus a big boy, Leo.  I did not get photos this time.  Forgot my camera.  And, as an added wonder, to my life, the two calicos are leaving also, to be taken in for adoption by West Coast Dog and Cat Rescue of Eugene.

Tilly Notail Black, the newly minted manx, wants a nice cozy home.  Her skinned bloody tail is being amputated today.

I was putting food in the rabbit hutch, where I've had her housed since retrapping her in S. Salem a couple days ago, and she head bumped the food plate.

I thought, "Hmmm.  I think she wants her chin scratched."

So I put down the food plate, reached in, and started scratching her chin, then her ears.  She shifted into it, flopping on her side.  The purring began.

Tilly Notail, whom I trapped a few months ago, in a large colony carelessly bred by irresponsible humans, who then left them all behind, is tame!

This sweetie is not going back there.  No way Jose!

I'm going to need helping finding her a  great home.  Spread the word!!!

Tilly NoTail is sleek gorgeous and today, she loses that bloody hanging stump, what's left of her tail.  Three or four inches of her tail already dropped off.

This was her back when I trapped her to be fixed at the FCCO.

I'll get a really nice photo of her after she gets home tonight.  Temp home, ok, not permanent here.  I have too many.  She needs a real home, where she can get all the attention she wants.  There is one out there for her.

Marketing issue alert.  Let's find her some good people!

I'm not so great with adoptions.  I haven't had an adoption since last fall.

So I need help to help Tilly NoTail Black!

Dangers of Life

I trapped a Salem colony a few months ago.  Shortly thereafter the couple and their kin moved out and left every cat.  19 of them.  It was the daughter of the elderly neighbors who had asked me to get them fixed, since the woman who was allowing them to breed would do nothing.  The woman even was a no show at spay appointments set up and prepaid for by the neighbors daughter.  How's that for abhorrent behavior?

Now the old couple is left caring for them.  One of them, a young female when I got her fixed, lost part of her tail recently and most of what is left of the tail is skinned.  This could have happened if her tail was run over.  It could have happened if she was seeking warmth inside an engine compartment and the car was started.  She could have been grabbed by a dog as she was running away too.  Today I drop trapped her and Thursday, she will either have her tail stump amputated or she will be euthanized, at Heartland.  

Life is full of dangers.   Especially when you're born unwanted.  And born because some asshole junkie didn't see the need to fix any of her cats and left them all behind when she moved.   There are plenty of heartless assholes out there.  Many of them are on drugs and just no longer have any use for their brains.  They are the walking dead among us, zombies, bodies and minds no longer theirs but taken over, by a drug.  They serve only the drug now.

Am I in a mood?  I am in a mood all right.  I zombify drug addicts because they end up treating animals and kids badly.  They reproduce and bring up their kids in angry hovels of trash and the kids have to take care of their own parents when they're "sick".  The kids, seeing no other way, end up just like them.  It's all they know.  Then they have kids.  On it goes.  Seems no way out of the cycle.

But is the other side any better, slaves to money, making more and more, sacrificing family and any real values other than working to get more.  Is that any better?  There must be an inbetween, where happiness lies, where the pressure to be the American dream, to work harder and harder, is laughed about, mostly, and people buy what they need and no more. And are not such slaves to working for somebody else.  Is there that?

She looked like this when I got her fixed, not that long ago.

And now what is left of her tail looks like this.

And this. 

 I've begun to think those who break all rules in this life are rewarded most.  From lying cheating big banks and businesses, like those three big credit rating companies, in the latest sleaze scandal, who have been operating above the law for who knows how long and we, the little people, are at their mercy.   On the ground and in the trenches, little people are called to task for the tiniest of infractions, while the movers and shakers do what they like.  The poor are blamed and tweaked and pecked at more.

A grand illusion.

This little girl's suffering will end, one way or the other, on Thursday.  Because there still are people out there who give a shit, that a little life is having a really rough time of it out there in the big and dangerous world.  The old couple feeding these unwanteds, the discardeds, both have health issues.  Their daughter, who masterminded getting them fixed and this little girl retrapped came all the way from Portland to make sure it happened. Her foot was just operated on.  She's hobbled.  She and her husband are suffering from a business deal gone bad, someone took them for all they had, and vanished.  Despite all that, she rose above, as I rose above to go help, all my issues and stress of late.

See, some of us do that, despite it all.

Despite getting crushed like bugs all the time.  We unflatten off the pavement, like cartoon characters, to rise again and go help a little stray cat.  Despite all our hardships and issues and boy we got plenty of issues.

Assholes of the world, large and small, take note.  We're stronger than you could ever imagine.

We, the little people with the warm hearts.

Hard Day in a Cold Car. But.....Six More Local Cats Fixed!

Yesterday wasn't easy on my beat up body.  I spent the day crunched up in my cold stinky car waiting for cats to be fixed at the Portland FCCO clinic.

I had 12 reservations.  I had a call from an Albany couple who thought they were feeding ten or twelve cats, mostly males, along with a neighbor around the corner.

I only caught two and then, for whatever reason, everyone else disappeared.  In fact, I never saw any other cats besides these two, caught quickly.  That put me in a bind.  I didn't want to drive all the way to Portland for two cats.  It's not an easy trip for me.  I rarely have anything to do during the day, in colder weather, and often must sit hunched uncomfortably in my car for the day.  Often I sleep or read.  With my foot sore, I could not even go wander around stores and shops.  I did not want to put myself through more suffering for little reason.

Then I was called by a Lebanon woman who had called me before about a stray female and her kittens living on her porch.  She had then told me she thought the female was pregnant again.  I tried to go over at that time, about three weeks ago, but could not find the woman.

 I went over this time after she called again and got the two teens,  but the adult female could not be coaxed out of some bushes.  Later, she called to say she had the adult female inside her place.  A Lebanon friend picked her up and brought her here.  When she picked her up the woman said "Now don't bring her back, find her a home and could that woman bring me some cat food."  My friend explained I could not take on more cats and was very poor so not to expect me to supply her with cat food.  I later told her about the Safehaven food bank.  She has no car, she said, to get there.

However, the cat lucked out and an FCCO volunteer who has a rescue took her on, to adopt out.  Thank you Wilma!  The cat turned out to also be already spayed and is very probably not the mother of the two teens.

The two teens are a boy and a girl.  The Lebanon woman will take care of them.

Lebanon gray and white female fixed Sunday.

Lebanon male teen fixed Sunday,.

The Monmouth woman trying to get all the strays she feeds fixed also called, by chance and wanted to get more fixed.  She had borrowed traps and was trapping.  She caught three, but two turned out to be already fixed.  The only one of the three not already fixed was a big feral brown tabby male.  Now he is fixed.

Monmouth brown tabby male fixed yesterday.

I had been devastated last summer, confounded actually, by antics at an Albany apartment complex.  I was first contacted by a tenant last spring, who asked if I could get the cats she and a neighbor fed, fixed.  I said I would.  But then she claimed that management would likely kill them and if they couldn't go somewhere else, probably best to not bother fixing them.  At the time, I had a vineyard that wanted cats so I told her I did have a place.  But she declined the relocation opportunity then, and also help getting them fixed.  This was crazy.  But it got crazier.

I was contacted by a different tenant there, late in the summer, who was moving out because of the drama of the cats and the tenants who fed refusal to get them fixed.  She was anxious for the cats to be fixed and willing to sign an anesthesia release even though she was moving out that weekend.  I spent most of the night there trapping, with great tenant inteference.  Was like a circus to them, I guess, but it greatly impeded efforts to trap.  I caught six cats, but only two true ferals.  The other four were males, three of them discarded by other tenants who had moved and left them and the fourth actually owned by tenants in the adjacent complex.   They agreed to him being fixed.

Later, I was told, that the feeder woman found homes for the other three tame abandoned males I had taken to be fixed.  I was really happy about that.  But not so happy the rest had not been fixed.  One of the females had a litter late last fall.  Two of those are still there also needing fixed now.

The main feeder woman promised to use her own trap to catch the four other ferals. I rigged it for her to make it easy to selectively trap.  Afterwards, however, she would not return my calls.  I finally went over, a month later, to see what was up, to find her trap on her front porch, with the rigged device attached.  She had not even tried to feed in it and catch the others.  She was hostile to me.  I asked the other woman, who lives next door, and is home all day, to then selectively trap.  She said she would but then never contacted me back.  It was frustrating and futile.

Then I got an e-mail from someone whose daughter lives there.  Management by late October had decreed the cats could no longer be fed.  There was nothing I could do, since the main feeders would not contact me or return calls but I forwarded the e-mail to the city.  I heard nothing more.

Until the mayor contacted me a couple weeks back, to say the feeder tenants had been evicted and the one with a trap wanted to donate her trap to me.  I thought, "oh gosh" and told the mayor because of that woman with the traps' behavior, I didn't want it.

 I contacted Meow Village and despite lack of funds and overwhelming demand, they were willing to take these cats if they could be caught.  The feeder woman returned my call this time, when I told her about Meow Village being willing to take them and we just had to catch them, so the unfixed ones could be fixed, and then all taken to Meow Village.  That was ten days ago.  She was all gung ho, said she was out of the apartment there, due to her eviction, into a new place but had paid an extra month so she could hopefully find the cats a place.  I thought she meant it. She said she'd do whatever it took to catch them. I told her I had reservations this Sunday for the unfixed ones to be fixed and set it up for Saturday night.

Everything had changed by Saturday night.  I urged her to start setting the trap early.  But she did not answer when I called her.  She was supposed to have been feeding inside her own tied open trap for the past 8 days.  They should be easy to trap if she'd done so.

I finally got ahold of her late and again urged her to set the trap.  She caught one cat.  I went over to pick her up and transfer her to my trap.  The cat was freaked out and I was fairly sure had been left out uncovered in the trap.  But I said nothing and urged her to reset the trap.  Well she tried, but the plastic piece in the trap was over the trigger plate so the trap would not set.  I pointed this out and she got mad and snapped at me.  I then saw that she was using about one tiny flake of tuna as bait, dropped into an empty cat food can and suggested she use a paper plate, so the bait could be seen and much more bait than one tiny piece of tuna.  She again snapped back at me.

I had had a hard day.  This was too much.  To have been so eager, in thinking she was totally into catching them this time, even had said I could be in that apartment to do it, believing her, believing she had fed in a trap for a week, which would make it so easy to catch them, and suddenly to realize none of this had taken place and that it was last summer all over again and that she may be dedicated to making this fail and maximizing my suffering in attempts to help her and these cats out, I wanted to sob.  I said nothing. But I knew it wasn't going to happen.  I left, with the one cat.

I had to be in Portland early with the cats I had.  Nine in all.  She didn't catch any cats all day Sunday. I don't think she even tried.  By Sunday night, she was texting me her excuses,  intent on blaming me and her work schedule.  I was upset. They could be saved. I knew now that was not going to happen and she had saddled me with a single cat, who cannot be relocated alone and what was I going to do now.  This was all so unfair, to me and to the cats.  It still is, although the mayor is going to ask management if I can just be there and trap them.  Haven't heard yet.  It really all totally sucks.

The lone female was fixed yesterday.  Also fixed were the two females I caught at the supposed ten cat colony, where I only saw the two, but at least they are fixed now.

This is her and I don't know what is to become of her if her family members cannot be caught.  You cannot relocate a feral alone, without their family.  Feral relocation rarely works anyhow, but if you do not relocate a family together, the cats are as good as dead.

Tame abandoned Albany female, fixed yesterday.

This is the one surviving offspring of the Siamese mix tame female, abandoned in Albany.  This tabby on white teen girl was fixed yesterday.  Her brother was hit and killed on Salem Road a few days ago.

I feel like I failed the cats in both situations. I am tired today, tired like I've been run down by a bulldozer.  Half of that is the despair over what happened with the apartment cats who could have been saved were it not for their lord and master, the woman who was evicted for feeding them, but would not get them fixed, back last summer and seems to not want them saved even now.  I cannot understand.

While in Portland, uncomfortably shifting around in that car, cold and cramped and sore, I got out and hobbled around a little to take some photos.  The clinic is located in an industrial area of Portland.  People dump trash, as they do here, in locations where they feel they can get away with doing so.  This area is one of those trash dump sites.

Berry vine buried street sign.

Razor wire protected.

I watched 60 Minutes last night and it was depressing.  More complete dishonest nonsense from big business.  This time, it's the three big credit rating agencies that hold Americans by the balls.  This report exposed the massive numbers of mistakes on consumer credit reports held by the three large credit rating companies.  Your credit report gets checked when you apply for any loan and often when you apply for a job.  One out of ten Americans has a credit report error.  And, there is no real method for a consumer to change mistakes.

60 Minutes interviewed whistle blowers whose jobs had been working for the big three credit report companies, to review consumer attempts to right wrongs on their credit report.  It was just shocking.  There is no checking out consumer error complaints or remedying errors.  The three former employees always  judged in favor of the banks who made the error.  They never made calls, or did any investigating of the errors.  It's terrible, horrible, fraudulent and, according to one state attorney general, against the law.

They hold your fate in their hands and they don't care. It's ridiculous and depressing.

You can view the report here.

Oh, and by the way, the credit reports sent to you, when you request them from the big three credit report companies, are not the same reports they send to creditors who request them.  Yeah.  Fraudulent all the way.  You can forget that common suggestion made that you check your credit report once a year.

Nine More. Nine More. Nine More.........

Life is hard here lately.  Blueberry is better, but life is hard.  Mitzy and Colors are still here, hoping for homes, of the 8 cats abandoned in Albany by a drug addict.  The other six of the 8 went to two other rescues, but I couldn't find another, to take the last two lost girls.

I still hope before the cascades of free kittens crowd craigslist, to find someone to love Mitzy and Colors.

In the meantime, I took 9 more local unfixed cats to be fixed Friday at Heartland.

I took five more girls from the 23rd street house.  I took three from an apartment on Jackson street.  And I took in the latest yard stray, although he has been around in and out of my yard for some time.  However, lately, he'd taken up residence in a neighbors shed and was spray marking, driving Peeman Sam into a frenzy of indoor pee marking in response.  I could not go forward, so Roger Roger, the name I gave this latest male, got himself trapped and fixed too.  It will be three weeks before he doesn't smell and act like an unfixed male.  Three more weeks of hell.

AC, one of the 23rd st house outside twin tabby girls, fixed Friday.

DC, the other outside tabby twin from 23rd street fixed Friday.

Harley, one of three sisters from the 23rd street house fixed Friday.

Molly, another of the three sisters, fixed Friday. I did not get a photo of Nixi, a torti, and the third sister.

Bagira, a medium hair brown tabby female, was also fixed, from Jackson street.

Bitsy, another Jackson street kitty fixed Friday.

Mocha, a big Siamese mix boy, also  fixed Friday.

Last but not least, Roger Roger, the yard stray, was fixed.

That's six more girls and three more boys who won't be making more unwanteds.  Breeding season and soon kitten season are upon us already.

To a God Unknown. Book Review

I like John Steinbeck's writings.  I like Cannery Row especially.  But this book was a little harder to read.  I was not sure where he was going with it or what he was trying to say, if he was trying to make a point.

The book is about Joseph, an earthy man, who feels the earth as himself and does not feel, as Christians seem to, a distance from the earth, or a need to be rescued from it, as if the earth itself is sinful and dirty and humans something special and higher and pure and chosen.

Joseph leaves his father, who is like him in thought, leaving his father in his old age, to travel to California to make a land claim.  There, his claim thrives in the first years, and after his father's death, his brothers come to join him with their families.  Joseph becomes bonded to a particular tree and feels his father's spirit has travelled, after his physical death, to join him, taken up in the tree, to watch over him, advise him, and share in his life.

Each character in the story uses different beliefs and strategies to engage or survive life.  The youngest brother engages in liquor and womanizing.  His death is barely registered by his clan.  Thomas, another brother, tames wild animals, and finds comfort among animals, far more so than he is able to find with humans.  Burton, yet another brother, is a very stern and devout Christian, who is unyielding in his beliefs and catches Joseph talking to the tree, taking the tree food and offerings, much as local Catholic Mexicans would light candles and count the Rosary and go to mass with its sacred objects.  He confronts his brother, and calls him a pagan.

Burton in the end condemns Joseph and kills the tree before taking off with his wife and children to build a house elsewhere.  He is almost apologetic before he leaves in his judgemental doings, telling Thomas and Joseph he was too isolated at the claim and would be better off near people of his own beliefs.  None of the brothers come across in this book with even any color, when I think of them as I read or now, after I have finished the book.  I only remember them in black and white.   I remember all the book's characters as dull, with the exception of Rama, Thomas's wife.

Joesph takes a wife, Elizabeth, who grew up with a mean spirited father in Monterrey, before she became a school teacher where Joseph found her and courted her.    She is much like Joseph and with him, freed of constrained beliefs that bound her before.

After the tree dies, the story turns darker.  Joseph is keenly in touch with the land, the weather and its animals.  This is a story of farmer, a rancher, whose success and failure depend on his skills reading the land and the sky.  He was told when he made his claim about the dry years.  He lives in worry that they will come.  After the tree dies, and after Burton leaves, the dry years come, scorching the earth, and taking all life from it.  Their hay is soon used up and the cattle are starving.

Elizabeth and he go for a ride to a glade.  She climbs a rock, chatting and happy, slips, and in one moment, breaks her neck and is gone.  Joseph, who is so disconnected from himself and the human world, carries her back to the settlement on his horse.  In one second, all the opinions, all the hopes and dreams, and past and skills and talk, all that was his wife is gone.  One simple slip and all that was Elizabeth is gone forever.

Elizabeth's character in the book, is the one most like a blooming flower, the only character that gives the reader some optimism about the story.  When she is crushed out, so is hope.  I thought of her as fresh water pouring into a moldy stagnant pool.  The brothers and their wives and children, so set in their own beliefs, gone sour with the stagnancy of their ways and thoughts.

Here is a quote from the book, that very much encompasses the reasons I like reading Steinbeck.  He has very briefly described Elizabeth's childhood and father, who is harsh.  She has studied to become a teacher and taken her county exams and has been quiet and stays shut up and silent near her outspoken angry father.  The quote:  "it was a decent means of leaving her home, and her town where people knew her too well; a means of preserving the alert and shatterable dignity of a young girl.  To the community where she was sent, she was unknown and mysterious and desirable.....The people among whom she went to live did not know her baby name".  So Steinbeck, in three paragraphs, describes how she was, how she left that fate, and pursued another, how she became someone else entirely, exactly who or what, was up to her, in a community where she was not known.  He is adept at deep character creation in very little space!

Later on in the book, Joseph will ask Elizabeth if she thinks much anymore, about the books she's read or all the things she learned in school.  And she will respond that she doesn't, that she just lives now, and thinks about her tasks at hand or things she sees in front of her.

Rama, Thomas' wife, is a gypsy by nature, with deep homey earth skills and has recognized Joseph for what he is from the beginning, his pagan beliefs and deep connection to the earth.  She is similar in her beliefs but they are not born of need to connect with the land as are Josephs'.  Her beliefs are more passed down, as women give birth and talk, and superstitious connections are made up to exist merely through coincidence of occurrence.

Rama is like the rock of the story.  I knew she would not be killed off and could not be.  She was the interesting solid steady side character and while Joseph's beliefs got the better of him, I knew all along Rama's would not. She is well-grounded in the needs of reality.

At the end of the book, all has been lost.  Thomas has driven the cattle far towards the coast in attempts to save some of the herd from starvation.  He is gone with his family, and the hired Vaqueros.  The claim and its barns, once high in hay, its gardens lush in vegetables, and its once filled houses, all empty, in ruin--deserted.  Joseph has been swallowed by his ritualized beliefs and dies at his own hand.  His suicide he justifies with his  beliefs. But his end really comes as all his hope fades.  He is unable to disconnect his beliefs from life reality  or find a way forward once they have failed him.

The book is dark and distant from its own characters.  Belief systems, from paganism, to Christianity to Catholicism are portrayed as arising from various needs, hopes and fears, either individual or group and though different, conceived for similar reasons.  They are useless in the end, as tools to manipulate greater forces and fate.

When I'm in the mood, to curl up, on a stormy night, wrapped in a blanket with a cup of tea or hot cocoa nearby, and reach for a good story book, I'll bypass To a God Unknown and grab Cannery Row or Tequila Flats instead.

Rear Main

My car is leaking oil still.  Rear main seal.  Let it leak, is what I say.  My brother advises that also.  The car has over 216,000 miles on it, almost all cat miles, from transporting cats, mainly to and from spay neuter surgery clinics.  My angelic car has probably transported over 7000 cats to be fixed.  And it smells like it has.

It isn't worth the high cost of replacing a rear main seal.  Unfortunately, nowadays, cars are built hard to work on and to replace the rear main on my type of car comes with a hefty "get to the part" labor bill.  Either the cars engine or trans axle thingy has to be pulled.  The mechanic told me even the sub frame, whatever that is, would first have to come off.

It's a grand or more in good cold cash.

Yikes!  On a car that may start money pitting me with other failures due to its mileage age.

I love that car.  I want buried in it.  I can't bring myself to speak of its "diagnosis" anywhere near it.  It might "know".  The car has a soul, I think.   Because it has been faithful and true to me and rallied beyond its Toyota given capacity for me.  I'm in awe.

Far cry from the cars I had before this one.  I had to carry survival gear, food, water, tools (lots of them), repair manuals and be prepared for a breakdown anywhere.  I broke down everywhere in my former cars.  None were reliable.  Until this car took charge. This car has carried me places I never dreamed I would go.

The car loves cats.  The car has heart.  The car bleeds courage.

What's not to admire?

I've drug it's rear bumper down the street and when I heard the scraping noise, leaped out and popped it back into place.  I've done the same with the front bumper.  I turned down streets in the dark to avoid high water, in last years flooding here, only to find myself in higher water, water so high my car should have sucked it in and drowned itself.  But it didn't.  Did my car hold its breath until I could drive up onto a sidewalk?  How did it survive that plunge?

How I love that car!  I knocked the electronic mirror silly on the edge of the garage backing out. It broke.  I taped it back together.  One night, sitting in a dark parking lot at an apartment complex, a guy comes out and is messing with a pickup right beside my trap.  I sit back, watching, hoping he doesn't notice the trap, from the other side of the parking lot . He finally does.  I have to yell at him to please leave the trap alone.  He comes over to my car window.  It's after midnight.  I know I have to be a good talker because it's not a good complex, full of drama, full of people whose lives are hard with big huge issues.  He finally wants to give me his number, in case I know of work he can do.  He claims he's a certified union carpenter and mason.  He writes his number on the back of one of my cat fixing business cards.

A few months later, I'm in Mill City trying to put up fliers to promote a Corvallis FCCO clinic.  I stop in at the sheriff office and give him one.  He says he's glad to know there are programs.  I talk about what I do, personally, and he asks if I have a card.  I give him one.  He looks at it, then turns it over.  On the back he sees the name of that guy and his number.  His face turns a funny color.  I didn't remember I hadn't thrown out that card with that guys name and number from the parking lot.

The deputy asks how I know this guy.  He starts talking about when he arrested him and where and for what. "Oh shit," I think. I'm frazzled and suddenly nervous, not wanting the deputy to think that me and the guy in the parking lot, who was obviously a criminal, are friends in any way.  I'm scared of cops.  I try not to be, but I am.  It's the time I spent in Corvallis, in the mental system, getting hauled away by them, the stunts they pulled on me, as someone nobody gave a shit about.  Some of them understood well they could get away with anything on people nobody gave a shit about.  Sport hunting.  Me a prey animal.  Worthless.

 I tell the deputy how I came to get the guys number.  I just want to get out of there now, away.  I tell him about trapping in the Albany complex and that the guy claimed he was taking photos of a pickup he and his brother bought to fix up and sell and how he asked me, there after midnight, in a dark parking lot, if I wanted to buy that pickup cheap or how about a BMW.  He took me for either an idiot or someone who wouldn't mind taking advantage of a cheap car likely stolen.  Opportunity knocking!

I said to him if he's so good at fixing cars, how about fixing my side mirror then right then and there.  He messed around with it a few minutes, after which it dropped and hung and I thanked him and grabbed my trap and got the hell out of there.  It was after that encounter, when the guy truly finished off that mirror, so there was no hope of fixing it, that I ordered another from ebay motors.   And installed it myself.  For $30.  That's all it cost.  An entire new mirror with housing and wiring.

I got out of Mill City too, after giving the deputy by accident the card with the car thief's name number on the back.  My whole feel good thing, handing out and putting up fliers, trying to drum up cats to be fixed for the Corvallis FCCO student coordinators, now had turned into a feeling of unease, a feeling the deputy now thought I too was a criminal and not helping cats at all.

Off I went, my car reliable, sure, windows down, stereo blasting, making everything ok, laughing.

The rock of ages.  The one sure thing.  The connector of all things.

Let my little car leak.  I'll clean up after it in its old age.  I won't even tell it it's dribbling.

Now, let's switch to cats!!!  I still have two of the eight nursery abandoned cats here.  They need a home, somewhere nice and loving!  Come on now.  I know there is someone who needs them like they need you, somewhere out there.  It's a matter of finding you.  For now, I've named them Mitzy and Colors, but I'm not set on those names.  Waiting for them to tell me their names, if you know what I mean.

Blueberry is still in my bathroom.  Her last day on metronizadole for gut bacteria overgrowth is today.  Her stools are still loose, however, and I hope she "solidifies".  I finally fixed my clippers so I could clip some of her long fine fur. I'd accidentally clipped the cord itself, resulting in interesting sparks when the bare spot of wire touched the floor.  I bought a cheap plug, cut off the cord  before the damaged section and put the new plug on the wire.   I'm not much good with the clippers.  Blueberry's fur mats in the undercoat, like Hairy's fur does.

Blueberry, back now cut shorter.  She is very patient with my clipping.

Stiletto, of the Business Nine, looking cute.

Since Gretal had all her teeth pulled, a year ago, she has gained weight and made friends.

Sam and Buffy are long time friends, but sometimes Sam pushes the limits.

Juno's Story