Church of the Child Molestors Update: 31 teens pregnant or with kids

Down at the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas, a.k.a. Church of the Child Molesters, the Fundamentalist Mormon dirty old men impregnated (for religious reasons, of course) 31 teen girls ranging in age from 13 to 17.

When these kids are forced into marriage often with middle aged or geezer men, the first rape occurs in their temple. Imagine a grunting bloated older man, atop your little girl, your daughter, mothers out there. Wouldn't you get a shotgun and put an end to that? Normal people would.

But not religious freakazoids.

Not even politically aspiring democratic mayors of Portland have the morals and balls to stay off a child. Remember Neil Goldschmidt and the widespread cowardly behavior of those who knew he was raping a kid, his babysitter and did nothing? His bodyguard, an Oregon state cop, went on to become Sheriff, who adultered with Mr. Childmolester Mayor/Governor of Oregon's wife.

No wonder our society is messed up. Child molesters harm the very fabric that creates the future--the women.

Are some men so owned by their penises they can't see the forest for the trees? Well then neuter them, for god's sake, for the sake of our healthy futures.

Neutered cats and dogs get real lives. They're no longer just a walking angry fighting penis, (or kitten factory) serving their penises only, run by hormones alone. Once that little problem is gone, their brains function and they get a chance to branch out and get real lives.

Many human males have progressed beyond penis servitude. It's probably a real sign of evolution in action. It's the only way to world peace. Superior men have brains that rule their actions.

War is hormonal--male hormonal, face offs on fence tops, spray marking, full blown battle. Hormones are the reason we have learned nothing since the dawn of time about resolving conflicts through any other means but war.

But then, the Spartans, the 300, who held off the massive army, they were allegedly a gay army. So, many holes in my simplistic theory.

Hormones do spawn aggression and violence, on the streets throughout the world.

And hormones cause men to misinterpret and manufacture religions that allow them to serve their penises, free of the guilt, by over riding morality to molest children and control women.

Women who do not defend their children from such actions have distorted hormones, too.

It's pathetic. Guys who are unable to "master their domain" should neuter themselves. And women who turn over their children to be molested or who stand by and do nothing should get themselves spayed.

And mothers, instead of turning over your daughters to the penis only men, teach your girls self confidence, independent thinking and self-defense, so they do not fall victim so easily to men like these religious molesters and the Neil Goldschmidts of our world.

Yes, I want men to be men, protectors, providers, and women to be women, rabid defenders of children and nurturers. But some, of both sexes, are severely hormonely distorted. These rigid traditional roles, as we see them, are far from societal based. They are hormonal based to some extent.

I know, there are all degrees of what I might term hormone fueled behaviors/roles in people. I know this even from dealing with cats, seeing some extremely nurturing males, who love kittens and are peacemakers, even gay males, and very warrior like athletic female cats alongside traditionally dainty kitties. I see the massively hormoned macho male cats, with thick necks and jowels who want total control of their environment and take control by brute force, attacking anything they see, from kittens to females and of course any other male around.

In the cat world, such aggressive males are losing out in part because if a male fights routinely these days, that male, the big hormoned up males, will get FIV and no longer be passing their genes into the pool. FIV is primarily spread through the deep bite wounds unfixed free roaming males get and inflict upon one another when they fight. Those they fight with will also end up with FIV. In this manner, natural selection is dealing with extreme feline aggression. The unfixed males who survive to breed, are the more social and less aggressive males.

Another dilemma in the human population becomes the desire to breed and the desire to bear children. Big families are a source of permanent support and companionship. Children from big families seem better adjusted, and not as prone to the "single kitten" mentality--of a self-centered kid/adult, who doesn't know how to play well with others.

Likewise kittens, who grow up alone, or who are taken from their mother and siblings too young and adopted into a one cat family, where they are left alone for long periods, generally grow up to be not exactly psychologically healthy cats.

The world has way too many people already, however. How to deal with conflicting values--keeping the planet healthy, with a smaller population, and the healthy desire people have to create and live in big families. I don't know the answers.

In other news, I am terribly excited that my tooth pain will finally end. Just two more weeks to wait and then, well, I'm so excited about the extraction date finally coming up, now just two weeks away, I almost pee my pants when I think about it.

The thought is better than good sex, better than chocolate ice cream, which I can't eat due to cold hurting my tooth, better than even maybe catching forty feral cats for spay/neuter. Well, maybe not better than the thrill of the latter, which is a real high for me, even if all my teeth were on fire in pain.

What I'm saying is, OH MY GOSH, finally, the pain will end!!!!!!!! Two more weeks.

Fleecing the Common American

I can't believe the news stories of late. If they're true, man alive we're being fleeced by our government. The oil companies, recording billions in profits, are getting government subsidized. Who else thinks that is outrageous? I do. We should be marching in the streets protesting that one. Our government is owned by special interests. Our leaders stand at their public pulpits feeding the public very key word emotionalism, to fire us up in the wrong direction, to take our eyes off what is really going on, or to kind of subjugate theivery to "well, I guess it's ok" status.

Our FDA is a farce, protecting none of us from much of anything. Latest scandals: toxic prescription drugs made in China and imported back, post production, by drug companies, to sell here, who (wiping tear from eye), claim they are the victims of Chinese product subterfuge. Yeah right. You make your products over there for cheap labor and no oversight. Now, go directly to jail. Only you won't because you bought off the right people.

The FCC is a farce, too, exposed in the latest airline scandals of kickbacks to FCC managers if inspections were just not done or problems overlooked. What the fuck? Did these people lose their jobs, at the least, I hope? They need to be in jail.

Over and over we see misuse, to the tune of millions of dollars, of government issued credit cards. Usually it's Pentagon employees spending your tax dollars on vacations to Vegas, hotels, electronics, etc. The latest scandal involved Veterans Affairs workers, ripping off, by misuse of government credit cards, not only taxpayers but the veterans they are to serve. Any of these theives fired? I remember the whistleblowers in some of the Pentagon misuse of funds cases were fired and a year afterwards, when the story was updated, some of the worst offender theives had actually been promoted. Who says crime doesn't pay?

I just don't know what has happened to America. It's like I fell asleep and when I woke up, a lot of what was familiar is gone.

I saw scientists again today, outraged that politics has driven investigations into allowable toxins, and how the White House just decides what, in investigations, it will allow. This is like a dictatorship would do. Scientific studies don't need run through the White House. They're not scientists. Manipulation of facts is atrocious and fat suited moblike seedy dictators of third world nations, like in Africa, behave in this fashion. But it's not supposed to happen here, in America.

Makes me want to cry sometimes. I love America. I want America back.

Woohoo. Home for two orange tabs

Two of the nine are leaving tomorrow! Woohoo! Yahoo. The girl spayed yesterday and another medium hair female---out the door tomorrow, to a situation similar to the one they originally came from.

That leaves seven adult orange tabbies to place. Four are at my friends' place, in her garage--two females and two males. Three adults left here, two females and one male.

Wouldn't it be nice to find one barn home for all of them?

Yes, it would.

I also have not returned the three ferals from Heatherdale, fixed yesterday--two boys, Silver Smoke and the Big Black long hair, and one girl, a young brown tabby, in hopes a barn home will come along. If one doesn't, in the next two days, well that's the way it is and they'll go back and I hope they're treated kindly. But, I always hope to find something better for such lovely kitties.

Because they deserve it.

Confrontation at Heatherdale

I was over again trying to catch the remaining unfixed cats at Heatherdale. I wonder why I bother. Along comes a blue van and a woman begins talking to the man I'm helping with cats. She looks at me and says she knows me, that I dumped three cats she didn't want at her trailer a few years back.

I bristled. "I don't dump cats," I said, truthfully. "What trailer are you in?"

She told me.

"Oh," I said, remembering. "You were feeding those cats and asked me to get your own house cats fixed and those strays you fed."

"Yeah," she said, "but I didn't want those strays back and you dumped them back here."

"I'm not your slave," I said, "and your lying is disgusting and mean. You asked me to get them fixed. I did. And you got a couple hundred dollars or more of service for nothing and my time and labor and bait, too---for nothing. What do you do for anybody?" She started laughing and again claimed I dumped cats that weren't hers.

I told her she doesn't do anything for that park or anybody else but increase the drug trafficing there. She drove off.

I went back to my car. I was angry and fed up. The man I'd been helping came over and said "at least we appreciate you." I said "I have to leave." He said "You are making our park a much better place to live, she should shut up and you're welcome at our trailer anytime." I told him thank you. The tears were flowing. I'm just kind of worn out and...I don't know. I just...I don't know.

Too much lately. I have all these cats to place. Just too much lately.

We Know Not What We Do

Mother/One Kitten Disappear

The woman fostering the four orange tabby kittens, who also adopted their mother, left a message this morning that the mother had taken off, with one kitten. She'd left the door open, to the foster room and the laundry room, which opens outside. The mother took off, with one kitten clutched in her teeth by the kittens scruff. It was one of the female kittens.

I tried to call her back. No answer. She finally called back and said she had to go, that they were looking, didn't give really any information. I left a message that I was headed up. I headed up there intent on retrapping the escaped mother and kitten. I've done this before, by using a drop trap and the remaining kittens in a carrier beneath the drop trap.

But when I arrived, no one seemed to be home. I was surprised since I'd just talked to her twenty minutes before. She had not mentioned going anywhere. Finally their son answered my knocks. He's a kid who doesn't talk much, maybe two word answers. I shouldn't say kid. He's twenty or so.

He said his folks were gone and he didn't know when they'd be back. He said he didn't know anything about the escaped cat and kitten. Then he wandered off. I didn't know what to do.

I had tried to arrange to come get two of the kittens, who had a home ready, on Sunday, but could not get ahold of the family. I left a message earlier this morning also, to same affect, trying to arrange to get the two who were going to a home today. A third kitten was to go to a Redmond couple who placed a hold on the kitten last week.

I hemmed and hawed around. I went out into the berry vines searching but it's a huge area and I had no idea where she'd seen the mother with kitten disappear. I had asked the son to call his mother, to get this information and when they might be coming back. He did call but afterwards, would not even say a word to me, other than he didn't know when they would be back.

I searched the fields with binoculars. Tramped through the berry vines. But it is a huge area. The mother finally came out of her bedroom. She is elderly and very sweet. Her daughter wanted to keep the fourth kitten for her. The mother said she really didn't want another cat and I should take all three that are left. So I told the son I didn't know what to do, that I was going to take the kittens and his mother could contact me about catching the mother and fourth kitten.

At that time, the parents arrived home. The woman wouldn't even speak to me, just stalked past me, and finally screamed "They're in the fucking brush" when I asked where they had last been seen. Then she went inside and slammed the door. I didn't know what to do. I asked her husband what I should do at this point, that I didn't want yelled at by his wife.

He said he would go in and get the kittens. He came out with only two. I have homes for three already arranged. I wasn't happy with the woman. She'd not only left the door of the foster room open, where the mom also was, but done so with the laundry room door to the outside wide open. These doors were also open when I arrived with them gone. This was her fault. She didn't mean for the cat and kitten to escape, however. It was just one of those things, an accident. She had no business screaming at me over it.

So I left with the two kittens. I just wanted to sob. I had wanted to find the mother and the other kitten. I don't know if they'll even survive now. I don't know if she'll try to take that one kitten and head back to that barn where she came from, which isn't that far away, actually.

I drove home in a fog of sadness. I drove home in a big black pit of despair. And shock. I didn't expect her to scream at me. It was the last thing on Earth I expected. I expected she'd be there and together we'd try to find that little kitten and her mother.

I've struggled ever since Hopi and Moby died, with sadness and emptiness. I've struggled a lot. It is hard for me here. The culture, I suppose. The lack of any green quiet escape. The hordes of unfixed pets. The drugs. The crime. The alcohol. The roaring cars. The concrete. The absolute aloneness of my life here.

The Albany dirty air report is no surprise. People scoff here at regulation of anything. They scoff at climate change, or of any human culpability to maintain the Earth. They scoff at anyone who even thinks that maybe spraying every chemical available in garden departments on their yard and gardens is not such a great idea. I can't even come close to understanding the culture here. I don't want to try, anymore. I want gone from here.

I am determined to leave Albany for somewhere more in tune with the things I value. I'm dying.

Silver Smoke

I took seven cats up to be fixed today. One of them is the last orange tabby from the Lebanon situation. The other six are all from Heatherdale trailer park in Albany. Two of the six are owned. The other four are strays.

I don't see many silver smoke colored cats. I've never caught a feral silver smoke. Until last night. He's very feral, too, and such a pity he is, because he is gorgeous and would get a home in an instant. He does need a home, if anyone wants to give an extremely beautiful kitty a barn home offer. He lives under a crusty trailer at Heatherdale, along with some fellow strays and the neighbor wants them gone. Where have I heard that before?

I wish that people, instead of threatening cats, would, before a problem starts, prevent it, by going door to door in their neighborhoods, banding together to make sure it is understood "In our neighborhood, all pets need to be fixed" then helping those who can't afford it by having little neighborhood fundraisers, if need be, to get all cats and dogs fixed. That's all it would take. This could be helped if communities would pass mandatory spay/neuter ordinances. Dream on.

In our world, neighbors don't even know each other. And when people complain about a problem that could have been prevented in the first place, they want someone else to come solve it at someone else's expense.

Silver Smoke is a beautiful male kitty. He shares the undersides of the ramshackle trailer with several other cats. I caught three of those "others" last night, too. An orange and white short hair male, the nemesis of the park, due to his fighting and spray marking behavior. At last, he will be neutered. I caught a stoic lovely long hair black kitty, with a blazing white chest spot.

I assume this cat to be male, because of massive size, but I don't know that for sure. The cat never said a word, like the noisy orange and white, never fought the trap like Silver Smoke did, and sat in the trap like a condemned man might sit in a cell on the day of execution, frightened, heart pounding, but resigned, knowing there is no use fighting the inevitable. Or was this cat conserving energy in case I came off my guard and an opening arose, even slight, for escape? Was this what prompted the black longhairs even behavior, its refusal to meet my eyes? Silver Smoke met my eyes head on and charged the side of the trap hissing and striking out. Stupid behavior, if you ask me.

May I say this to you Silver, even though you can't read or even understand my language. "It isn't fair, I know, that you live in plain sight, like a ghost you are, of pampered housepets who are loved and doted over, who lounge on soft couches and take naps on windowsills and who never have to dig through garbage looking for bits of anything edible or dodge bullets and curses and rocks. I KNOW IT ISN'T FAIR. I know you're wonderful. I know you have a heart of gold, too. IT ISN'T FAIR!! I know what you want and who you are. I know."

The blacks behavior shows superior intelligence. But Silver Smoke is young, maybe a year, a twentyish, by human standards, outraged over his predicament. His anger turned off his thinking brain and any chance he might have of living, if I had been truly a threat.

Most true ferals, when caught, hunker down, not wanting to attract further attention to themselves. They don't meow in the trap. They don't meet my eyes, at first. They don't attack the side of the cage if I lift a corner of the towel, not repeatedly that is. They do when first startled if I pull up a corner of the towel covering the trap. Teen females often are far more aggressive from fear than other age groups. But not at first. At first trapping, for the first couple hours, the teen boys exhibit the most bravado if I lift the cage cover. The older females usually get a sense of what is going on quicker. In other words, they understand more quickly their lives are not in danger. After surgery, it's the adult males who are the most eager to eat, even in a trap, and also, usually very thirsty after coming out of anesthesia. The females have more pain issues after surgery and are more unlikely to eat.

But....Silver Smoke's relief will be so great, that he was wrong and not actually killed, that he will likely be far more grateful, if I would see him again out there, far more curious about me and my motives, might even follow me around the park, from a distance, were I out there trapping again. He'd know if I saw him that I would give him treats and talk to him. The ones who are most astonished by kind treatment are later the ones who seek out humans afterwards, because they've encountered a human or humans who understood. I always hope such cats do not encounter the cruel humans then. I will hope Silver Smoke is treated kindly. The angry feral beautiful Silver Smoke male, being neutered today, unwanted at Heatherdale.
This is the tame owned brown tabby female, young, who walked away from her just born kittens last week. They all died. She is being spayed today.
The orange and white problem Heatherdale male, losing his "problems" today.
The Long hair black stray, from Heatherdale, up being fixed today.
A young brown tabby stray, from Heatherdale, sex unknown, being fixed today.
Groucho, an owned male from Heatherdale, up being neutered today.

Cat Hunting at Heatherdale

I spent most of today tracking down unfixed cats at Heatherdale. I trapped three strays living under one trailer. And kids from one trailer came over to me with their brown tabby female in their arms, wanting her fixed. I'd taken in their male and another female over a week ago. The brown tabby female, just a teen, had kittens the night before, however, so she couldn't go. Well, all her kittens died. Why? Because she wanted to go outside and prowl around instead of taking care of them. She just abandoned them, in other words. So tomorrow, she will be fixed.

I also picked up another black and white mustached male, who is owned, from his owners, to be fixed.

In the this latest visit to Heatherdale, I've taken in nine owned cats, and six outside cats, although most of those six grew up inside the trailer of the man who feeds them, so most of those six were tame. 15 cats so far from Heatherdale.

Tomorrow, that total will increase to 20 from Heatherdale, including the first two true ferals. Most of the strays there are previously owned abandoned cats and not feral. If I catch them before they have litters, no colonies of true ferals will form. So I've got two true ferals and that's it, out of 20 fixed so far from that trailer park.

One of the true ferals is unbelievably gorgeous. He is a young silver smoke tabby male. Unbelievably gorgous.

Besides the five Heatherdale cats, I'll take in the final adult from the Lebanon orangies, making 12 adults fixed from that Lebanon barn.

More Orangie Photos. Nine Orangies need Homes

Peaches, who was the last cat we went and got up at the orange cat barn Lebanon situation. She was pregnant at spay and now needs a home.
This is the mom of the kittens up in foster. She was spayed Thursday and rejoined her kittens yesterday. Those folks are adopting her, along with one of the kittens.
One of two females, both pregnant, fixed yesterday, from the Orange situation. A third female, orange tabby, was spayed, too, but she was from Albany.
The short hair orange Lebanon female, who now needs a home, who was fixed yesterday.
One of two long hair males fixed yesterday.

Bad Air in Albany?

The report of bad air in Albany hardly surprises me. I live in an industrial district. The air sometimes stinks. But what stinks worse is the constant smoke from a neighbors wood burning. When he burns it, the smoke gets inside this house and sometimes the smell is so strong, I wake up thinking the house is on fire. My eyes burn. My throat burns and yuk! It's miserable. Click post title to see TRI report on Linn County emissions.

The two worst polluting offenders in Linn County, as far as the TRI, appear to be Wah Chang, on Salem Road, and the Pope and Talbot, Inc. Halsey pulp mill. The report makes for interesting, albeit scarey, reading.

But if you compare the number of reporting industries in Linn and Benton, Linn has far more who report. There are only some chemicals released that must be reported, apparently. The smell of manure near the OSU livestock barns would certainly top the charts if reporting was required. I lived near those barns, so I'm an expert on the volume of those odiferous (stinky) emissions. It was like living beside a cow outhouse, sometimes, that the porta potty people never emptied or cleaned. You know what I"m talking about.

I would think the air would be worse in Albany, if it is, because of the massive car problem here. There is an overpopulation of cars in Albany, big trucks, and an addiction to roaring one's vehicle engine, producing clouds of exhaust. I would think that would be a major contribution.

But, I knew someone who, when they moved to the mid valley, bought a house in Lebanon, rather than live in Albany, because, they said, Albany stinks. They have sinced moved to WA. Yes, sometimes it does.

Moral of the story, maybe it's good I don't exercise anymore, living here, due to lack of parks and anywhere to exercise. Breathing hard in bad air when exercising means inhaling more toxins into your body.

I saw a report on CNN about health insurance and people who don't have it. But not only that, if a family pays out of pocket for health insurance, buying their own policy, it can cost for a family of four, over $12,000 per year, merely for premiums, not counting copays. I don't know people who make that kind of money.

A senator is introducing a bill that would disconnect health insurance from employers, instead, encouraging employers to raise wages so people can buy their own. Like that would happen! He believes with people shopping around for their own insurance, prices would be driven down. Companies shop around now, and negotiate lower prices by volume of people they enroll from their company. Individual buyers would have no such volume leverage.

Anyhow, such a bill would only create more uninsured people, as the report pointed out, because people with pre-existing conditions then could not get insured when formerly they could do so through an employer. Allegedly, states have high risk pools to help such people get insurance, but the report stated that states help only a tiny fraction of the people who cannot get insurance due to pre-existing conditions.

The report stated the US got into the mess, with employers paying insurance, during WWII, when wages were frozen to combat inflation and tax breaks were given to industries to attract and keep workers that were to be passed on to workers in the form of things like health insurance.

They equated it with buying car insurance. You can choose not to have a car, however, if poor, and then not have to pay insurance. Most poor people I know drive uninsured. Why? Because even liability insurance for a good driver, without accidents or tickets, runs close to $500 a year. That's damn expensive. Go ahead and claim it isn't. It is, to people who live on very little.

I pay $45 a month, an amount that includes the monthly $5 billing fee, which is a crock. Would my insurance company be there for me, should a false claim come in? Of course not. Of course not. Hahahaha. That's so funny to even think about. Of course they wouldn't be behind me.

This is $500 down the drain for me. Down the drain. Paying that much money, nearly an entire month of my money, won't help me replace my shattered windsheild, shattered when struck by rocks flying off an incredibly filthy gravel truck pulling a backho on a flatbed. The flatbed had not been cleaned off either. Rocks were flying through the air behind that rig that day on I5.

The cheapest quote so far for fixing that windshield---almost $400. Where is that money supposed to come from? Thin air? I could use that vapor money, the money thrown down the insurance money pit, to do something tangible, like to fix that windshield, broken because of another negligant driver.

Along these lines I got a questionnaire from Samaritan Advantage, the medicare HMO I have to accept here in the mid valley, in order to get any medical coverage. The HMO is owned and operated by Good Samaritan hospital. The questionnaire claims Medicare has to know how many of Samaritan Advantage recipients have secondary insurance or a job. I am not so sure, and when they ask point blank, "do you have a job" I am afraid to answer that to Samaritan Advantage. I guess I don't trust that they are not creating a list of poor people, to further discriminate in care against us.

I don't know why I think that, maybe partly because of the problem getting a new doctor, when mine quit. Nobody wanted to take my medicare insurance. I finally found a doctor taking new patients but I was then severely scolded by the receptionist at the Samaritan operated office, because, I was told, that doctor's openings were not for "people like you" but for "real people in the general public".

This kind of thing messes with a person's self-worth and also creates suspicion.

For all the technilogical advances and all the crap on the news every day about what tests you should have and all that, that doesn't fly as normal for most Americans. I don't think the morning news shows that give all that even seem to know that most Americans don't know if their blood pressure is normal or not. I don't. I haven't had a PAP smear in 10 or more years either. I don't know if my cholestrol is normal or not. I had it tested just once, that i know of, years and years ago. I think that's the way it is for most people.

Worn Out

I'm worn out. Dealt with too many cats in too short of time again. Stress. I hope to find placements for the nine orange tabbies left. My friend has four of them in her garage. I have five in my bathroom. I have Stinod the one-eye, in my spare bedroom recuperating. Overloaded.

I returned the Heatherdale female this morning. What a sweetheart. There are still a lot of cats to get in for fixing there. A good thing was seeing three of the cats I'd gotten fixed three years ago, lounging on a trailer porch, sporting those right eartips. Twas a good feeling to see they were still ok.

I get so attached to the cats, each one. I think about them, am sad when one is killed. It's like every cat I encounter becomes part of me, part of my family.

It's not easy sometimes, emotionally, to deal with all the abuse of animals, abandonment, suffering I see so much of. It's not easy to know the solution is right there, in front of people, yet they won't fix their cats. This creates sometimes a resentment, that I must sacrifice so much and they sacrifice nothing, to help the cats they call their own. But it is an age where people are into themselves and satisfying themselves. I think that is a part of the problem.

The other thing that creates resentment in me is people who promise things they never do. The Tattoo Prairie man said he was going to get involved, to help pay back for all the free fixes and labor he received, by going door to door, to locate unfixed cats and by building some trap cover boxes for me, to help me better trap in rain and wind. He's done neither and I'm tired of asking if he's going to do so.

The Red Linda woman has not returned my trap in about a months time that she's had it. I called finally, asking her to return it and she became angry that I would ask her, had a million excuses. Later she left a message about how rude I am for wanting it back when she's going on a trip to the coast.

Rude. Wow. How rude is it to keep a person's trap for a month and not return it? How rude is it to promise to make payments to pay back the cost of fixing all those cats (21) and not to do so? Maybe it isn't rude. Maybe it's just plain dishonest disgusting behavior.

It's very hard, day in and day out. One must develop stategies to survive. I must get enough sleep, because if I don't, then I am likely to actually talk back to these people. I try not to talk back because I want to get all the cats fixed. But the resentment and tension builds when people forsake promises and use me so badly without any guilt whatsoever. I have to bite my lip a lot. If I say anything, I am often then cussed out and a laundry list of my faults are aired to me, through intermittent cussing. This thrashing is given me by people who have received massive amounts of free labor and free spays and neuters, because, like the Red Linda colony woman, they failed to fix their cats in the first place and only called me when their own behavior created a huge mess.

I usually just walk away in the end. It's all so pointless. I have lost hope in humanity.

Glorious Day

Sunshine!!!!!!!!

In Oregon!!!!!!!!!

Yahoo!!!!!!!!


In other news, seven more cats were fixed today. All seven were, yes, you guessed it, orange tabbies. Six of the orangies came from the Lebanon situation. Two of these were females and both were pregnant. The seventh orange tabby was also a female, although she came from Heatherdale Trailer Park. Although just a teen, she too was pregnant.

In all, my friend and I removed 16 orange tabbies from that Lebanon barn, from Wednesday through today. And, already, 11 of the 16 have been fixed. Four of the other five are kittens too young still to be fixed. All four of the kittens are orange tabbies, three of them girls, and all are spoken for.

Two of the adult males, Flash and Cody, are now at SafeHaven awaiting homes. THANK YOU Safehaven. The mother of the kittens, after her spay, went to the home who is fostering the kittens. They are keeping her.

That leaves me with nine orange tabbies to place. Well, that's better than 16.

When I took the two orange boys to SafeHaven, I saw two other cats I knew there. One is from Red Linda colony. The little brown tabby tux female, that I took in for spay, and returned to the woman, was hit on the road last week. The force detached a rear leg, which her owner later found in the middle of the road. The cat survived. She took the cat to her own vet and said she couldn't take care of her. The vet cleaned up that amputated leg and she is now at SafeHaven awaiting a home. She is a tripod now.

The other cat I knew there?---the little torti teen, spayed last week, from downtown Albany. She'd been abandoned. Fortunately, she wandered into good hands. The office manager at a nonprofit for low income housing, run by City Council woman Sharon Konopa, took her into the office and Sharon contacted me about getting her fixed immediately. I took her in, got her fixed and the office manager kept her a few days after surgery. I didn't know the cat would be at SafeHaven today. I knew they needed to find her a home.

It was nice to see both cats and that they're doing ok.

Stop by SafeHaven. Look for the beautiful torti teen, the tripod and two gorgoues orange boys.

GT Editor Gets On Board. Blaming Cats for World Issues.

I was reading the online GT today, something I do less and less of. In the opinion section, they give a raspberry to some people who damaged a mink farm. But, out of the blue, for some reason, without any explanation, they mention how destructive feral cats are, like they hate cats so much they were looking for any reason to work their hatred into an entirely unrelated subject.

A better article to mention along with cats would be the one about the grass seed farmers and the voles. The grass seed people are getting exemptions from the EPA to treat entire fields with zinc to kill voles. This is the same substance that leached into a Keizer pond and killed dozens of geese. The EPA assures people the amount a single vole will ingest with field application is not enough to kill raptors. Have they heard about the higher up on the food chain a predator is, the more toxins get concentrated in their systems? Because raptors aren't going to eat a single vole. They'll eat lots of them. That zinc stuff will leach into the waterways, too. That's the way things work. Think I'll drink water from elsewhere this summer.

Speaking of windrowing during harvest, do you know how many animals and birds those windrowers mow down and maim, from fawns to any ground nesters? But let's blame cats for everything. Let's somehow blame them also for the vole outbreaks. The farmers I knew that had a lot of barn cats didn't have as bad of vole problems that year. The farmers who shoot cats and skunks for sport did.

Also, why are grass seed farmers getting this exemption? They must be special. Grass seed isn't something we eat. It's a product, not a food crop.

Feral cats are far less destructive than humans to our environment, far less destructive than pesticides, insecticides, cell and radio towers, window glass, jet airplanes and CARS to bird populations. A recent study in Iowa I think it was, that studied roadkill on only 11 miles of rural/urban streets, found, in one years' time, massive carnage on the roadways inflicted by humans and cars.

The vast majority of species killed were amphibians and led the researchers to wonder if cars killing frogs might not be the real cause of so many frog species dying off to the point of extinction. Birds were also found dead in high numbers.

I'm tired of people blaming cats for almost everything. A Wisconsin study found 300 birds on average killed per night at the base of one radio tower (from hitting the tower or wires). This was during migration times and most of the birds were small migratories. Large cities have great problems with bird mortality from hitting skyscraper windwos.

But hey. Let's still blame everything on cats. It is so much easier than changing our own behavior.

The fatal flaw in blaming cats is this: the problem will never change if the focus of blame is "feral cats". The blame lies upon human shoulders, upon those people who do not fix their pets. Feral cats are the DIRECT result of people who do not fix their house pets. You can kill feral cats until you are drenched in their blood and you will change nothing. Because it is not a cat problem, it's a human one.

If you are a cat hater, you should be on your knees kissing the feet of us cat fixers. We might hate you cat haters and you us, but the cat trappers and fixers reduce the problem by magnitudes.

If you really want to fix things, so to speak, then every community must have easy access to low or no cost spay neuter, coupled with mandatory spay/neuter laws and landlord enforcement of fixed pet only rules. And, people like me, going door to door, to locate unfixed cats and get them fixed. Then, when you fix feral colonies, you don't have an endless new supply of abandoned house pets starting new colonies.

The Feral Cat Coalition coming around three times a year doesn't touch the problem. Or hit at the root of the problem--those who create feral colonies by abandoning or dumping unfixed house cats. You have to stop the problem before it starts, and get the house cats fixed at extreme rates. That's how you solve the feral cat problem.

That's the way you end the feral cat problem. Blaming is always so easy. Doing something about it, well that's left to the few, the action heros, unsung, put down, yelled at, abused and used.

That's a load off. I feel better now.

Five Orangies Fixed Today

I took five orangies and a black tux up to be spayed today. They're gorgoues! Four girls, including the mom of the four kittens, and one boy. One female was pregnant. Tomorrow, four more Orangies from the one Lebanon situation, will be fixed.

Orange tabby female, spayed today, too. All five orangies were spayed courtesy of Poppa Inc.
This is the only male of the orangies fixed today. However a black tux male also was neutered.
This is the mother of the four kittens, now in foster. She will rejoin them tomorrow.
Orange tabby young female, spayed today.
This female was pregnant.
And the outsider of the bunch, the black tux from Albany.

Her Eye was Removed Yesterday

Stenade, the last cat I caught at Tattoo Prairie, whose eye had been damaged six months before, in a fight when she was still just a kitten, had her suffering end yesterday when her eye was surgically removed. The eye was bulging with a detached cornea and causing her misery. Imagine yourself with a useless infected bulging eye. Imagine living in that kind of pain.

The colony caretaker thought she was a loner and an angry cat. He never connected her horrible eye problem with extreme pain which causes some irritibility issues, as I so well understand.

I hope to find this sweet young cat a home. She is shy but not feral. And, she is extremely grateful for the gift given her, by a stranger with a trap and some absolutely wondrous people, whom I've never met, who paid for her surgery.

Orange Acres Orangies

We returned to Orange Acres today and took four more adults and the fourth kitten from the barn. This makes, in addition to the four adults and three kittens already removed yesterday, a total of 12 orange tabby kittens and adults. There are at least three more orangies to nab for fixing. Six of the adults have taken over my bathroom.

I hate to say this, for fear of sounding orange tabby racist, but they all look alike.

Two of the six week old orange tabby female kittens are already spoken for along with their mom, who is very cute and sweet. She will rejoin her four kittens tomorrow, after her spay.

So three of the 12 so far now have homes to go to. Working on homes for more of the orange acres orangies.

The people are nice. We finally met them.

Stenade, from Tattoo Prairie, is up having her right eye removed today. I hope all is going well for her. This operation will relieve her of a lot of pain. In the last few days prior to her surgery, she's really settled into my heart. Maybe it was the way she took to licking nutrical off my nose. I don't know.

Forever the Tooth

I do have health insurance, but doctors and dentists don't like my health insurance. Consequently, getting a painful tooth pulled has made me understand the frustration so many folks go through every single day, who have no insurance, and big pain. Getting my painful tooth pulled has required endurance, a tolerance for pain, that is sometimes shrieking, and realization that I am low on the totem pole of society. But I'm not as low as some, who could never get a painful tooth pulled, without doing it themselves or bribing a friend.

I tried to get referred elsewhere, rather than wait til mid May, but there are very few dentists who take my plan, under OHP. Almost none, in fact. I thought I was having a breakthrough yesterday, when a dental office in Salem, returned a message I left, after my insurance company said they take my insurance and gave me their number.

They actually called back, but I was gone, and left a message. The message stated their office would be open today, if I called back, which I did. There was just the message machine again. I left another message, which has not been returned.

I surmise I'll have to wait until mid May after all.

I've got another health issue that has arisen. It's been going on for over a year. The doctor says nothing is wrong, but I"m in pain from this every day and have constant abnormal symptoms. I won't go into detail. I don't know what to do anymore.

Vile Evil Albany Old Lady

It comes back to me every now and then, in a rush of anger and despair, when I remember that old lady, that church lady, who preached Jesus and church and waved her American flag and lied to me worse than anyone has ever lied to me. And she was unspeakably cruel to some kittens.

She'd asked me to help trap them for fixing. She said she'd feed them. I took them up for surgery, she was to pick them up afterwards because I had to go to Salem.

I picked up my traps a few days later. She said she had turned them loose and they were doing great.

It was months later, out of guilt I suppose, that she confessed to what she really did with those kittens.

I was trapping in the same neighborhood, off Queen, on 13th street or one of those little streets behind that gas station, in the neighborhood south and west of the high school on Queen, just as Queen heads south to fork into Oakville North and Riverside Drive.

She approached me. Walked down a block and a half and came up to me, where I sat in my car, watching traps. I was tired out and finally I asked her how the kittens were doing. That's when she told me. She hadn't really brought them all home. Only one of them.

The others she took to North Albany right after picking them up at Countryside, and dumped them out along the road when they were still under the influence of anesthesia. It was raining, too, she further confessed, and maybe they survived anyway. She said because it was dark and raining so hard she couldn't see exactly where she was, when she dumped them out, so she couldn't tell me exactly where it'd been. I had immediately wanted to know where.

I wanted to take that bitch by the throat and choke the life out of the lying creep, who had exploited me and my time and Poppa money, and committed this atrocious act upon innocent lives.

I told her she better run now, and get away from me fast because what she had just told me was enraging me. I also told her to go get her checkbook and write me a check for the money Poppa paid to fix those cats, in good faith, that she had betrayed in an act of extreme cruelty.

She must have thought I would think it was ok, because she didn't seem to understand at first that when I said for her to get out of my sight immediately, that I meant it. I hissed in her face then. It was a gut response to my shock and horror. She started to walk away, then turned back, like she was going to say something more. I hissed again and told her she needed to start running. She ran.

I started pounding on my steering wheel in anguish for those poor cats, angry at myself too for believing such a little self-righteous old lady in the first place. The better than thou preachy Christian old ladies are often the meanest most cruel most hateful most dishonest people I encounter. I don't know why.

I spent the next two weeks searching all of north Albany, walking the roads, knocking on doors. Of course that was an impossible feat. It'd been months since she did that deed. That is a massive area to search.

I'd sit in my car in that neighborhood over off Queen, where I was trapping other cats, and stare at that bitch out in her yard and try to figure out how a person is able to do such a thing, to helpless little lives.

I would look at her and wonder how a person justifies such acts, still goes to church, still pretends they're righteous with a right to tell other people how they should worship and live their moral lives.

I would wonder what turns a person that evil.

I think about it now and then. I still cringe for those cats. My stomach reels. It's hard. I try not to think about these things, but sometimes they surface in my mind and there's no stopping the thinking.

It's best to forget.

Difficult Day

I am stressed. A posting on craiglist a few weeks back said Too Many Cats in Lebanon. I responded, as did many others, asking why they were not fixed. Many people offered to help get them fixed. The woman responded only to one Albany person who offered, but was vague, would put her off, would suddenly call saying they were all in her tack room and to come get them immediately, when the offer was to help get them fixed. She is moving from the property.

Today the Albany woman said she was going up there. I offered to ride with her. I did not know she'd told the woman she would pick up six of the cats to be fixed. She had no appointments made to get them fixed anywhere. I didn't know that either.

Nobody answered the door when we arrived. The Albany woman finally called her, and she said she wasn't home. She said some of the cats were in the barn in a storage container. Sure enough, cats were huddled in urine and feces, inside a plastic storage container. We couldn't leave them like that. They're in my bathroom and I am not happy.

The three kittens, and we couldn't find the fourth, are at a friend's place.

There are sixteen or so cats up there. All unfixed. All orange tabbies.

I got home and a Corvallis woman I've helped over and over again called wanting me to take on and find homes for the strays she feeds and has fed for years. I've sat out there time and time again, trapping them, taking them to be fixed.

So she tells me management wants them gone and we've had the conversation many times over many years. I"ve told her to find them homes then. I tell her she needs to put up fliers, advertise online, take out a free ad in the paper, things I've told her over and over and over. She wants to talk to someone at Poppa and wants them to take them, so I tell her, Poppa only fixes cats. She wants to express outrage that no one will do all the work for her and says she's going to write a letter to the paper. I tell her that's nice, but why don't you work to find them homes, rather than do the outrage thing.

Because I'm getting iritated at her once again. The entitlement attitude, the someone should do everything for me attitude, the "You sacrifice to help me, but I won't sacrifice a thing" attitude.

So I finally hang up on her. Then she calls back to very smugly tell me how wrong I am about Heartland, that they won't kill them because the cats there that she feeds are tame. Uh huh, I say, then how come, if they're so tame, I had to sit out half the night, in freezing weather, over and over, to trap them, if you could pick them up, and then I hung up on the entitlement queen.

I'm sick of people right now. I wish could run away again. I blew up at Circle K when the very nice clerk asked how I was and I told him exactly how I was, that I didn't want to take on more cats, but these people had stuffed six into a storage container the day before, and I just couldn't leave them like that, and I've never encountered so many people who are so irresponsible and so selfish and cruel towards animals in my life and I just want to get away from all these freaks who shove responsiblity off on someone else, and laugh about it and use emotional blackmail to do so on people who care.

I went outside and sat in my car and cried and wondered how I ended up in Albany, Oregon and not some place happy and enlightened or at least where half the populace isn't looped on drugs or alcoholics.

Not a good day. Maybe I'm worn out. Maybe I need a vacation.

Four Cats Fixed Yesterday

I took four cats up to be fixed yesterday. Three were Heatherdale Trailer park cats, all from the same trailer. The fourth cat was a black feral teen, trapped at an Albany complex. The man who trapped him paid for his neuter, too.
Orange tabby male, from Heatherdale, fixed yesterday.
Medium hair gray female, in heat, spayed yesterday.
Muted torti female, in heat, from Heatherdale also, fixed yesterday.
Feral teen black male, fixed yesterday, will go home today.

The Soon-to-be-One-eyed Shenade, from Tattoo Prairie

Shenade was attacked by something six months ago, the Tattoo Prairie man told me, and that's how her eye was badly damaged, infected and now is bulging and causing her great pain. He told me she has only one eye. He hadn't told me it was clouded over and bulging. Usually, the cats with such eyes I encounter have fought bouts of herpes. But this was caused by a fight, which he claims, tore up half her face and he didn't think she would even live.

She has suffered for six months. He claims she has been an angry cat, a loner, and didn't think to connect that with the extreme pain she has been in. She was pregnant Friday when she was spayed, so despite the pain she was in, she had to go through males fighting over her, attacking her, holding her down, as I witnessed there with the teen females.

She was hissy and hiding at first in the rabbit hutch I housed her in, after her spay Friday. I'd seen that eye, and knew she wasn't going back there and that I was going to get that eye removed. That day will be Wednesday. She will first be tested for FIV/Felk. If she's got leukemia, she would not recover without consequences to the surgery. The consequences likely would be death within a few months, because of the immune response required to heal and the fact leukemia, an immune suppressing virus, would likely activate and roar into high gear.

In post spay surgery leukemia positive cats (those not tested, so I did not know they were positive), I have discovered, through caregiver's calls, that the cats have died and the most common cause---ocular tumors. I don't know why this is, but it's happened over and over again. I either go get the cat and take it to a vet before it dies, have it tested, and then euthanized, or necropsied, if dead, or the caregiver does, and that's how I've seen so much of it.

So anyhow, Shenade is going in Wednesday. She acted feral at first, but I put a net over her and began to pet her and put drops in that bad eye. Then'd she want me in there petting her and would want to lay against my arm when I'd lean into the rabbit hutch and she'd want brushed and her chin scratched.

So I do these things, knowing she's had it very rough for months now on end, without any empathy or softness to the pain she's gone through.

And here's another sad thing. Out at Red Linda colony, the caretaker said Flash, the little tame orange tabby male, disappeared the same day last week that his buddy, a spayed young brown tabby tux female, was hit on the road so hard that her rear leg detached. It was left laying in the road. Whomever hit her, did not stop. People drive like maniacs out there.

She found the brown tabby tux female, crying and crying and scooped her up and took her in to her vet, who cleaned up the wound, (no amputation required since the leg was gone) and will keep her there and try to adopt her out from his office.

It's likely Flash got creamed too, by the speed freak, so engulfed in himself or herself that they would do this to a couple of cats and leave a cat without a leg laying on the road.

The speed freaks are everywhere. It's scarey the way people drive these days and how they disregard all lives in the process. Speed freaks are very self-centered people.The brown tabby, now with one rear leg missing and up for adoption at a local vet's office.

Kind of Scarey, the Food Crisis

It's kind of scarey, the way the world is turning today, with food riots and high prices and the price of gas going sky high. In the face of higher food prices, the news said speculators were buying up large quantities of food, and holding it, hoping the prices will go even higher. You wonder how some people sleep at night, the way they behave.

I saw a clip on the financial channel. The man was urging people to buy stocks in companies that exploit the labor force to a high extent, not investing even in companies operating in China and India, but advising investors to search out companies operating in the extremely poor countries, where there is no oversight on labor or environmental practises. This is an American television channel, advising viewers this way, to make money. This astounding, really, and sad, and scarey.

Our world is built atop use of the gasoline engine and petroleum products. We should have sought out alternatives long ago. A slow transition would have been easier on the entire world. We have to drive to jobs miles and miles away. Our food is shipped in by truck and all our goods, too. Many of us live too far from work, schools, food outlets to walk to get what we need and where we need to go. And now, our system, based on oil, is collapsing, as high prices of oil force up the price of food and everything else. We're over a barrel, an oil barrel.

I hope our inventiveness will save us now. We need people working on alternatives, affordable ones, around the clock.

I'm planting a garden, a vegetable garden, if the weather ever stops freezing anything I plant. I'm glad I held off, although it wasn't planned, my planting procrastination. Urban chicken farming I believe will again become the norm. (hold the roosters please).

Maybe more families will plant small gardens and enlist the kids to help, getting them away from the boob tube as a result. Maybe we'll all walk more, too. Maybe some of the changes will be good for us.

Maybe neighborhoods and communities will become more centralized around local markets and goods.

The downtown office manager at the city council womans' nonprofit took in the cat abandoned down near their office after her spay. I dropped her off at the woman's house Friday evening.

She has bee homes hung on her porch. Not for honey bees, but for another type of bee that also polinates. She and her husband make them out of six inch diameter by 8 or so inch long pieces of birch. They use birch because the bees like birch over other more smelly woods. They drill small two inch long holes in the ends of the birch piece. The bees make their homes in the holes, and lay their eggs inside, and pack the holes with mud. They live their short summer lives, then crawl inside the hole in the fall and die. The eggs hatch in the spring and cycle repeats. I'm going to hang some of these under my eaves for these polinators and I'm going to try to keep them around by planting some Cosmos and other polinator attractors.

Ideas out there for attracting bees? We need bees, that's for sure. And we need to put away those chemical backpacks spraying dead everything alive. I ran into so many women who said their husbands were salivating at the chance to get out and spray weeds and bugs this spring. In the process, we kill too many good things, like honey bees, and the insects birds eat and contaminating the seeds the birds eat, too, leaving them nothing. We have to remember the good things die with those we don't want.

I am reminded of the windrowing season upcoming, on the grass seed production lots. Winrowing is the way crops are cut, including grass seed, which is not a food crop but a product, and seems to waste a whole lot of land that could be used to grow food. I suppose people need their grass lawns and ball park grass and golf course grass, etc, however. And hay is a byproduct of grass seed production, that goes to feed livestock and people's hobby horses. Well anyhow.

Those bladed winrowers maim so many animals and birds I have come to call harvest season the season of death. They cut the legs off fawns, cats, and birds, like pheasants, wild turkeys, etc, any ground nesting bird, right at the time these animals and birds have young and try to defend their young. It's horrible.

I can't even look into the fields at such a time of year, having found so many of the animals maimed by these machines. I wish there would be advances and since it is such a huge problem, it seems like by now there would have been advances on the machines that would startle up and out wildlife and birds in their path. Wildlife when threatened will huddle down, try to blend into the environment, holding very still, and not run, in the daylight hours, to survive threat. They get mowed under, limbs cut off, I don't want to think about it.

Someone else warned me about mid valley dirt. I was telling her I was trying to find dirt to make a garden and joked about carrying a shovel and going into fields at night to dig some up. She said "You don't want dirt from a field around these parts for a garden. The dirt is dead, killed by all the chemicals the farmers use." She told me not to dig up dirt from around here and expect it to grow anything. That surprised me. Can't be true, can it?

Well anyhow, it's a scary world these days. Uncertain and there is a lot of hunger and suffering. I still believe the bottom line is there are too many people on earth. I know, we industrialized nations use more than our share of the earth's resources.

There was also something on the news about a village somewhere, I didn't even catch where. The glacier they rely on for water and life, has receded hundreds of feet, and now they are considering how they will survive when the water is limited or gone.

I hear these stories around the world and I do feel guilt about even driving here in the US, like we're impervious to what we do and how it affects the rest of the people living on the globe. I hear this and that about global warming, are humans to blame, or aren't we. Sure, it'd be great if we are not and I can understand why there would be pressure to keep it quiet if we are to blame and political reasons to keep the science down if we are to blame. I am not a scientist and I don't know what to believe. It's hard to know, being just an everyday person. But seeing pictures of melting glaciers and all, it's hard not to believe somethings changing fast.

I start thinking our time of plenty might be nearing an end, and sometimes I wonder if we really are the cause of global warming, will there be consequences for what we have done in creating suffering for others in this world. I wonder why churches aren't calling for change, as a moral issue, among politicians and their own members, and I wonder why we aren't getting on this rapidly.

Well anyhow, I don't know anymore. There is so much violence in our world. The food crisis will spark even more. I don't know the answers. But I wish those financial channel people wouldn't act so mean and selfish by their talk about investing in companies operating in impoverished countries where the labor market can be exploited and I wish, in the face of people starving, that food speculators could get some soul and not stockpile food to drive prices even higher. That's just evil.

FLDS Bullshit

Apparently the Fundamentalist Mormons are trying to woo the public with a public relations campaign about their polygamist lifestyle. Number one: polygamy is against US law. Number two: having sex with a child is against US law. I hope the starstruck easily bought out media does not loose track of the facts and the knowledge this sect does not allow women freedom or choice. They grow up believing this way. That does not make it right.

Giving children in marriage at age 13 is child rape and removal of choice for women. This is America. Want to behave that way, join the Taliban or Al Quada or some of those similar women controlling whackjob Muslim sects.

Many of these spiritual wives, as they call themselves, and their numerous children, are supported on welfare. Does the state of Texas have no welfare to work laws? Most states do. An interesting report would be how much welfare money is going into this sect.

Stop giving these lawbreakers publicity. We have laws in this country to protect children. We have laws against polygamy and we have welfare to work laws. Let's see these laws upheld.

Cat Photos

Torti, from downtown Albany, preg at spay, fixed Friday.
The gray owned Heatherdale male, that ended up loose in my garage. He was fixed today.
Black tux Heatherdale male, fixed today in Tigard.
kBrown tabby Heatherdale male, fixed Tigard today.
Black and white male, fixed yesterday from Heatherdale.
Gray tab on white female, in heat, spayed Friday from Heatherdale.
Black female, from Heatherdale, preg at spay, fixed yesterday along with four other cats, three of them from Heatherdale.
Black and white male fixed today from Heatherdale.

Tally at Heatherdale--two owned cats fixed today, from one trailer, one brown tabby male and one long hair black tux female. An owned male, fixed from one RV, the gray boy who ended up loose in my garage. They have a long hair gray and white male also, but haven't seen him in two days. And five more fed by a man who feeds nine (or more), at Heatherdale, making six of his cats now fixed--one black female, one black male, one brown tabby male, one torti, and two black and white males.

All the black and whites in the area are offspring of the above mans' feeding breeding that I hope to halt. I ran into a black and white mustached female, who looks just like two of the males done, on her own basically and in heat. And another kind man is feeding yet another mustached black and white male, offspring of this original colony.

Anyhow, so far, I've taken in 12 cats from Heatherdale and there will be many more.

The little female from Tattoo Prairie, the last cat unfixed there, spayed Friday, although now the man thinks he might be seeing more at the colony, needs an eye removed.

The cat got into a horrendous fight six months ago, or was attacked, her eye scratched, and now her eye is bulging and dead and the poor little girl needs it out. She is in a rabbit hutch in my bedroom and I will get her that surgery as soon as I possibly can to relieve her pain.

Hail at Heatherdale, Snow on Cherry Blossoms

Well, what interesting April weather.

I'm Happy

I hate to admit it in a way, because maybe some of you don't know, because I usually blog only when worn out, that I am very happy. I love this house I live in. The cherry tree is in bloom. I have been sad lately, with the loss of my dear Hopi. I try to sleep and I wake up in the memory of Moby's head falling, as he died and it hurts. I loved them.

I have a life I could not have dreamed I would ever have, when deep in the darkness of life in the mental health system. I get to help cats. I meet tons of people, all half dark and half light, some more one way than the other. I am very blessed with a life I sometimes feel I don't deserve, with a wonderful place to live now. Because I remember all those without.

I lay on my couch, a good couch bought from Goodwill, sturdy and comfortable, nestled into a sleeping bag that I got out of a dumpster behind the Julian hotel years ago, and look out at that cherry tree blooming. I love the sleeping bag. It is cozy, blue and red plaid flannel, and comforting and my cats love it, too. I had two of them that I fished out of that dumpster and washed, but I gave one to someone along the way. I can't remember who.

It is a treasure of mine. It will be with me until it falls apart completely.

I try not to think very much of Hopi right now because I cry then. Inconsolable. Not even Electra, who also loved Hopi and misses her greatly, can comfort me. Vision and Miss Daisy cry out in their sleep and have nightmares. It's Moby they miss. Miss Daisy is back to the nightmares she's had since she came to me, the one's about the abuse she endured before she came to me when somebody tried to take her out and kill her.

She will kick a back leg over and over, then it's like she's running in her sleep. She's crying out and then her whole body will make a violent jerk. Then I wake her but I make sure my arms are around her first so she knows now she's wrapped up in somebody's heart who loves her.

She's deaf because somebody tried to kill her, with a gun I think. They missed and she ran. I think they had her by the back leg but she got away and ran for it until her paws, in the hundred degree heat, on the searing pavement, were burned and bloody. She ran for it, and that farmer heard her crying. That kind farmer.

I have her to cling to in these losses and she has me. And Vision, the very old river girl, the granddaughter of Captain Courageous, who was the Angel of the River, she is still with me, too. Captain Courageous died along the river. The old man, Ray, who fed her since she was a kitten, who promised for a decade, to take her home with him, and he never did. He let her die down there, sick and slow. I was gone. When I heard, I searched the banks for three days.

The old man Ray is full of shit and was always full of lies and empty promises and too much beer and flatulence. He finally told me the truth about himself. He said everybody used to call him "Mr. Inertia" because he never did anything he said he'd do. Then he said, "Jody, the name still fits me." And that's how he explained away Captain Courageous' horrible death alone along the river.

I never spoke another word to Ray in my life and I never will.

It's been hard for us all here, these losses. Harder on some than others.

My dear Hopi, I will miss you. One day, one day our souls shall join together.

My dear Hopi.

I am happy and maybe that sounds strange next to my sorrow over the loss of my friends. It isn't strange at all. I am sad, but the sadness will not sting with time and I truely do love my life helping out the strays and I do love this wonderful house where I now live and that beautiful blooming cherry tree.

I would not trade exposing myself to the joy even if it must be tainted with sadness.

I remember my father once talked about hungry stray cats down by the boat ramp in the town where he lived. I said "Why dont' you feed them?"

He said, "But I might get sick and miss some days, or I might go for a vacation and not be able to feed them while I'm gone and then they'd be expecting food and get none."

I said "So you're going to let them starve and die for these reasons?"

"Well I don't want to see them hungry," he said, "but I don't want to think they're starving if I miss some days and what if they die, that would hurt me."

A few months later, he told me someone shot them all. He seemed relieved.

Fast Trip to Tigard

I was up at 5:00 a.m. today, ready to be up in Tigard by 7:30, with nine cats. Complication. One gray male had broken out of the carrier he was in and now was asleep atop the garage room.

No tuna in live traps by my car in the garage had enticed him down and out of a cozy nap.

I propped a ladder against the side of the garage room, between my car and a wall, and climbed to the top rung, in my PJ's, trying to coax him down. I could get him to come almost within reach. Standing on the top rung of the laddar I was almost high enough at the waist to pull myself up atop the garage room, but, I knew, with my luck, I'd fall through the ceiling of the garage room, busting through between the studs.

That wouldn't be fun. I'd be adding aches, pains, maybe broken bones to the ache and pain of my tooth problem. Also, it would have been quite embarrassing to explain the circumstances of the fall and what I'd been doing at that early hour in pajamas up near the top of the garage, with a net in my hand, to emergency crews or ER doctors, if I was still conscience or even alive, when finally found.

I finally duct taped the handle of a fish net I use to catch cats to an old five foot piece of PVC pipe I had, as an extension, and again climbed the ladder with that. All that did was make him mad and make him move. So, I moved the ladder and hoisted the net up and above the room again. He moved again. I repeated this procedure about ten times, which was slightly annoying, until he decided he'd take his nap down. Growling and hissing, he jumped down atop some shelves and to the garage floor and went under my car.

I decided to try some flirting. I told him real nice things about himself and offered him tuna and catnip and boy was he mad, when, after he believed me and came out to be coddled and appreciated more, I stuffed him into a live trap. I did give him tuna, a tiny bit since he was having surgery, and smeared some catnip on his face, too. But by this time, I was way late for take off and had to skip my shower.

Off I went into the big city world for a few short hours. I arrived just before 8:00 a.m., only slightly late, dropped off the nine cats, then headed off, as usual when I drop cats off in Tigard for fixing, to Poppa's Pres's house in Hillsboro. She was barely up, but fixed breakfast for both of us, before I went in her rescue cat room to admire the cats there, and promptly fell asleep on a futon.

I woke up with Bono, one of her rescues, pulling a button off my shirt and trying to poke his paw into my exposed belly button, which fascinated him. (I'm an in-y)

I decided to head out to Recycled Gardens, see if they had anything easier than roses to take care of. I intend to dig up the roses here, since I'm no good with them, and take them to RG to sell. But Keni, Poppa's Pres and plant expert, told me not to dig them out until at the earliest, fall, better yet, wait til next winter.

Anyhow, so I got a sword fern. Dave, the king of RG, a very wonderful long time volunteer there, told me to just take it, refused to charge me. He said "You do so much for the cats every day. I will not charge you." So I have me a nice sword fern for my yard.

By then it was noon and I could pick up the cats by 12:30. So I did. Not a bad deal at all, I'd say, to have nine cats fixed and be home by 2:00 p.m.

They're all delivered back to their people, too.

But, oh my gosh, just as I was delivering the now fixed cats back to Heatherdale, the pea hail hit with such force it hurt when it would pound on my head. Whoa. With thunder roaring and lightening piercing the low hanging clouds with sudden eery yellow flashes. The woman whose male, Reject, was fixed Wednesday, was helping me deliver the cats to the various owners. She's really been extremely helpful over there.

There was snow through Salem coming down on the way up. I wonder who up there somewhere, maybe the weather god, needs to wake up and turn a few pages on their calandar and get things on the right track.

Five Cats Fixed Yesterday. Nine to Be Fixed Today

Five cats were fixed yesterday, including the last unfixed cat, a female from Tattoo Prairie. She was pregnant. She also has a bulging right eye. She needs that eye removed. She's currently is in a rabbit hutch in the spare bedroom.

Another of the five, was a pregnant teen torti, from downtown Albany, abandoned by someone when they moved. She took refuge at the office of a nonprofit run by a local council woman and the staff at the office is taking on the responsibility of finding the torti a home.

Three more were Heatherdale cats. A black female, also pregnant, a tabby on white female, in heat, and a black and white male.

The nine I have here, ready to leave for Tigard to be fixed: 8 from Heatherdale, including five fed by one male, the same man who fed the black preggie fixed yesterday. These include a torti, two black and white males, a black male and a brown tabby male.

Two from a different trailer including a black tux long hair female, and a brown tabby male, and one from another trailer, a gray male.

But the gray male busted out of his carrier last night in my garage and is now currently lounging above the garage room, where I can't get him. I have a trap set in the rafters. How did he break out of that carrer? He's an escape artist cat, who reaches through mesh and just unhooks the carrier. Smart stuff. I may have to have his owner come call him out.

The ninth cat going up is a female from Fry of Siam colony. A couple years back, I trapped about 40 cats at that rural location, most of them feral Siamese. They'd bought the house with the cat problem from a daughter of the former owner who dumped her Siamese cats out there unfixed. Anyhow, in the initial trapping we missed one brown tabby female who had four kittens. We caught three of the four kittens and the mother for fixing. That female had a litter last summer but only one survived and the couple took it to their vet, who found it a home.

So she is pregnant again. First they called saying they'd caught a black male who was fixed Thursday, the impregnator. Yesterday they caught the gray female kitten, now an adult and pregnant again. She will be fixed today also. So, 8 cats from Heatherdale, if the male comes down from his roost, and one from rural Linn. 3 females, 5 males.