Painting My World

Well, there's nothing like a good can of bright paint to cheer me up.  And I've needed some happy face cheer in my life lately.

Number one: I'm bored, losing my self-appointed mission in life as I did last June, when Poppa closed its spay neuter mission.  I need to get on top of figuring out how to raise funds, to keep the cats here, and with Odd Cat Out, in the food, litter and vet care.  Not easy for a recluse like me.

Number two:  I'm lonely!  I'm not a recluse by choice.  I just don't know many people.  Wait, I know lots of people.  I know them only because I helped them solve their cat issues.  I need friends!

So, Sunday, the day before I headed to Portland with Cougie, that long hard day, for me, but mainly for her, but at least she was under anesthesia, I marched into Bimart.  I needed light bulbs.   Mercury bulbs I call them, because they're full of it.  I've had some bad times with mercury bulbs breaking and I know what that meant--mercury vapor everywhere.  So those bulbs give me the creeps.

Sure they're supposed to last a long time.  But in the last week alone, three have burned out.  So off I went to get replacements.

Into Bimart I go.  And quickly, very very quickly, am confronted with a sign, that throbbed out my pulse.  "Paint Sale".

I had five mercury squiggle bulbs in individual packages in my hands.  Too many to hold.  They were cheaper bought individually as opposed to packaged in two's.  Who can afford $7 for two bulbs?  Not I.  But, unfortunately, one slipped from my hands and fell to the floor.  I heard the tinkle of glass breaking and knew now that box was a toxic waste zone of mercury.  I called the clerk, who shrugged it off and laughed about them being health hazards when broken.  He quickly grabbed up the little box with the broken bulb and mercury vapors inside, and took it away.

Then  I was at the color chart, listing off from memory my online wish lists from Behr paint colors and Glidden paint colors, to the amused clerk, and debating which Lucerne colors came closest to my desired Behr or Glidden colors, although I never buy either of those brands.  They're too expensive for me.  Shire Green.  Tangerine Dream.  Bamboo Leaf.

I chose the Bimart paint brand color Lime Green and counted out money for one can.  I left the light bulbs on the counter, because I can live in the dark if my walls are.....Lime Green!

I'd bought Warm Gold color, or some name like that, at Walmart for two other walls.  I painted one wall a few weeks ago, and the other with the same paint, last week.  My newly acquired lime green was going to cover the wall currently painted Forest Green, which is very very dark indeed.

Like a deep dark Oregon shaggy doug fir forest where no light penetrates to the forest floor on a gray rainy day.

Look at it now!

Now that is a beautiful wall.  That wall will keep me awake.  And remind me I am alive still and not in fact dead.

And the other wall, the warm gold or dusty gold, now I forget its given name, is wonderful.  I think my blue lawn chair accents it well, along with the cinnamon stick trim color.  I sanded down and painted the old lamps' stand too with cinnamon stick.  I may have no fancy furniture or clothes but I have cats and I have color!

My hallway is the warm gold color also.  Makes me smile to look at it!  Can't help myself.

Outside everything's bleak and all the houses are painted to not stand out, in pastels and if you were sleepy, walking home, you might mistake one house for another.  Nothing alive allowed out there on cemetery cul de sac.  Walk in line, keep your eyes down, do not cry, do not smile, do not rage, do not stoop to help a stray kitten, lock your dead neighbors cats out when he dies and sell his belongings for cold cash to line your casket, oops, meant pocket, I think.  That's my hood.  But its not me.

If you come inside, here, where I live, you're going to feel the heartbeats.   We're alive in here, me and the cats.  We love one another, we fight, we play and we cry.

I LOVE my lime green wall!  Don't you?

Vino loves his new found cushy fun life!  I don't think I'll ever find him or the others from the Let Em Breed colony good homes.  I'm still trying.  In the meantime, I want very much to find a way to support the cats here, in food, litter and vet care, and just let them have peace and be happy.

Cougie's Second Go Around

Cougie was right back to drooling with her tongue out.  It's been only two weeks since her teeth were cleaned and the worst one pulled.  At that time, the vet said she would likely need them all pulled.  I just didn't know it would be so soon.

Got my upload usb cable working again, by cleaning the severely corroded inner surface of the tiny end that plugs into the camera.  So this is Cougie, after her first dental, tongue slightly out, right side lower lip swollen and draining, and eye on the right, closed in pain, from right side pain.

Today, I took Cougie back up to the Odd Cat Out vet clinic and had most of her teeth pulled.  She's cuddled now in the bathroom on the heating pad next to old Electra, who spends a good share of her time on that heating pad, since she got over the pneumonia.  Who doesn't like a heating pad in the winter in Oregon?  She races back into the bathroom if she is out and sees another cat even looking towards the bathroom.  She doesn't want her spot and heat pad place stolen.

Can't blame her.

But Electra likes to sleep next to other cats and so does Cougie so this is a perfect place for Cougie to recuperate from the latest tooth yanking she endured.

Odd Cat Out footed the bill, but they're low on funds, so I need to come up with something in return for sure.  That was very kind.

I spent a miserable day in my car in parking lot after parking lot, up in the Portland area, with an upset stomach, trying to find public restrooms when needed.  It was a very uncomfortable, painful miserable day.   My car's driver seat cushion is disintegrated from hours upon hours spent sitting on it when driving cats to be fixed.  There's no cushion power left to it and I forgot to bring extra towels to pad it so my injured sacro illiac area also protested the day.  So I ached, and moaned and hunched uncomfortably and cursed the day away, at times, and it was hard.  But not so much when I think Cougie got those teeth pulled when I had no money to get it done and if the price was one miserable day for me, then that's nothing.

Home now, about to hit the hay, so grateful Cougie could get that done.

Can't upload photos currently.  I use a usb cord plugged into my camera to upload.  One end is normal usb size to plug into the computer, then the other is the small size, for the camera.  Anyhow, suddenly my computer claims "windows does not recognize this malfunctioning device".   Or something.  I can't take out the flash card to upload from that since the battery compartment latch broke on the camera and I have it jury rigged closed in a manner that makes it difficult to remove the flash card and more likely there will be an unfixable problem with the battery compartment if I remove the flash card very often.

The encouraging part of the trip was that the car ran very well, at least I thought so. In the last couple of weeks I've changed the oil and all the filters and vacuumed and brushed off the front fins of the radiator.  I still need to change the plugs, but first I have to find my plug gapper or someone who has one, and a spark plug wrench (they've got padding so my big fear is eased of shattering the ceramics of the plugs when trying to remove them.  I suppose I can make one though, if need be).

I roamed Winco Foods in Tigard for awhile, to kill time.  I bought a pound of almonds from their bulk food section.  Raw bulk almonds used to be under $3 a pound and now they're just under $5 per lb.  But here where I live, in the only store that sells in bulk, they are over $9 per lb.  It seems strange that low income area food stores are almost always far more expensive.  So now I have almonds again.  I love almonds.  But they are like gold so I will treat them that way.  Only a few a day.  The nuts grown here in Oregon, hazelnuts, are out of reach to most of us Oregonians in price.  They are far more expensive than almonds. Tain't that the way it goes.  Oregon is also known for its salmon but only the rich can afford to eat salmon or those who can afford the fishing gear to catch their own, the licenses and the gas to get to a salmon river.

So that's my jury rigged life and I'm going to bed.

Some Days are Diamonds and Some Days are Coal

From John Steinbeck in his book, East of Eden:
 
"Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man.  It happens to nearly everyone.  You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite.  It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms.  The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet.  Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes.  A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and the trees of him dark and somber.  The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale.  And then--the glory---so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes.  Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished.  And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories.  It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world.  It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men."

I've felt the glories, long and strong and there have been many.

But those who feel the glories also encounter the gray and after Cloudy's death yesterday, a horrible screaming painful death, I have been living in the gray.

I don't question why he had to die.  There are no answers to that.  I don't ask some faceless imagined super alien in the sky why it happened.  That would be silly.

I watched a little cat lose his life.  That was hard.  I will get over it.

Cloudy's little body is buried now, in the dirt, will return to dirt, make something new of himself.

I have to get along with my life.

 Goodbye little guy.

Meanwhile I'm trying to figure out who is who among the other Lebanon colony cats here.   Many look so much alike.

I know Willy.  This is he:

And Vino is the big guy, wants to be a tame boy....

This, I believe, but am not sure, is Storm.  See I sent Flopsy, another gray short hair, up to Odd Cat Out, with Thunder, the big black male.  At least I think I sent Flopsy and not Storm.  I need to make sure, but I'm fairly sure this is Storm:

This one is easy....Mopsy McMuffin....

Then there are the four long hairs--Bluebell, Gracie, Di Vinci, the only male, and Hawkeye.  I know Bluebell and Gracie have white chest spots and that Hawkeye does not.  But Di Vinci, I'm not sure.

This is Bluebell for sure....

And this I believe is Hawkeye....

It's Gracie and Di Vinci I must distingish.

Besides the four gray short hairs---Willy, Vino, Storm and Mopsy, and the four long hairs--Hawkeye, Di Vinci, Bluebell and Gracie, there are the easy ones, Huckleberry and Mona Lisa, the adult sister muted tortis and easy to tell apart, Rosy, the young fiery muted torti teen, and Arrow, the young black male.  If only they could all be so easy.

Death in Catland

Cloudy is dead.  It happened suddenly, this morning.

Cloudy was the youngest male from the colony.

This morning, I clean litter boxes in the second bedroom, he's peaking out at me, from under the bed.  He's shy but playful.   He lets, or did let, me pet him.

An hour later, I was drinking coffee, morning chores done, and I hear a horrible sound, like a low pitched shriek, a moan of immense volume, horror and distress. I was up in a second, frantically searching for the source.

I find him, laying out under the bed.  I am confused because only an hour before, he was running around.  How could this be.  Fluid is coming from his mouth.  He can't move his hind quarters, but he is crying out in pain.  I pull him out.  He's already cold.  His rectum is pure white.  I know that means no blood or no oxygen.

I think he's fallen, broken his spine, or a blood vessel and is bleeding out.  I wrap him in a blanket with a warming bottle and grab my phone, call Heartland, ask if I can rush him over to be euthanized, because he's in pain, thrashing, going into seizures.

They have no one there euthanasia certified.  She tries to call someone who is, calls me back, says she left messages, commiserates.

But by this time, he's in death throw seizures.  It's horrible to watch, but I know he likely feels nothing now.  From the time of the scream, until death claimed him, maybe ten minutes passed.  Time stood still in this house. And for me.  Cats ran, panicked, frantic and scared.  The low pitched scream was one from a nightmare.  Silence has now descended on the house as my cats and Cloudy's family, grapple with their own fears.

I call Keni, totally traumatized.  She asks if it is a young male, describes cleaning at Odd Cat Out, hearing a terrible shriek/moan like that, goes over "says no fighting now" and discovers a young male, dead, still warm.  Says her mother had the same thing happen to a young male she adopted and she lives right across the street from a vet clinic.  He died before she could run him over there.  Same thing, fine one minute, the next, the shriek, then convulsions, then death.

I had a young male die here once.  I wasn't here when it happened.  I was off helping the neuter scooter in Pendleton fix 400 cats in four days.  A pet sitter found him dead, laid out.

The young males and heart defects, seems so common, but it is so hard.  Keni says at least he had a safe warm place with his family to live for a few months.

At least there is that.

Goodbye Cloudy.  Your life was short and you never had it easy.

Death refused to pass this house by and when denied Electra, with a wicked arrogant rapid vengeance, claimed another.

We never know what each day will hold.

Hug your kids and your kitties.  We have only this moment.

Someone in the comments suggest this as cause, and this is exactly how he presented. 

Read about it here.

Reprieve for Electra!

Celebration time.  For now Electra's hardy nature has overcome the greater difficulties associated with ancient life to conquer pneumonia.

Last night, she hopped down out of her sick bay cozy, and wandered the house, took a whack at the ever annoying Peeman Sam, reclaimed her coveted pillow on the window shelf, watched out that window for awhile, in case something interesting transpired, but we do live on a cemetery dull street.  The dullness and deadness of this street quickly bored even her, a cat, so she left that perch to snuggle with me on the bed, as I read, and finally, drawn by the memory of warmth, went back to her heating pad.

Big huge sigh of relief.

With the Olympics dominating the only channel that really comes in here, on my antenna, I've been reading more.  Not that I don't like the Olympics. I just get tired of the drama, hype and games after awhile, and already know who won what by the time the coverage begins in the evening.

I did watch an interesting PBS show about crows last night.  I always knew they were very smart and very socially organized.  I already knew they talk and tell stories and pass them along.  Who doesn't?

But scientists are now trying to prove these things.  It's not enough to know, I suppose, for the skeptics who never look to the sky or let the birds be the guards when out in some sketchy situation.

You never want to cross the crows.

I want the crows with me and not against me, in this life.

I'm reading another Steinbeck.  East of Eden.  I LOVE it!  The guy has insights into our human condition that I've felt but never could have put into words. More about it after I finish.

Life is slow and alone here.  Me and the cats.  I spent my wad on vet visits this month.  It's hunker down and survive mode for now and that means no little extras.  My car's tank is nearly on empty but may hold just enough gas to get me by. And that's ok because Electra is still by my side, alive and well in catland.

A few days ago, I was startled by the rattle of a car engine pulling up my driveway.  I rushed for the garage to peek out, excited for a visitor, and forgot completely to close the door into the garage behind me.  I rushed back to do so, and Jim was exiting his old beater car by the time I threw open the garage door to welcome him inside.

"I didn't want you to think I'd forgotten you," he said.  He meant for Christmas.  He began unloading boxes of Fancy Feast cat food.  My eyes were bugging out.  Times are a little dicey for me and this was making my heart sing.  Jim's had an experience.  His first grand daughter, Olivia, came into this world not very many weeks ago and he was there, back in Ohio, his home state, to welcome her in.  Gave him a new lease on life, he said.  Jim and his partner have adopted what is it, four cats from me?  Or is it five?  He worked his life as a scientist, still is one, although officially retired, and his partner is a very talented artist who has mastered many mediums.   She's given me many potted bowls she crafted, says they're seconds that she can't sell, but I can't find a single flaw.  Maybe it's my eyes.

Life is good.  My brother survived that stroke.   Electra is still alive.  I have a roof over my head.  The rain has returned to Oregon, vanquishing worries of drought.  I've got my morning coffee and my evening cup of tea.  I've the cleaning rituals to keep me busy.   I take my break and eat some hot home made soup for lunch.  Nothing better.  At night, now, I dream of fat strawberries.  They're coming, you know.   Then the cherries, if my tree is not in a mood this year, and the blueberries, then the blackberries. 

Who, I might wonder, born here in Oregon, does not dream of summer berries, fish jumping evenings in a mountain lake, and the waves crashing at bare feet toes squished into the sand?

Oregon Normal

It's been pouring rain.  With wind.

We can all sigh with relief.  All is well in Oregon.  Now we can feel ok, not weirded out over the lack of rain.

At first when the rain returned, we held off, maybe feeling guilty, worried it might not last or be enough, but now, that the rain has REALLY returned, we feel comfortable again complaining about it.

It's raining, it's pouring
The gray days are boring....

I renewed my license.  Finally.  I've been putting it off.

I couldn't find my birth certificate.  How in the hell was I going to prove I was born in Oregon, oops, in the U.S.?  I thought walking into the DMV drenching wet, no umbrella, smiling, should be plenty to prove my roots.

The first reminder letter I got from the state said it would cost $86 to renew.  The second reminder letter apologized for the first, and said they'd made an error and it would cost $68, not $86.  Now that's a mistake I like hearing.

Then I wondered if I would pass the vision test.  I memorized all sorts of eye charts, just in case.  They were all wrong but no matter, I could read every line they didn't even ask me to read in the vision test.  I impressed myself.  Pass.

Fat Ed Lied, ordered pie, zebra died.   That's my memory helper phrase for the 20/40 line on what was supposed to be the one and only universal eye chart test, according to the web.  FELOPZD.  No zebra's involved in the long line of letters I read off today without an error, then started in on the line below but was stopped.  "You don't need to continue.  Your eyes are fine," I was assured.

Well, ok then.  How would I know.

I got a new project.  The toilet seat broke off.  I hope this project, replacing it, doesn't take me all day tomorrow.  I got a brand new used seat at the habitat store for $5.  Classy, too, clean, nice and sort of solid.  Sheets of hail were coming down by then, so I held the seat over my head as a dashed for my car.    Now I'm thinking of all the reasons maybe I should buy toilet seats new and not used.  Ewwwww.

But then, I do use public restrooms.  So, the used seat, it's ok. I'm over it.

Here are Oregon rain puddle photos for you to enjoy of my cat yard.

Electra's back from knocking away on deaths' door.  Good thing Death was taking a nap and didn't answer.

That's Electra in her cozy sick bay, heating pad underneath fuzzy blankets.  Good also for rainy weather snoozing.  It's in a cupboard in the bathroom.

And Miss Daisy, well I'm so darn soft.  I let her have her new little favorite sleep zone, the carrier that I left on a counter in the bathroom.  Actually I got super scared for Electra on Sunday.  She was gasping for air.  I even called the emergency vet to tell them I was bringing her in for euthanasia, to be ready, and was sobbing.  I had the carrier ready and sitting on the bathroom counter.  But when I go back into the bathroom, to get her, Electra is fine and her gasping was just my overzealous steamer going, and she got too hot. 

Miss Daisy took over Electra's euthanasia carrier, left sitting there on the counter.  She likes it.  She doesn't know it was to be a coffin.

Doesn't she look very satisfied and happy?

So this cat (photo below) hangs around the street, now and then, and fights nights with Simba, who lives a block over.  Simba is neutered.  I got him neutered.  I thought this black tux was fixed, but he spray marked that garage, over, what appears to be, a lot of prior spray marks, just behind him, on the garage. (picture a guy spray painting his graffiti over that of another guy, same thing)

 So....I'm going to try to catch him.  Why?  It's in my genes.  I have no money to get him fixed, but he will get fixed somewhere somehow.  This is my hood, buddy, and I will sell my organs if need be to make sure all cats in these here parts are fixed.

Night From Hell. Miss Daisy is a Bad Neighbor

I was going to go to bed early last night, was so looking forward to it.

Miss Daisy had other plans.

It was one of those nights, where she wanted into everything.  She wanted into the bathroom, where she had decided a carrier in there was her special hideaway.  She loves to find unique places to sleep.  But, she wasn't really into sleeping.  She wanted noticed all cute in that out of place carrier.

The minute she was settled into it, and I'd closed the bathroom door, so other cats wouldn't bother Electra in the night, she would start with the deaf cat loud howling.

I tried to ignore it.  I'd put a pillow over my head.  Eventually the low yowls got higher pitched and not easy to ignore.  I would drag myself out of bed and let her out of the bathroom, admonish her, although she can't hear me do that, and go back to bed. Then she'd want right back into the bathroom.  Over and over, this went on, until I took a sip of NyQuil and told the cats, others of whom were also being very loud in play with others, "I can sleep through anything now."

Not anything.

Miss Daisy then took to jumping onto my prone body from a shelf.

OMG.  I mumbled about sleeping in my car, that nobody loved me here.

Those threats go nowhere with cats.  Even if they did understand, they would think sleeping in the car would be an adventure.  FUN STUFF!  When I thought about this, I broke into laughter.

And Miss Daisy coyly curled around my feet looking up at me all cute and innocent.  She's that way.  Just a spoiler of any bad mood I try to work up and into.

She's perpetually the innocent.  Even when she's not.

I finally slept, long and hard and wonderfully.  So it's all good in the end.

But she wants to sleep now and I know what that means for tonight.

Electra is doing ok, better than yesterday, making progress maybe.  How would I know.

I read online pneumonia in cats is fairly rare, but when it strikes it hits the young and the old and often afflicts a cat trying to overcome a viral cold, when they tire, and seeps down into their lungs when sleeping.  Or when they inhale vomit.

I read it can take months of recovery time also.

We are taking it one day at a time, and if she recovers, good, and if not, we tried.

Doing home care treatment, steaming her, with my decades old Vick's vaporizer, using mint oil in it, or Vick's vapor rub.  Wish I knew where around here I could get peppermint or mint oil and eucalyptus oil.  I used to find it at one Fred Meyer but they discontinued.   There's nothing like either to penetrate clogged nasal passages.  I also got nutrical to supplement her nutrition.

I briefly thought I'd find and buy a nebulizer.  One Walmart website said they had them at the Albany store.  I went there and they didn't and the pharmacist complained people are always being directed there from online but that they don't carry them at the store.  You have to order them.  But they're cheap, about $30.  Nebulizers are better than vaporizers because the droplets put out are supposed to be tiny and penetrate the lungs, whereas vaporizer droplets probably penetrate only the sinuses.   Ordering one online, through Walmart, would take ten days to get here, so I didn't order one.  Cats are often nebulized to receive medications for asthma or pneumonia, but even the steam can help with no medication and it's done this way for cats at home (yes thank you again youtube):



 I also discovered a physical therapy treatment online, used for dogs and cats with pneumonia.  You cup your hands and lightly slap the cupped hand against the chest of the dog or cat, to loosen up the junk in the lungs.  With a cat, you use one hand, or several fingers.  So I have been doing that.  Today she sounds like she has croup in her lungs sometimes, which means its loosening I guess.   She's even trying to cough it out.

I'm learning a lot, which is always good, always interesting, always fun for me.

My phone quit ringing.  People call but I wouldn't know it, because the phone won't ring.  I have it set to both ring and vibrate, but it won't do either for an incoming call.  Also, when someone does call and leaves a message, the message might be delivered two to three days later along with notification that they called.  I find this hilarious.

At least I can call out reliably.  There's a dead zone where I live for cell coverage.  I might get one bar of coverage if I turn the right direction, stand on one foot, and tilt my head a certain way.

The lack of reliable service doesn't bother me. I'm not a phone talker.  I can still receive texts in and out with no delay.  I can call out because I can watch the reception bars and move to where I can get at least one bar before calling out.

I spent all day Saturday doing a five minute repair.  Isn't that the way things go?

My garage door lockset had begun sticking, locking me out, at times, and locking me in, stuck closed, when it wasn't even locked.  My brother sent me a replacement.  This should have been a five minute thing.  Nope.

I could not get the old lockset off.  It was corroded for one thing and the internal parts of the two knobs, stuck to each other.  After multiple doses of WD40, they unstuck, but still I could not pull them all the way out.  What do I do?  Go to youtube, that's what I did.  I love youtube and all the helpful DIY'ers on it.

I realized I could not find the push button to pull out the knob because I wasn't wearing my glasses.  I needed my glasses and  a flashlight in the poorly lit garage and then easily found the lever down from the knob, to depress, so the knob pulled out of the other parts and finally the old lockset was off.

I thought "Easy going now".  Not so much.

The new lockset didn't quite fit together.  I tried and tried, but finally by turning one knob one way and pushing, the parts slid together through the latch.  But the faceplate of the latch was rectangular and the old latches faceplate was small and round.  Darn it anyhow.  I couldn't bore out a new setback because it's a seventies door, plated in metal.

What to do now.  Well, I remembered finding an old lockset on a back shelf in the garage when I moved in.  It had no keys with it, so was useless, but what if it had universal latch face plates in the package.  I dug it out and sure enough, there were three different face plates in its package.  I again took to youtube, to find out how to remove the faceplate on the new lockset.  Sure enough, there was video on that.  Thank you Youtube!

I pried off the two parts of the faceplate on the new lockset and installed the universal round one from the old one from the back shelf of the garage.  At last.  All parts on and tight.  I didn't have to replace the strike plate.  The old one worked just fine.  Yay!  Hours working to do a five minute job.  But it's done!

Bad photo, I know, but the color is quite beautiful and despite hardships involved, I enjoyed finally figuring it all out and learning all about the different kinds of locks and their parts.

Today, now finally, noon already, I will tackle more projects.  I need to change my cars' spark plugs.  I used to have a spark plug wrench and gapper, but they are long gone.  When I used to change my spark plugs I'd have this terrible fear I'd break the ceramic part and not be able to get it out then.

I did change the oil, oil and air filters three days ago.  I think it runs better already.  I like to live in lala land and hope everything is beautiful and that my car will run forever.  If I believe it, it will be so.  Right?

And tonight Miss Daisy will be perfectly behaved and quiet and cuddle up next to me as I fall into an easy peaceful sleep.  Right?

Legalize Pot in Oregon?

Oregon is posturing to legalize pot here, like they've done in Washington and Colorado.

I don't smoke pot.  Reality is OK with me.

I've known plenty of potheads--people so addicted all they think about is smoking more and getting more.   It is addictive and it does make a person lose motivation.

But that's not my business.

We have enough people trying to limit freedom and think for us without letting our own brains make our own decisions.  We get dumbed down when we are over regulated and other entities do all the thinking and choosing.  Like politicians, laws and churches.  Churches are right up there in dumbing us down, doing the thinking for us, and smothering freedom, differences and free thought.

Seems like lots of people want to be the rulers of the world and force everyone else to think and act and believe just like they do.

So, although I've seen pot destroy plenty of lives, I don't think the government should regulate it.  That's the place of the free mind and personal choice, to make those decisions and regulate oneself.

The Oregon medical marijuana bill, allowing people to grow and use a limited amount of pot for medical reasons, is a joke.  Let's just all admit its a joke.  Because it is.   If I had cancer, yeah, I would want to smoke dope and should be allowed to smoke dope.  Reality for cancer patients and people with other severely painful conditions isn't pleasant.  They should be able to do pretty much anything they feel helps.  But  most people I know with medical maryjane permits don't have cancer, don't have anything, except they're addicted to pot, or like smoking it and also want to make a bit of money selling it, under the guise they're medical pot growers or have cards.  That's the reality of the Oregon medical marijuana law.

Potheads generally don't steal like meth heads do.  Meth is brain rot, zombieville, and its use creates crime.  Like heroin.   When personal use of something filters out to affect others, like crime rates, kids, safe neighborhoods and health care costs, that's when restrictive laws get made, to keep the bad choices one person makes from affecting other people.

Freedom is sometimes not pretty and relies on people with free choice to behave themselves.  So behave yourselves potheads and your choice to use will remain free, if Oregon decides to go that route.

Freedom means also I might not like what you do as a free soul.  But that's life and that's freedom and freedom creates a better world and smarter people who must use their brains to decide things for themselves. That's if you have a working brain not smogged out in weed smoke.  

That's my take on it, for what it's worth.

Hanging in There

Electra, before she went to the vet, was on death's door.  She may still be, but she doesn't feel like it now, not after that steroid shot.  After we got home, I gave her fluids, and after a couple more hours in the bathroom, on the heating pad, on which she is laying in the above photo, taken before she went to the vet, she asked to be let out of the bathroom, to see her friends and wander around.

So why not, you know, and she was out for awhile, also eating and drinking.  It bothers me once the elderly get imprisoned in a nursing home, their food is restricted to tasteless mush.  Elderly, once in a home, never to get out again, should be treated like elders, allowed anything they want, to eat or drink.  If someone wants a milkshake every single day they should get a milkshake every single day.  They should be allowed wine and beer too.

Later I found her back in the bathroom cupboard, so I turned on her heating pad again and she was happy.  She's come out a few more times, and eaten more.  Now she's back sleeping on the heating pad.

I have also been back to steaming her.

Molly, from the Albany apartment complex, is coming out of her shell.  I feel so bad for her.  She was the one who had just had kittens when I trapped her and I was not allowed to go find them under the building.  It was a shock, a tragedy, because initially I'd been told I could go under the building or that a maintenance man would do so. I won't forget them doing that to those kittens, and to Molly, and to me.   In my mind and heart, those apartments are cursed for the way animals were treated there.   A place without heart or soul.  A place where, when you pass, the coldness seeps out at you like a demon.

She's found a new friend in the young Lebanon colony male, Arrow.

 Arrow isn't very old, still has the kitten look in his eyes, but he is brave, and along with Vino, Mona Lisa, and Huckleberry, he has ventured forth to explore the house and cat yard from the second bedroom.  And met Molly, who wants to mother something.  So now Arrow has a mother figure.

 Slinko is from the same place Molly came from, and only recently came out as tame.  He's scared of blankets, for one thing, still bolts if I speak loudly, but otherwise is having a grand time, and loves to play wildly.

Sassy who is of the Albany business cat group is wildly beautiful and has lost, as she grows up, some of the "ever worried look" that most of the younger business cats had.  It was the shape of their eyes that gave them that certain look.  But as they have grown up, their faces have filled out and some of that worried look eye shape is gone.

Cougie and Rogue, part of Sassy's family, are doing well, by the way, after their dentals earlier in the week.

Last but not east, even though Valentine's Day is over, a photo of best friends Slurpy and Miss Daisy.
Slurpy, who is young by comparison to Miss Daisy, who is now 14, also outsizes her considerably.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Electra's Last Days?

Electra's been with me a long time.  15 years to be almost exact.  She's been with me through three different rentals, where I've lived, with her, and other cats.  She was my second cat.  I've told the story several times on this blog of how she came to be with me.  I'll tell it briefly once more.

She'd been brought to a Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon clinic in Salem, by a Salem trapper I called Saint Vince, a retired 3 star army colonel who turned to helping cats after leaving a long time military career.

Saint Vince is gone now.

She was in a live trap with a sibling, both just teenagers.  Vince had trapped her in Silverton.  She got away from me, when I was transferring her to another trap, in the bathroom, of the under construction building, where the clinic was being held.  She darted up and behind a board, loosely tacked over a former circuit box for the building.  It was all wires in there.

I turned off the main circuit to the building, plunging everything into darkness, fearful she would bite through a wire, start a fire, burn down the building and electrocute herself.  I then climbed onto a chair and reached into that tangle of wires for her, in the dark.  She bit me, lodging her teeth into my thumb joint.  I held on and pulled her out.

Due to FCCO policies she would now need quarantined for ten days, as a precaution against rabies.  I offered to bring her home to the Corvallis duplex I shared with only one other cat, Hopi.  So that's how Electra got her name and how she came to be with me.  And that's why my right thumb joint often swells, if I use it much.  I will always carry that remembrance of Electra with me.

Electra has been struggling the last month, first with a cold, and when she seemed to overcome that, with mouth breathing and lethargy.  Then two nights ago, she began vomiting.  I was up all night with her.  My vet office was too busy to see her yesterday.  She's been in the bathroom on a heating pad, but not eating much.

Today, despite being booked, my vet's office worked her in.  An Xray, that was unbelievably clear, showed her stomach and intestines full of air, from swallowing air in breathing and her lungs damaged from asthma with a gray area near her spine, although it's hard to know where exactly due to angles and Xrays being 2D.  The vet said it could be pneumonia or even a tumor.

She got a steroid shot and a convenia injection and the vet said if she shows no improvement by Monday, she should be euthanized.  Or to bring her back if she starts raking in the air, gasping, which is my great fear, after watching that poor long hair calico die that way, after damaged by an OD of anesthesia during spay surgery that sent her into a four day coma culminating in total heart failure.  That remains one of my worst memories.  I was told that vet clinic, and the others owned by that vet, where also those female cats I took up were damaged in surgery, has been sold and I'm very relieved to hear that.

So here's to Electra and the good old days, of youth and play and love and friends.  Here's to Saint Vince.  She's had so many friends, such a great life.  If it's about to end, so be it.  We all die in the end.  Her life has been grand.

Not that long, maybe a year, after Electra came to live with me, Vince called me.  He told me the old woman who had fed Electra's colony had moved and left the rest of the cats behind.  Would I help retrap them, he asked.  I never turned Vince's requests down.  Not ever.  So off I went and we trapped all those cats left by that woman, once again, and found homes for them best we could. Vince and I.   Electra's family, all of them looked so much like her.  Electra was safe and sound, with me by then a year, away from that woman, never went back, and I was so glad.

My dear Electra, how good life has been with you and all the others.

Electra is on the upper right, cuddled against Starry, from the N. Albany swamp.  Grumbly Rumba, a rescued Siamese from N. Albany is on the left with Slurpy's head against him.  Grumbly Rumba has long since gone to a home.

Here is Electra with Cattyhop, one of the Slaughterhouse kittens, from just off highway 20.  Cattyhop has passed.  She died unexpectedly of a heart attack.

Electra, on the right, with Shady and Teddy.

Electra, with a scraggly rescued kitten. The kitten attached himself to Electra, to her dismay, she not being a great lover of the rescued kittens I would drag home.  She later was good with it, and took over mothering him.

Snow Turns to Lots of Rain

Now the east coast and south are getting hit with a "historic storm" of ice and snow.  This winter's weather seems to say, "something is going on" and "the climate is changing".  I think the climate is changing.  I don't know much about the science of climate change, however, so I'll just say it's getting different and has been noticeable here for a few years.  

We've had almost no rain so far this winter in Oregon.  We have had two severe and strange snow and ice events.  But now, it's back to rain, and lots of it.  The snow hasn't even completely melted where it got piled up, at least.

My backyard is all puddles and yuck from two days of rain.

My backyard isn't level and the soil is clay which is almost impenetrable.  Water doesn't absorb.   It has to run off and if there's nowhere for that to easily happen it stands in the low spots.  Sometimes the puddles are knee deep in the back.

It's really yukky.  I need to one day haul in enough dirt to create slope at least so it can get onto the driveway and run off from there down the driveway to the street.  But dirt is expensive and I have no way to haul it here anyway.  So I make do with the winter lake that the back becomes.

At least it's not knee deep yet out back.

I take photos because then its easier to know where the low spots are.

While Cougie and Rogue are now on the mend and feeling better, I think I am about to lose my dear friend Electra.  She struggled a few months back with a bad cold, but she finally rallied, and recovered.  A month ago, she got another cold and has been unable to rally.  She seems over the cold, but has no energy.  I've been giving her fluids and keeping her warm but I think she's worn out and ready to leave me.  She's 15.  She wants to be near me or the other cats and Starry, the motherly torti from the N. Albany swamp, obliges, giving her baths and laying beside her to share her own body heat.

It is possible since the cold has finally waned she is catching up on the sleep she lost with the constant battle of fluids in her sinuses dripping down her throat.  It kept her up and unable to sleep much, as it has with many people who catch that sinus drainage down the back of the throat type cold.

She also got steaming sessions to loosen up the congestion and then, at the end, something that helped her greatly finally get sleep, antihistamines in the evening, to dry her up so she could sleep.

Starry is often beside her, laying against her or grooming her.  So is Slurpy, the chirping torti.

Slurpy, one of the nicest cats in the world

We here in Oregon have are eyes turned towards spring.  I bet others do also in many parts of this country.  We have had storm after freezing cold storm here in America---unseasonably cold.  Many of us struggle with the increased heat bills too.  This has been a tough winter for America.  But spring is coming!

Cougie, Rogue Back Home

Strangest thing, last night, the snow had melted enough to reveal a glow beneath---the solar yard lights had been completely buried.  But when the snow began to melt away, they shined through even still under several inches of snow.  It was awesome.  I cleared the snow away by hand to free them.

Snow by last night on the street was melting fast.

I made it up to Sherwood to pick up Cougie and Rogue, who were by this time, not happy cats and very anxious to come home.

They relaxed some when they saw me.  People in the vet office oohed and awed over them, told them they were pretty and were just very nice.

Cougie had one very very bad tooth pulled and the rest cleaned.  Rogue's teeth were good just filthy in tartar.  He's been having trouble off and on since he came here, so I would guess they all came here, from that business, where they existed, with nasty mouths.   At least these two should feel much better now.  Will have to wait to see if their mouths will just gunk with tartar and inflammation again, which is common if they suffer from an allergy to the membranes lining their teeth.  We shall see.

But getting all the debris and tartar off sure won't hurt for now and they will feel much better after they're not mad at me anymore.

They were so happy to see home, when I walked in the door with them in the carriers.  They were totally relieved and happy.

My car didn't run so well and I'm wondering what's going on.  I had to add almost a quart of oil before I left even though I'd added oil under two months ago, and rarely drive it far anymore.

It's not leaking.  But the lack of oil is probably what made the starter make the noises.  I'd left the car in the driveway last Wednesday, with the hood popped but not up, because I was going to change the oil and filter.  That was the day before the snow came.  But it got very cold and finally I decided not to change the oil until it warmed up and closed the hood, tried to start it to go to the store and that is when the metallic grinding sound started.

Well if its not leaking oil but is using oil guess it might be burning a lot of oil, which might mean something is going haywire deep in the engine.

I got stuck in a line of interstate traffic just before my exit today, when traveling north.  But it wasn't a wreck slowing traffic in north bound lanes.  Rather, a big rig was overturned into a ditch along the south bound lanes along the city of Wilsonville, which is bisected by I5 just like Albany is.  I also saw numerous police cars and an inmate work crew truck.  Tonight, the news says that big rig plowed into the inmate work crew, seriously injuring at least one woman worker.  I don't know why the trucker did that.  Didn't say his excuse.

 Today, when returning, a trucker started losing his lane off and on ahead of me.  I finally sped up to get by him fast and looked up to see him with a plate or bowl of food propped right on the steering wheel.  OK.  Guess that explains his swerving.

The car ran badly on the way back, rough and every tiny bump I could feel.  The struts have never been changed and the shocks only once and I've carried a lot of weight in that car.  But also the seat cushion is nearly gone, which makes driving quite painful, and that could be part of why it feels so harshly every little bump.  But there's more, because I know my car.  The swaying, rocking, the feeling of impediment or heavy load on the engine or something.  I don't know.  All I know is I know my car and I felt for it driving home and wondered if it would make it, the way it was running.  Ragged and overworked, swaying, rocking, bouncing and straining.  What can I say?  I don't know.

I guess I need to start making some kind of a plan, for alternate transportation, watch for a cheap decent mileage car, something.  I've got so little money though.  All along I thought this will probably be the last car I'll ever own, because they're so costly, to drive, to maintain, to insure, to license, to renew registration, not to mention gas that keeps going up.

I think I'll call the auto mechanic department at the community college.  I have been told by people the students sometimes work on people's cars, to learn, and it might be cheap.  But I don't know they really do that.  Might be an urban myth as I've never actually run into anyone who has ever been helped with car issues there.  Can't hurt to try.

I used to work on that first car I bought for $200 or $100, can't recall now how much I paid for that old Ford Fairmont straight 6 wagon.  Now that was an easy car to work on. Rear wheel drive.  A car meant to be fixed by its owner.  No computer.  Everything accessible under the hood.  No specialty tools needed to work on it.  I even replaced the drive line myself.  I replaced the struts myself, using C clamps to compress the suspension spring--a daring endeavor I suppose (many people have been badly injured when suspension spring jury rig compression devices fail).  I always had the dash off in a constant state of rewiring it.  The gas gauge didn't work.  The heater didn't work.  Oh my, that was a wreck, but for the price I paid, worth it!  I suddenly had transportation.  Wheels.  A way to get out of town.  It was awesome!   Before that, I lived without a car, in a tiny constricted painfully lonely empty world.

You think I knew anything about mechanics?  No!  But there was an old urine soaked repair manual under a seat.  Urine soaked because the woman who had owned it would store her poor dogs in the car.  Even the spare tire well was pooled in dog urine. I dried the thing out with a blow dryer, because I needed it.  It was a great simply illustrated and detailed repair manual.   I used to be seen along the road, where it had broken down, with that repair manual out reading it by flashlight, and trying to rig fixes with dollar store tools.

But this car is so different.  Computer.  Front wheel drive.  Engine cross ways.  Not even a distributor or carburetor.  Everything jammed up tight together in the engine compartment.  Specialty tools needed for almost everything.  And I can't get my hands down in there, its so tight, to even change a serpentine belt.  Built to be in shop repaired with the vast costs of mechanic labor, that's for sure.  

But the alternative to no car is to hole up here with no hope of any sort of life other than in this house and resort to begging for rides to get groceries, cat food and litter or to the doctor or vet when needed.  No dreams of visiting other people or family or going anywhere.  This town has no center, no community.  It's a place to live or shop and very spread out.   You got to leave to find recreation.  And if you don't have family, it is very lonely.  So life without a car here, that's no life at all.

I worry about it.  I have nobody around here if my car suddenly breaks.  I'm high and dry with no way to get anything I need.   It weighs on my mind with the car acting out lately.  I shouldn't have run it into the ground like I did, helping everybody else on earth, not even thinking what I'd do, when it quit.  Like an idiot.

I knocked my toe against the bed post twice and now it's a funny color and quite painful.  Darn bedpost anyhow.  An Australian blogger, whom I follow, just broke her toe.  Must be some sort of epidemic sweeping the earth.

Well that's a really yukky photo to end with.  I'll go find some cute cat, curled up real sweet sleeping, take a photo, then come back and upload it.  That would be a better less gross end for the day and this post.

I'm so happy Cougie and Rogue had their teeth cleaned and Cougie got that bad one pulled.  So happy Odd Cat Out is run by friends who offered the help.  I talked to her yesterday, from the vet clinic.  She was in tears telling me Annatude, a gray long hair girl, originally from Albany, had been adopted finally, by a lovely couple.  "The barn is the only home she's ever known," my friend who runs OCO was saying, through tears.  "When I'd visit her at the Petsmart, she'd climb into my arms and hug me.  She wanted me to take her back home."

It's hard on her, adopting out the tame ones, but she does it with the help of an adoption group called Felines First.  Annatude was one of six gray long hair female kittens I found when fixing cats in Albany.  The woman, who was into drugs, had two unfixed female cats, both with litters of unwanted kittens, and an unfixed male.  I called every local rescue and shelter and no one would take the six kittens.  I could see only trouble ahead, when someone who doesn't really care for her cats anyhow, had six female kittens who would never be fixed, once old enough, if left with her.   Poppa's president, now running Odd Cat Out, was the only one who would help.  So up they went.

Sure enough, within a month after I helped her get the two adult females and one male fixed, and removed those six kittens from the older litter, she was evicted and moved in with her parents.  She abandoned her male cat, who at least was fixed.  I tracked the woman, found out where she was currently, with her parents, because the other litter of kittens she had kept from the other unfixed female needed fixed.  Once I tracked her down, I got them fixed with Poppa Inc. funds.

 There's only one of the six kittens, now adults, still without a home.  The other five girls have been adopted.  She had told me the couple who adopted Annatude were getting her groomed professionally first thing.  "Keni," I said, "think of it.  That little girl with her sisters, living in a run down rental, covered in fleas and ringworm, not a chance in the world for any future and now getting professionally groomed?"

 I was about to start sobbing too, talking to Keni there at the vet clinic in Sherwood on my phone, staring into a carrier at Cougie, who had just had a terrible painful infected tooth pulled and the rest cleaned, a cat who had been a throw away from birth.  Odd Cat Out is awesome!

Blessings on Cougie, Rogue and Odd Cat Out

Today, ten days after Convenia antibiotic injections, Cougie and Rogue are up in the Portland area receiving dental care.  Good luck, my babies.

Cougie, who formerly roamed the grounds of an Albany business and lived almost exclusively on pigeons since the business people would not feed them.

Rogue, Cougies' cousin

Blessings on Odd Cat Out, footing the bill, when I could not.

You can still donate on Poppa Inc's website, but the funds go to Odd Cat Out and would help pay for Cougie and Rogue's dental care.  This is the link to the donation page.

I will soon be an affiliate, of Odd Cat Out, able to raise money here, to care for the cats here.  Odd Cat Out is the nonprofit that once was Poppa Inc.  They also ended up with cats without options, as I did when cat wrangling using Poppa Inc. funds to get cats fixed by the thousands.

I couldn't make it up there in the heavy snow then ice that hit this area.  Then my car starter started to fizzle.  And with the appointment long standing, I didn't want to give it up.

So the husband of a friend, on his way back to Portland from California, picked up the cats yesterday afternoon.

They will soon be at the vet and under anesthesia.  Fingers crossed for both lovely kitties.

Yesterday I cleared my entire driveway, street to garage door, of a foot of snow.  Sure, I could have waited for today's thaw, but most of it still would have been out there, slushy and yukky and difficult in my low riding car, to get through.

Besides, it was good exercise.

My car still starts so today I've got to get out and get food for myself and cat litter.  Oatmeal gets old.  But I did make some awesome soup out of nothing more than one sweet potato, lentils, onions and garlic. There's nothing like sitting down to a hot bowl of soup after shoveling snow for a couple of hours.

So long, snow and ice.  Was nice to know you.  Where you go next, that's your business.

We needed the moisture in drought stricken Oregon, so no complaints here.

Cat yard fence, now minus snow and ice.

Backyard still with snow, some of it from the driveway.

Driveway cleared of snow.  That was a lot of snow to shovel, including around the corner clear to the street.

We will end with cat photos.  And why not....

Sleepy Slinko

Happy Hawkeye

Madcap Mopsy

Willy Wonderful

Meesa Methinks

Dreamy Daisy