Mr. Goblin has finally decided to join the group.I have been seeing him more often in the last two weeks than ever before. This could be because the weather which they’re calling the “atmospheric bomb” has frightened him into deciding that joining the group and sleeping out of the elements is preferable to sleeping outside.

This morning I was able to get close enough to him to see that he has indeed been neutered. Doesn’t come as much as a surprise to me, because if he was a Tom, there would have been fights for dominance in the night. All has been peaceful. He is still a bit skittish around me, but his love for canned tuna dissolved his apprehension of me checking to see if he was a boy or a girl. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to flea treat him and deworm him.The only kitty that is upset with him being here is Twist  They are both the same size and they are both black cats. But Twist is a female and she is very dominant.

The heavy rains are affecting my trees and not in a good way. They are so thirsty from not having moisture for so many years, the limbs have dried out and become brittle. With all the added rain that’s been falling in the last 48 hours, my limbs are falling down everywhere.

We are supposed to have continued rain for the next week or so. I think at the end of it, once I do clean up, my burn pile is going to turn into a bonfire. Although we are allowed to burn right now I feel very uneasy due to all the recent fires. I may just wait for the next burning season to open up before I attempt to burn again.

It’s quite interesting to me is that my  creek is still dry even with all this rain. I was looking at pictures the other day when we first moved here and the water was coming clear up to the bottom of the house. That hasn’t happened for about seven years now. I remember how confused my horses used to be, when the fish and salamanders would be swimming in their pasture. Racer would look at me and cock his head as if to say “But mom I don’t eat sushi!”

A few days ago we had an unexpected frost. I believe that Fall is going to be a short one this year and Winter is planning to hit hard. My outside cats are at a bit of a disadvantage. Before they did the build, I had electricity to several outbuildings which were turned into cat enclosures. That unfortunately is no longer true. So I have piled on the straw inside these buildings and made them as weatherproof as I possibly can while still leaving access to the cats to get out 24/7 if they need to. Misty, although she does still appear to look quite scraggly, she has more energy and is eating better.

This year my vet debt is such that I will not be able to pay it in full at the end of the year which makes me sad. This will be the first time in over 30 years that this will happen but times are hard and Covid has not helped things. I will just take it a day at a time

I am also going to be mixing dry food with canned food through the winter. Just to stretch the food out longer and hopefully get the cats through the coldest stretches without issues. Buying canned food locally is becoming a bit of a challenge. They tell me there’s an aluminum cans shortage which I’m not sure I buy, I think more it’s just a supply and demand problem. I know I have washed out and recycled over 1 million cans during my time in rescue.

I had to take Magoo into the vet last week. His eyes were looking really strange. It didn’t look like conjunctivitis, he didn’t have a cold, he just had these severely swollen eyes rimmed in red. His eyes were so swollen that they were slanted when you looked at him. The vet was really puzzled and tried him on several different eye ointments  which made him worse  Finally I decided to just stop putting the ointment in his eyes and instead put warm compresses on his eyes as tolerated. It must’ve felt pretty good for him because he would lean into it and sit there for at least 10 minutes or until the wash cloth got cold.

his eyes are doing much better and yesterday I believe I solved the mystery of what was wrong with him. He and Ashley have been sleeping together recently. Something that they haven’t done since being returned. As kittens they were virtually inseparable. Ashley has been licking his face in an obsessive manner. She did that when they were kittens and they were always together. But she was honing in on his ear. She would lick it until it bled. Now she’s doing the same thing to him with his face and his eyes

I believe he’s had enough because now he sleeps in the dog kennel and she sleeps on top. I try to split them apart every time I see them together. Yet they still don’t groom on their own  Ashley just sometimes gets this obsessive licking PTSD behavior. I’m just glad I figured it out because we didn’t know what was going on.

I am relieved to say that after more testing they have ruled out Cushing’s on Kota  There are now two lanes of thought for him  Because of his passion for water. (He is always jumping into rivers, lakes, streams you name it he’s in it if there’s water involved). They believe that he must’ve picked up some sort of foreign organism in the water  I was given a broad-spectrum pretty intensive de-wormer to give him for three days  they also gave him a shot to help alleviate the hair loss and the itching. Unlike prednisone this medication had no side effects. It was prohibitively expensive but it had no side effects.

The other theory behind his ill health is that because he is such a mixture of breeds and not just pure shepherd that he is inheriting something genetically from one of those breeds. He is Siberian husky, boxer, black lab, Dutch shepherd and German Shepherd according to the AKC in Portland when I sent his DNA in.

When I’m talking about the vet debt, I am not talking about his treatment. I’m talking about the cats. It’s been a hard year because of the burn kitties and all their issues, the loss of my seniors and other health care  What is going on with Kota is on me  The vets tell me that if this current treatment does not work they want me to take him to see a specialist. The only problem is she’s booked until mid January. So I’m hoping that what we are doing now. New medication’s, adding supplements, vitamins and another change in diet will turn the tide  I am so relieved and grateful that it is not Cushing’s as first feared

well the day is waking up. We are supposed to have two weeks of solid rain starting tomorrow. Boy do we need it. I need to go out and harvest the walnut tree before the rains hit. We have been without rain for so long that the walnuts are not good this year. Most of them have turned black and mushy because of the vinegar fly invasion. So I want to rake them up and put them in the burn pile before the squirrels come  they can get really sick on spoiled walnuts. For some reason they don’t have the instinct to not eat these mushy black walnuts. I have a friend coming in a few days and he’s going to take my walnut tree completely back. He’s going to take all the firewood and all the salvageable walnuts in payment for the job. I’m good with that because this tree is probably 100 feet across now and taking over my backyard.

Those of you who might still be reading this blog that I am not that consistent with these days. Thank you for still visiting. I worry about those I no longer hear from  I almost wish I could do a roll call to see who is out there. But I imagine most everybody is now on social media platforms and it is my personal preference to stay off of those. I have my reasons. At any rate stay safe, love each other and give your furry ones a hug. When you can spare a prayer, throw it my way  We can always use them.

This morning, when I woke up, I realized that the challenges that face me ahead are unlike any before, that I have encountered. It’s simply a challenge to go out in public these days, for it seems as if some of the public have lost their minds. Or, perhaps, I have lost mine? On this path since Mike left,  I have had to face I was never alone. The obstacles at times that seemed  unsurmountable, became bearable because of Kota. He was there by my side helping me cope with the crazies. Right now, looming before me is the very real possibility that my wonderful friend and companion does not have very long to live.

He started getting sick immediately after the first dog attack, about 9 months ago. He was losing his hair gradually, he was licking, itching and feeling quite miserable. Kota was panting, much like the engine in the beloved storybook I grew up with “The Engine that Could” did going up that steep mountain. He would climb on my bed at night and it would shake in rhythm with his rapid breath, as if we were caught in a minor earthquake, until I couldn’t deal with it anymore and would ask him to please get down.

He couldn’t get enough water. He has large milk pail size water buckets in the house. At that time, there were two. He would drink them dry several times a day. Today,  there are six total and he drinks them all dry regularly. He would pee like a racehorse and several times, he would have accidents in the house. Something he hadn’t done since his first night with us.

My vet swore it was a flea allergy. Kota does not have fleas. I don’t allow that. In rescue, I have seen the damage those tiny black parasites can do to animals and it is extensive. I spray my yard every year, I feed (food grade) Diatomaceous earth crystals to the outside kitties..

Kota started getting hives all over his body, his hair would fall out simply if I petted him. Not just individual hairs but clumps. After that initial attack, he has since been jumped (unprovoked) six times now! I knew something was wrong with him that was not an allergic reaction and all the prednisone he was on during that time was not helping. My vet was insistent, it was fleas.

Two weeks ago, Kota vomited up blood. A lot of it. He had a vet appointment a few weeks out, but when I called the clinic in the morning and told them this new development, they asked me to do a drop-off. They couldn’t do an actual appointment. I cancelled an appointment I had in town and immediately took him in.

I have seen him go from a bright, vibrant loving dog to a couch potato with no energy left in his body. From a dog that loved to walk with me in the forest for hours, exploring all scents he follows with his nose, to one who cannot walk 30 minutes without lying down and quitting. He is three years old! He has weakness periodically in his rear legs. He can’t at those times jump up on the bed or into the truck. I bought a ramp, but so far he won’t use it.

I started thinking about all the unprovoked attacks. Some so incredulous that they defy logic. The homeless man in Sweet Home with a black lab that tries to jump into the back window of my truck when I am driving, to attack Kota! Kota does not provoke these attacks. I know people who own aggressive dogs that say “their dog will never hurt anybody” right before that dog goes to attack another dog. I am not in denial, Kota is the most easy-going loving dog I have ever had or even met.

I thought about the attack from a “service dog” in Walmart that jumped out  of his “bed” at the bottom of the shopping cart and went right for Kota’s legs! It was a small terrier,. The pitbull in Bi Mart without a vest who wanted to kill Kota. He was, according to his owner, “an emotional support dog” but she “forgot” his vest at home.

That’s when I realized that the vets were wrong. Kota was not being attacked because he was “big and black” or because the dogs who attacked him were the equivalent of a “schoolyard bully and saw an easy target” but because he was sick and his smell was different, off-putting, challenging to the other dogs who all had one thing in common, an aggressive streak. So after all the training that I have put into this dog, I have retired him from service. He is just my dog now.

The vet kept him and observed him. He called me and told me that Kota looked really “rough.” (That was an understatement). He said that Kota was dribbling urine almost continously and they had discovered his urine was dilute and full of bacteria. He said the x-rays did not show any obstructions. I told him the vomit had also contained a lot of Kota’s hair and would hair show up in a film? The answer was no. His best guess at this time was a severe UTI. He wanted to run bloodwork. I gave my consent.

Kota’s kidney and liver rods are off the chart. He is on a pretty powerful antibiotic (I also started him on a probiotic). He is getting worse and not better. Cushing’s Disease was mentioned. Cushing’s is a disease of the adrenal glands. It can be caused by dog fights, over-use of pred, and various other factors. When the dog is stressed, it will rear it’s ugly head and the dog will pay in misery. The test to actually determine Cushing’s is prohibitively expensive and stressful. The dog has to stay at the vets for four days and endure repeated bloodwork and urine tests.Cushing’s  is not curable and the meds to manage it range in the thousands of dollars. (They are the equivalent to what cancer victims have to pay for for their meds.) The cheaper “off-label drugs” are not that much cheaper and again, there is no cure.  The only symptom of Cushing’s that Kota does not currently display is the pot-bellied appearance as the liver becomes so enlarged, the abdomen swells.

So I have started him on Melatonin to reduce the panting and anxiety. Some other holistic herbs and oils  are recommended to keep him steady. I am looking for a holistic vet, but unfortunately, Delta is rampant here and no one is taking new clients. We are in a wait and see moment. Are we going to see the excessive shedding stop? Will all the flaky skin he is losing stop happening? He could qualify easily for a Head & Shoulders commercial. Will his appetite come back? Will he stop panting like a steam engine? Will he just continue to be a couch potato disinterested in the activity and energy around him?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I do pray to God a lot more now than I ever have. I pray for healing, I pray for knowledge that I do the right thing to alleviate all the stress in his life. It is unfortunate that the last attack on the 14th of Sept was perpetrated from a new neighbor’s dog. I cannot let my dog outside unsupervised. (Not that I ever did anyway). I am not the type of dog owner who just leaves a dog outside all day to run, or sticks them in a small kennel in the hot sun, or puts them on a chain run. This dog, when she sees Kota (no matter where he is  on our property, she goes into prey mode. She wiggles and tries to escape the collar that is attached to her run, or she charges her fencing in her small cement enclosure.

Yesterday, I made my neighbor aware of his dog’s actions. I told him (and I meant it) that if his dog gets out and goes over the fence to attack Kota, it will end badly for her. Not a good way to start a neighborship, but I am over hearing my dog scream in panic and pain. Kota has not ONCE in all these attacks bitten the attacker or anyone trying to get them apart.

So now, the challenges become deeper. Not only do I have to go out in public occasionally , but now I have to do it alone. My best friend, my companion the part of the glue that has kept me together since Mike left, is no longer at my side. He is either waiting in the truck, or he has been left at home alone waiting for my return.

She looks like she is rebounding. That’s one thing I love about black cats, they have remarkable healing capacities if they can find a place to go to ground and sleep. I have been putting in the wet food, feline transfer factor, L-Lysine and food grade dichotomous earth crystals. It seems to be paying off. Her weight looks better, she’s not so scruffy and she’s no longer limping. It’s a great relief because with this weather coming she’s going to need all the strength she can get. Thank you all for your prayers and support. Hopefully the crisis has been averted.

The much-needed rain has arrived. It started pouring hard last night around 11 PM and it did not stop. When I went outside this morning at 2:00 AM to feed, I couldn’t open the back door. All my cats were clustered on the steps. It was raining so hard and they were so frightened, they are used to being able to get under the house out of the weather. With this access cut off from them, their only recourse was to crowd up the back stairs.

12 cats on four steps made it a little bit tenuous to navigate. I ended up going out the front door and enticing them to the platform with food. Thank you to those of you who sent food quickly to us. It is so much needed. I did the math and on severe weather days, I feed 210 cans of cat food a month  that adds up quite quickly. So again thank you to those of you who sent money and or food.

it is now 3 o’clock on Saturday afternoon and the rain has started again it left for about four hours. My trees are so thirsty they are just drinking in the moisture. Even after all the rain that has fallen the ground part of it is still dry. I find it a bit unsettling when I look at the cracks in the dirt and I don’t see earth worms come broiling up to the top. I wonder if the severe drought and all these fires have killed off the earthworms?

I took a walk back to the creek but it’s only trickling. There’s a lot of water that God still needs to deliver before my creek is full. The cats are going to have to get used to going in the outbuildings. I hope after a few days of stormy weather they’ll figure it out. I leave all the outbuildings open for their convenience but last night the unexpected storm not only freaked me out a bit, but it also scared them  Misty was on the step as well

We ran out of dry and wet food yesterday. Unable to find any locally, I ordered what I needed. Took a chunk out of my budget, but it is what it is. This morning, I woke up to 35 degree temps! Heck of a time to run out of cat food. All pet beds outside have now been turned on. I looked at the overall temperature for later today and saw we will be in the 80’s! Crazy friggen weather-

I have not seen Misty now for over two weeks. I don’t know where she is or if she has gone to ground to heal or die? It is frustrating, but there are so many places here she can get into that I cannot. I need to buy a sims card and set up my trail cam to see if she is sneaking in late at night while I am asleep. I am lacing the wet cat food (that I ran out of last night) with L-Lysine and Slippery Elm Bark just in case she is still coming to get food.

We have a bad storm approaching on Friday and our first freeze warning. I hope they are wrong about the freeze warning- it’s way to early to have to deal with frost right now. But the weather here has been nuts, so who can tell what will really happen? Generally, we don’t have a freeze warning until after mid November.

A year ago, during the Holiday Fires, a mama cat gave birth to several kittens during the inferno. When the fire passed over  her- she laid on her newborns and gave her life to the flames, so that some of her babies could live. There were two survivors.

Left to themselves, hungry and I am sure terrified, they went in search of mom’s milk bar but only found ashes, soot, dirt, small pebbles to eat. When they finally came to our rescue, they were so hungry that even being so tiny, their growls for food were ferocious. First time pooping them, showed me the true horror of what they lived through. All that came out were ashes, gravel and dirt. They were so ill, they spent 48 days at the vet (total) not cumulative. When they got back into our rescue, I could see that they were changed. Magoo was scared of everything, and Ash, well she was very fearful of hands.

It’s been a long year’s journey for these two. They were adopted out (we were very forthcoming about all the issues these kittens were showing in their behaviors) but the people insisted they could handle it. Thirty days later, they were back. When I asked why the kittens were being returned, I was told “They pee in our shoes.” I had initially told the adopters that the kittens pee on and in soft things. I don’t lie to people when it comes to issues that kittens have. But, I guess it was just to much..

So I knew, they were here for Life and that we were going to be challenged in all directions concerning their PTSD symptoms and behaviors. Sadly, I was not wrong. But they (and we) have come a long way together, with a longer way to go. They live inside my home, I still rarely see them during the day, they will come out at night, but they won’t sleep on the bed. Magoo no longer hides underneath the bedding, and Ash has stopped trying to find a hiding place that is smaller than she is to hide in. But. she still will slap my hand away every time I try to pet her.

Here is a look back in pictures:

Misty does not have it in her to make it till Friday. All is set up for me to grab her tomorrow morning. I could have nabbed her about 30 minutes ago, but there was nothing in place to do so. Now, my gloves, dark blanket, and cat carrier are on the feeding platform. I was grateful to see this morning that not only is she still eating, but she is hissing to keep Crazy Eyes away from her.

As she gets weaker, he will really harm her. I cannot let that happen. The idea of a bare-handed snatch on a semi-feral cat was not appealing this morning to me. Had there been a cat carrier parked nearby, I would have chanced it. However, I cannot end up in the ER or the hospital with cat scratch fever, something I had years ago and almost lost the use of my right arm from it. With all the Covid restrictions here, there is no one waiting in the wings to care for the animals here. I have to do this with caution and some planning. Please pray that neither human or animal will be harmed in this endeavor. Thank you-