I brought him home this morning. He looks so much better than he did before I rushed him to the vet. Not so skinny scrawny (they said he has a healthy appetite. Right now, he is solo inside of the stall enclosure. We are playing an active game of hide-n-seek. He is doing all within his power to not be seen by me at all!

He is still on pain meds and antibiotics, prebiotics and organ meats because he is so anemic. I just warmed up some bone broth for him.

Oh look, here he goes now up to the highest peak away from me.

Yesterday, after returning from town and picking up all my supplies for the coming month, I came home to find a large box on my porch. At first glance as I pulled into the driveway, it looked for all intents and purposes that it was from Chewy.

When I went to pick it up, it was cold although it was a sunny day and it was a bit wet? I carried it inside and to my surprise, there was food inside of it. But food for me! Fresh food, vegetables, packaged meats, spices, dried fruits. No indication of who it was sent by that I could see. The box came from Dinnerly.com  I was told when I called that the boxes will be delivered every Weds indefinitely!  There is enough food in there to easily prepare at least 18 small meals! Fresh corn, eggplant, cucumbers- exotic spices. The recipe cards I was told would be emailed. They would not tell me who sent it.

It took a little bit of research on my part, but I found out this is being sent by a local real estate woman. One, who in the past would call me about finding abandoned kittens and cats in abandoned houses and I would help her out all I could. This is nothing short of amazing at this time. Because I have to divide my donations between hitting the vet bill and buying food my cats will actually eat, this has dipped into my personal money, which I have no problem with. These cats come first always. It just leaves me a bit on the dry side when it comes to my wiggle room (how much money I have left after payday to run the next month). It just left me feeling so blessed.

I have not heard when HRB is coming home. He’s been on total care for a few days. They still haven’t pulled the IV yet, or taken him off the pain meds. He is finally eating on his own- but not bearing weight on that front leg yet. I can’t even go visit him! I did take over yesterday, a thin t-shirt that has my scent on it. I asked them to please put it into his cage, so he can get used to my scent. I had to tell them I didn’t care if I ever saw the shirt again. I just wanted him to have it to start the socialization period. He does indeed put the F in Feral!

Only by the Grace of God, was I able to catch him this morning. He is at the vet’s office as I type this. Before I went into the shop this morning, I set up a cardboard series of tunnels before the entrance/exit hole outside. I weighted those down. Then I put the trap at the final box entrance with the door of the trap inside the box. Bracing the trap was the existing fence.

Taking a deep breath and saying a fervent prayer, I then opened the front of the shop and he was in the back room and out he went! The other cats followed, but since he was first in line, he is the one that got in the trap.  His paw is extremely swollen. I saw quills coming out of them! He’s messed with a porcupine! I guess with all of the humans vanishing out of sight the wildlife in the hills are coming down into our property now. I was told they will call me when he is done being examined and treated so I am waiting for that call.  I’m just so relieved that I caught him finally. First time I have seen him in the daylight.

Three days ago, I decided to get tricky in trapping this elusive boy. He is still not putting any weight on his front leg at all. This is not a good sign. So since I couldn’t easily block the back of the shop- I went inside to see if I could make one main entrance/exit for them. Of course all the cats scattered to the wind when I went inside the shop, so while they were gone, I boarded up all the small exit holes and made only one entrance/exit for them. My idea was to set the trap right on the outside of the entrance, so as HRB tried to escape, I would catch him..Sounds like a good idea right? Well one thing I have learned when it comes to feral cats is they have their own mindset and agenda.

The next morning, I went out, I swung the door open and saw him with the others, so I shut the door quickly. I grabbed the trap and pre-loaded it. I hustled back to the back of the shop and just as I was getting ready to lay it down to cover the entrance- BAM! Here he came underneath the trap, through the gap in the fence and into the blackberry thickets. As he whizzed by my, I caught the stench of decaying flesh. I have not seen him since and am so worried. I almost had him. I almost saved him. Now he is nowhere to be found.

I miss blogging so much. With all that has gone on here, in the past two years, I find I’m at a crossroads at this time. For the first time in ages, I have a manageable amount of rescues here. I am not running all over God’s Country and trapping cats rushing them to the vet to get them help. I find that although I do miss that part of my life, I am relieved right now that I am taking a breather. Currently, we have a dozen cats. When people do contact me about a stray problem, I do everything I can to point them in the right direction to find the help they need. Only under dire circumstances will I step in and rescue.

A lot of my decisions now have a lot to do with losing Mike. Running a rescue without that strong support. Those broad shoulders and arms that would wrap around me and erase the horrors I just witnessed at the last rescue are sorely missed. The stand up guy- who would give up his own time and sleep to pitch in and bottle feed and care for the babies while I went to catch a much-needed nap… Gone…The ears that carried all my woes and heartaches when a kitty would go to the Bridge. The Love that would comfort me along the way all of it is missed.

Compounding all of these changes is that freak accident I suffered two years ago, when Kota slammed into the back of my knees and I flew up in the air, landing with both my legs under my back! The medical consensus at the time was he totally wracked my meniscus, stretching out the tendons and muscles of my knee. This was after seven x-rays were taken of the damage. They wanted to do an MRI but I wasn’t insured, so nothing was done except a round of pain pills and piece of paper that I carried home with exercises to do (that I could not perform).

It took me months to be able to walk again without shaking in pain. I used holistic means, my own version of the exercises that I could do. My right foot had over time developed a mind of its own. It would no longer walk straight. It “drifted” off to one side- so I learned that in order to walk without pain- just to let it drift off to the right. What I didn’t plan on and recently discovered that this unnatural angle has made my bones in my foot shift to this unnatural gait. In order to correct this- they would have to rebreak my foot, shave off the excess bones that have grown. They would then reset the foot with pins and screws. I would be in the hospital a very long time, and in a nursing home for even longer receiving “therapy.” Let’s face it, I am 65 years old. I do not heal as well as I did in the past. Plus once they cut on a foot- bad things can happen. I witnessed this with caring for Mike and seeing all the harm the doctors did on him in an attempt to “make things better.” Ultimately, this “help” ended up costing him his life.

Could something bad happen if I don’t have this surgery? Maybe, but I know something worse will happen if I do. That’s the state of the medicine at least here in this area. So I am going to be retraining my foot to walk the right way. If the bones can shift once, they can shift again.  I am refusing all pain medication offered and instead I am using CBD oil and a wonderful salve I found on Etsy called Joint’s Joy..I was skeptical when I ordered it- but I put in on at night before bed and in the morning, all the painful inflammation that gathers at my right ankle was gone! The redness had vanished and instead of battling chronic pain now. The pain is intermittent. It feels like someone is shooting hot fireworks into my foot- so it is nerve pain. It really flares up if I drive somewhere. Doesn’t matter how far or short the drive is, and the end of it, I am gimping around and in great pain. For awhile the quarantine was a real blessing for me, because I couldn’t go anywhere!

Friday, I went to pick up cat food (that was not there!) This has been happening so much, that I have been buying my own bags of dry food- Fancy Feast for the kitties. They seem to only like that brand these days. I can’t buy the canned, so I don’t. The majority of the money is still going to the vet. We now owe him $732.00 which is quite a chunk still. Anything off the payments I have been making goes to the FF purchases. But just driving to Albany after finally not being in pain for a few days, set me right back to the beginning. One of my local contributors has graciously offered to make the trip for me throughout June. Kathleen, I am so grateful! Thank you again. You keep telling me it is no big deal, but it really is (Kathleen found my blog a bit ago and now we are good friends). She lives closer to Albany than I do.

So I am dealing with all of this and then I get a notice that the law is changing here in Oregon for non-profits. Apparently now, you can only have ten animals period. You have to have full paperwork on all the animals. If they came from out-of-state you have to have  paperwork signed off by both parties relinquishing the ownership. You have to have entry papers and exit papers and the list goes on. Any infraction after the inspection they launch will result in a $600 fine per infraction! I will be honest with you. When I started CATS it was my mission to take only the cats in dire need. No owner surrenders, no cute, fluffy healthy cats or kittens. We were going to help the throw-aways. The ones everybody said couldn’t be helped. That’s why our vet bill is always so sky-high and that is why my vet now repeatedly asks me: “Mary Anne can’t you bring me something easier?” LOL  The answer to that is no. I currently have a new stray that I can’t even get close to yet. Listening to him breathe in the still of the night, he has pneumonia. He will not go under a drop trap, into a trap, into a carrier- nothing. One step toward this royal blackness and he splits. He is pencil thin. He is a Senior. He is neutered. I have tried peppering his food with antibiotics (didn’t work) He’s not eating much and is rail skinny because he can’t smell.

Despite the $700 bill, I am determined to win his trust, get him to the vet and get him help. I am hampered because my days of squatting down next to a scared cat, or sitting on the ground is over. Even sitting on a chair, the height is still too much for him to trust me. If we are bigger than they are, we are perceived as a threat. So I am working several hours a day with just letting him get used to me being among his new friends, my other rescues.

In the hope that he might just go into an enclosure, I recently cleaned one out  and set it up so the cats can come and go at will. If he gets in there, only two escape doors exist. I might be able to close those entrances off and have him confined so I can really concentrate on working with him. That’s my hope, along with whittling down this vet bill so it doesn’t add to the stress I am under currently. Here are some photos of the new revised enclosure:

So that is why I am not blogging much anymore. I do miss it, I do hope all of you still reading my words are safe, away from the madness that seems to be gripping the world right now. Stay healthy, stay safe and pray that I can make great strides, not only in walking in the future, but if catching His Royal Blackness before it is too late.

God Bless You ALL!

Now that I have done my final tweaking (not THAT kind of tweaking LOL!) I see I can finally post again.

Things here are okay. There are still projects to be done. I have been working on my memorial flower garden, for the cats who have passed over. I still have probably 15 hours more of weeding to accomplish, but the bulbs have been planted and the biggest challenge is keeping Kota from crashing into the sprouting tulips and dahlias! I am going to be bricking in the sides this coming week after the rains stop.

This morning, for the first time in a year, I was able to pet MK. She is a beautiful Persian/Maine Coon long hair. She mats as soon as you look at her. I am so desperate to get ahold of her, but every time that happens, I have to take her to the vet. Then, I can’t touch her or get close to her as it traumatizes her to no end. It’s been about a year since her last vet visit.

Seven of the cats have refused to go into the enclosures and instead taken up residency in the shop. I have been going in there periodically during the day, and just sitting on the step and letting them get used to seeing me. It is working, but it is a slow process and some of them really need help.

Pigeon, Baker and PITA inhabit the main enclosure. Anyone else I put in there (Twist was the last one I tried to introduce) gets pounced on immediately. Bentley was too Alpha to put with Pigeon, so he is in the patio enclosure. The others are still free-roaming.

I finally ended up emptying out the big enclosure of all my furniture and belongings moved in there during the build. I have decided, since there are so many escape tunnels in there now- that I will tear down the wire covering the two stall doors, and clean it out and open it up 24/7 for the cats to go in and out as they please. It’s a  big job, I have at least 100 cat carriers stacked in there. (People have donated them to me for years.) I think what I am going to do, is when I do the clean out- I am going to put some of the carriers out on the front lawn with a sign- FREE for the taking. I know in the future, if I do rescue, it will be on a much smaller scale than before. Without Mike to help out, it is too overwhelming to rescue dozens of cats.

I have finished my floors! I hope you enjoy the photos. It is so nice to be able to go barefoot again in the house without fear of splinters. And the sub-floors were getting so dirty, what with Kota and the cats, traffic and shedding. I haven’t done the patio yet- I’ve run out of supplies and money to get that huge room done, but it is coming. It was a labor-intensive act of love that’s for sure. Not bad for brown butcher paper, Elmer’s glue and Varathane and some back-breaking labor.

With all this new information coming out about cats being silent carriers of Covid-19 without exhibiting symptoms, I am sad for the cats owned by the ill-informed or uneducated. I fear so many cats are going to be dumped by panicked owners. The corona virus is common in cats- especially cats owned by hoarders, stuffed into over-crowded shelters and catteries and in feral colonies. There are scientists now, who are intentionally injecting, not only monkeys, but cats with this virus, then sitting back on their heels to “watch” what happens. Animal testing HAS GOT TO STOP! There are so many better alternatives our there now. I know the biggest lab in Maryland is guarded on the outside like a prison. You can’t even take a picture of the front gate without your camera being seized! They know it’s wrong, yet they keep doing it. 🙁 Lecture over, I know I am talking to the informed and educated here.

Some people do not know this, and I am speaking from first-hand experience here. But there are underground labs who will periodically send messages to elderly people hard up for money. They will pay $50.00 or more, for a specific kind of cat (or dog) and suddenly all these pets are vanishing and no one knows why. My beautiful calico Smudge was a victim of such a snatch and ultimately, before I could get her back, she died. It was heartbreaking and occurred the first year we moved here. I don’t blame the woman (dressed like she was going to church) that snatched her. I blame the unethical basement labs. So watch your animals closely during this panicked pandemic time.People are nuts right now, quick to anger and slow to use common sense. It’s a powderkeg just waiting to explode.

I have been dealing with a bug in my blog, so this is a test post to see if what I finally did was successful

Kodiak has been returned to his owner. I haven’t heard how he is doing, nor do I expect that I will. That is all I am going to say at this point about that. He is no longer under our care, so it is up to his owner to follow through with what the vets would like her to do.

Thank you, to those of you who chipped in to help with his bill. His owner is not able to afford such care, so you took a big stress off our shoulders.

I have started re-introducing the outside clowder to each other by putting them slowly one-by-one into the main cat enclosure. I have wired closed the holes where the tunnels once were, but of course, one of them found a weakness in the underwire and dug out. I had to first find the hole- which was not easy because of the grasses growing outside, but I finally did locate the escape hole and fixed that.

Currently, inside the cat enclosure is Bentley, Pigeon, Baker and PITA,  I can tell they are not easy about the change, as they were free-roaming until recently. No more ducking under the house when they feel scared or threatened. Pigeon is the most worrisome, he was the escapee and there are times that he is pacing the enclosure like a caged lion which makes me sad. His wound from the past has not quite healed and there is a spot above his knee on his back leg that keeps breaking open. It is not life- threatening, so I can’t really justify taking him to the vet right now. I am using Vitamin E oil on it to see if it might finally  heal on its own. because they are so used to being able to get away from each other when they were under the house, skirmishes have resulted. Bentley is injured now, and in the house inside the patio enclosure. he has an abscess festering between his left front paw pad.

It is still scary here when it comes to the virus. Just as I imagine, it is where you are right now. The governor is getting ready to open up Oregon soon- but in my area, it never really shut down. Only recently when I am at the store, do I see the majority of people taking this seriously and wearing masks and social distancing. Sadly, out on the street, this is not happening. When we first began this exposure, LInn County was fourth from the bottom on the chart tracking the exposure to the virus through the counties. Now we are 6th from the top! Not a good time, in my mind, to open up Oregon even if it is done “softly.”

I heard about, and ordered a book called Deadliest Enemy. It is written by the top epidemiologist in the world: Michael T. Osterholm PhD, MPH. He was the forerunner during the AIDS epidemic, and he writes the facts quite succinctly. He says as long as man continues to encroach on forestland and jungles, killing the animals that live there, pandemics are going to happen. I am only on chapter four but this stood out to me more than what I have read so far. He was talking about how when the primates and other animals are killed, hauled away for meat for humans or other animals, the microbes will jump ship. They will move from animal to human in order for them to survive. He likens it to an alien invasion. (The ET type).The book was published in 2017. Here is the quote that jumped at me:

” AIDS is a horror story that haunts all of us in the business. Once we understood what we were dealing with and how it was transmitted, we were unable to stop or warn off much of the behavior and habits that led to its spread. Evidence, knowledge, and logic aren’t always enough.”

If that isn’t enough what is? I highly recommend this book. It is not just a book about infectious diseases, it also a history of mankind in a most extraordinary way. I can’t read much of it all at once. It’s too heavy but when I am not reading it, I am thinking about what I have read deeply.

Please all of you continue to stay safe, keep your loved ones in your thoughts and prayers and may we soon find a good way out of this nightmare. I know that there is talk of a vaccine in the future, but according to what I have read so far, this vaccine isn’t going to appear magically any time soon. As he says, they have never been able to cure AIDS, only like Diabetes, manage and try to control it with certain cocktails. All of which I know have nothing to do with disinfectant! :

The enclosure where I hope all the cats will be soon:

Kodiak is being quietly confined in a large cage. He is on antibiotics and painkillers and he goes back on Friday morning to see if his drains can be pulled out. He is eating, drinking, peeing and pooping. He has been through it as his vet bill reflects: his care increased our Vet debt $500.00! At least he is okay now and I can concentrate on getting him back to normal. Again, if you can contribute to his care, it would be appreciated but please don’t feel bad if you cannot. Like I said before this is a helluva time in the world to ask for donations.

The vet called yesterday and told me that after they sedated and shaved Kodiak, these were his findings:

Kodiak was bit several times in his underbelly. The vet said based on all the wounds and damage left behind, the dogs, shook, rolled and sheared this cat. I did not know what shear meant, so when I asked, here was his reply. It is when a predator is attacking a cat with such fierceness that the tissue is ripped away from not only the skin, but the muscles as well! 🙁 He is concerned that the amount of bacteria that was able to fester inside Kodiak because I couldn’t find him in time, has made the tissue that wasn’t injured in the mauling to become infected as well. Kodiak has two drains in him now. My vet said that it will be a long time before Kodiak even looks normal. They are keeping him until Monday. When he does get released, he will need to be quietly confined (I’ll put him upstairs now that all the workers are gone) He will need to be medicated daily and watched closely.

During the build, destroyed along with most of the patio room were the custom built cages Mike designed for me. They were 5’x6′ triple tiered and lined on the back wall. I did ask the crew to save them, but somehow they just got smashed and carted away. So, I will keep him upstairs and I will keep  you updated on his progress. He does still have a fever though that the vet is hoping by Monday will be back under control. I want to go to him, hold him (the cat not the vet!) and tell him it will be okay now. I also would want to tell him that I wish I had found him first, before he made his way back to me. But at least now, he is getting help. The dogs have vanished. No one has seen or heard from them since.