Cats of Walmart

Yes, the saga continues.  In an effort to get a better idea of when the calico cat is coming around, to determine the optimum trap-setting time, I volunteered to set up my gamecam on Tuesday.  The trap was left unset, so as not to inadvertently catch the wrong cat.

Look!  It's calico:

 and yes, if I had to guess, I'd say that she is probably with child, er, kittens.

Heeeeeeere's babydaddy!  (Allegedly.  Ahem.)

The woman doing the feeding thought there was one more cat hanging around, and she was right:

Hey, THESE are funny looking cats:

and wow, THIS one looks even FUNNIER:

Jeez, this lady's feeding the entire Wild Kingdon back behind Walmart!  That's the problem when you free-feed ferals, i.e., leave food out all the time:  You never know who's going to show up at the snack bar.  It's much easier when people do limited feedings, that is, put the food down, leave it down for half an hour, and then pick it back up again until the next scheduled feeding.  That puts an end to the wildlife showing up, and it gets the ferals on a schedule, making for easier trapping. Hopefully when I show these pics to the woman doing the feeding, she'll agree.  Time to get these cats trapped and into rescue care and put an end to the endless buffet.

I'll keep you posted ...

Pop question: Getting Lost

I was watching Still Alice the other night, with Julianne Moore as a woman who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's.

And of course, I got to thinking about my mom, who passed away from the regular type of Alzheimer's in 2013, so the movie was ... not easy for me to watch.

In the movie, one of the first outward signs of Julianne Moore's character's disease is when she can't find the bathroom in her house, and ends up wetting her pants.  And I remembered how, a few years before my mom was actually diagnosed, I knew that there was something wrong.  She was forgetting things, and losing things, and then, one day, she was relating an anecdote to a few of us about how she had gotten lost in Walmart, how she had been doing her regular shopping, and then got turned around somehow, and realized that she didn't know where the front of the store was or how to find the exit.

And everybody laughed, talking about how big the big-box stores were, and how disorienting, and how everybody gets lost in one from time to time.

And I was, well, nonplussed.  Because I can't even imagine getting lost inside a store.  How could you possibly get so confused that you couldn't find your way to the exits?  And I still remember how worried I felt about my mom when she told that story, and how baffled I was that other people were relating to it, because WHO GETS LOST INSIDE A STORE?!

So:  Here's my question:  Have you ever gotten lost inside a store?  Enquiring minds want to know.

Right up the wall

The first time I saw this University of Phoenix commercial, I was hooked.  The woman's voice is distinctive, and the melody, from The Wizard of Oz, is instantly recognizable.  The visuals and storyline are interesting; people doing what it takes to get a college degree.

But then I started listening to the lyrics.  "A degree is a degree"?  Um, no, considering that if you buy a degree from the University of Phoenix, you're paying many times more than what the same degree would cost at your local community college.  "You're gonna want someone like me, but only if YOU have a brain"?  Again, no, if I were an employer, I would cast a long side-eye at a University of Phoenix degree, mainly because they've got a bad reputation for price gouging.

Sadly, the only people likely to be taken in by this commercial are the same ones portrayed in it; low-income workers looking for the quickest way to a degree and vulnerable to high-pressure recruiting tactics.

I googled "University of Phoenix scam" and up popped story after story of people ripped off by the school.  The most heartbreaking were ones like these:

“I was former student of UOP or Appallo and I went to get a anther copy of my tarnscript for my current school I have been at for over year and they will no release my transcripts. I ask them why. They say that I owe them 2800.00 dallors. I said how could that be when you collected well over 7500.00 and I drop classes and come to find out after I withdrew they still collect money and still saying I owe them money. So I contacted a attorney they will be hearing from them.
They also sent me to collection and the school I am going to know will not grant Finical Aid untill i get those transcipts. One semister from getting my LPN.”

Oh. My. God.  This illiterate person was one "semister" from getting an LPN.  Holy.  SH*T.  I'm sorry, but that is f*cking FRIGHTENING.

Now when I see the commercial it makes my blood pressure rise.  Hmmm, maybe the University of Phoenix should consider a tie-in with a high blood pressure medication manufacturer ...

Here have some more pictures JUST TAKE 'EM

Man oh man, there is NOTHING going on around here right now.  Work continues to be a sh*tshow, home life is boring, blah blah blah.

But!  Here is one thing I was thinking about:  on The Amazing Race, they should show the completion times on the various challenges.  Like, on last week's episode, the teams had to race around a marketplace looking for matching handbags.  And this one person was, like, "Well, we should probably skip that one, because by the time we finished it'd be dark out and it'd be hard to find the handbags."  Which left me wondering, how long, exactly, do these challenges take?  I mean, on that one episode, the old dude was supposed to be doing that challenge in the cave, but he kept wandering around outside, and I was wondering, how long did it take him to figure that mothereffer OUT?  Enquiring minds want to know.  So they should show running timers on the contestants.  Get right on that, Amazing Race.

So!  The weekend.  Still no foster kittens.  I like to give myself and my cats a nice long foster hiatus in the winter, especially this year, with Pony recovering from his dental surgery, although honestly, he seems pretty much OVER it, already.  I can't believe how fast these cats heal up.  Fairly soon I'll be itching for kittens again, so we'll see.  Kitten season doesn't really ramp up around here for another couple of months, so I might end up doing an older foster in the meantime.  It all depends on the needs of the rescues, of course, so I'll just have to wait and see.

Efforts continue to catch Walmart cat.  Yesterday, the baby daddy actually went into the trap first, so the woman trying to catch her ran over to shoo baby daddy away from the trap, as she is afraid that if Walmart cat sees another cat get trapped by the trap-that's-not-a-trap, Walmart cat will refuse to go near it.  I told her that (a) she (the woman, not the cat) was probably OVERTHINKING this whole thing, ahem, JUST SET THE DAMN TRAP ALREADY AND LET THINGS SHAKE OUT AS THEY MAY, and (b) once she finally GETS Walmart cat, I will trap baby daddy MYSELF if I have to and get him neutered, so the Circle of Walmart Life will finally END.  SHEESH.

Here's some pictures from yesterday's walk:

And Tinks would like you to know along with perfecting his side-eye, he has ALSO spent the winter months cultivating his ear floof:

Recent Pics

That moment when you get up to clean your brushes, and return to discover that SOMEONE has walked across your painting:

"Not ME, lady!  My paws are CLEAN!":

The ice is starting to leave the creeks:

and when the sky is blue it seems warmer out, somehow:

"I may not have many TEETH left, SodaPUNK, but I can still kick your butt!":

Speaking of Soda, he makes an excellent bookrest:

And Tinks has utilized the winter months to perfect his side-eye.

"Pardon me, would you have any Gray Poupon?"

The Saga of Walmart Cat, continued

Remember the feral cat I was feeding while its primary caregiver was out of town?  The one we built the trap for?

Yeah, that cat.

Time for an update!

As I mentioned, the woman had used our trap to capture other community cats, and it worked brilliantly.  Last week, it was time to try it on the wily Walmart cat.

First, the woman set the trap up with the door disengaged.  She set food in the front of the trap and waited and watched to see if the cat would at least enter the trap.

It worked!  The cat set its front feet in the trap to access the food.

The next day, she set the food back a little further into the trap and waited. This time the cat had its whole body in the trap to reach the food.

It was time to act.

The woman set the food alllll the way in the back of the trap, engaged the trigger mechanism, and waited.  And waited.  The cat didn't come around.  So the woman left for an hour, came back, and ...

The trap had failed.

The cat (or, well *a* cat) had entered, and the door had started to come down, but because it had been out in the weather for several days, the plywood door had warped juuuuuust enough so that it only came halfway down before getting hung up.

The cat had escaped.

*sigh*

Needless to say, we were all disappointed.  The woman was devastated, convinced that the cat would never, ever go anywhere near the trap again.  I told her to keep trying, that she didn't even know for sure that it was "her" cat who had entered the trap, to set the trap up again but disengage the door until we could fix it, and back off, and see if the cat would go back in it.  What did she have to lose?

Sure enough, yesterday she saw the cat enter the trap.  Again.

We're back in business.

Now I've just gotta figure out how to fixed that warped door.  I swung by this morning and picked it up, but unfortunately, MacGyver is out sick today, so I'm on my own.  I need either figure out a way to shave the front of the door down, or figure out a way to cut the bin-hole it drops through a little bit bigger.  Time to go hit the internet ...

I'll keep you posted.

Beach towels? BEACH TOWELS?! HAHAHAHAAAAAA

Last summer, when I was doing a lot of kayaking and swimming and hiking on the weekends, I made a list of the things I wanted to take along to the reservoir and stuck it on the wall by the kitchen door, so I wouldn't forget anything.

And now I've hit that time of year when all I can do is look at that list and laugh, and DREAM of the day I will need sunblock and a swimsuit and, yes, beach towels.

Dear summer:  I miss you.  Please get here soon. 

The Tooth Fairy had better be really, REALLY good to him, is all I'm sayin'

So, yes, Ponyboy had to have dental surgery on Monday.

It had been brewing for years; by the time I adopted him, his teeth were already bad, and he was only a little over a year old then.  He had shed some teeth since he came to me, and the remaining teeth were ... questionable.

So even though he was eating both canned and dry food (and the occasional mouse) with no problems, at the advice of my vet, he went in for dental work.

Let's look on the bright side, shall we?  They managed to save three of his canines.  Three!

Everything else?  Nope.  Ponyboy is now a three-toothed cat.

But!  Tinks underwent similar surgery last year and now is down to a count-em'-on-one-hand amount of teeth, and he's doing just fine.

No, I don't feed my cats candy.

Pony was a rescue who had feline herpes as a kitten and never received any veterinary care until coming into rescue at over a year old.  It's thought that the herpes virus could be responsible for his bad teeth and his runny eye.  Tinks was also a rescue, and while it's not thought he had feline herpes, he did come to me with a mouthful of bad teeth.  Street cats can tend to have dental problems; their diets are not generally the best and they can be subject to mistreatment.  Although some cats are just predisposed to bad teeth, and that may be the case with Tinks as well.

But Tinks is doing great now, was doing great within a day of his surgery, in fact, and the vet reassures me that Pony will soon be feeling much better, as well.  I almost had a heart attack Monday when I let him out of the carrier after picking him up at the vet's - he had a giant LUMP on his side, and I was all, "OH MY GOD PONYBOY WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU?!" but then I remembered that they gave him sub-q fluids because he was in surgery for so long, and WHEW. Ha.

Up until yesterday morning he was still pretty loopy, probably a little bit from the anesthesia aftereffects and a little bit from the long-acting pain reliever injection they gave him.  But he's eating!  Getting breakfast in bed, as a matter of fact.

Milk it for all it's worth, Ponyboy.  You've earned it.

Wayback Machine

Sorry about the radio silence around here - Ponyboy had dental surgery on Monday, so between his continuing recovery and work being an insane asylum, I've been a little preoccupied.

But!  I did borrow a book the other day on an inter-library loan, and look what was on the flyleaf:

Remember these?  Remember getting them stamped when you took out books?  Remember going to the library and using the *gasp* card catalog?

Yes, it's official.  I'm older than dirt.

How To Make a Painting

Step One: Take an old, laughingly bad painting that you can't quite bear to toss:

Cover it up:

Turn the canvas sideways and paint some sky:

Add a sunrise, and some land, and some reflections:

Throw in some more clouds, and blend stuff together:

Voila!  It's a painting.  Now go clean the brushes.

Recently Read

As always, skip it if you wanna.


1.  44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith - This author was recommended to me as having a style similar to Maeve Binchy, whom I LOVE.  However, 44 Scotland Street was a bust for me, mainly because so many of the characters were sooooo unlikable.  I got about halfway through, realized that I didn't care what happened to the painting OR the missing underwear, and quit.

2.  The Cat Who Came for Christmas by Cleveland Amory - Memoir from a guy who rescued a cat.  The first two chapters, involving the rescue, were engrossing - the following chapters were a bunch of meh.  Meh.

3.  Looking for the Klondike Stone by Elizabeth Arthur - Memoir about the years the author spent at summer camp as a young child.  I have nothing but admiration for people who can remember events and conversations from their childhood, because I don't remember any of that stuff from my own growing up, but still, this book was a little ... er ... boring?   As a series of long-form essays on line, it might have been interesting, but ingested all at once it was kind of meh.  Summer camp has a special place in my own heart, but that doesn't necessarily mean I wanted to read about someone else's experiences with it. Didn't finish.

4.  The Sound of Gravel by Ruth Wariner - Account of the author's childhood in a polygamous family.  I LOVE this kind of thing, but the author could've used a ghostwriter.  Didn't finish.

At this point, I'd like to say, I really, REALLY am not trying to dis these authors.  I keep doing these Recently Read posts because, so often, I'll get partway through a book only to realize that I'd read it before, because I am OLD, so now I put all the books I've read down in these lists so that, before I buy a book or take it out of the library, I can search for the title on the blog here and find out if I've already read it.   Every single one of these authors is to be admired for actually writing a book, even if me, Little Miss Nobody, didn't find it interesting.

5.  Ambulance Girl - Memoir about a woman who became an EMT.  Way, WAY too much about her feelings about becoming an EMT, and almost nothing about what being an EMT is actually like.  Not good.

Movie review time!  Hands on a Hardbody (minds out of the gutter, please!) is an old documentary about people trying to win a truck by being the last one standing.  Fascinating and sad.

6.  The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by Brianna Karp - Memoir about a woman in her twenties who was supposedly homeless.  Oh oh OH there is a LOT that I could say about this book, none of it good, but suffice it to say that she wasn't actually homeless and leave it at that.  Blech.

7.  Ever By My Side by Nick Trout - Veterinarian's memoir.  I read a LOT of veterinarian's memoirs, because they're usually an enjoyable read, and this book was no exception.

8.  Off Keck Road by Mona Simpson. Novel. Didn't finish.

9.  The Journeyer by Gary Jennings.  Historical fiction about the travels of Marco Polo.  I read this book many, many years ago and LOVED it.  All this time later, I could still remember parts of the story.  So I finally bought a copy to see if it was as good as I remembered.  This book, at over a thousand pages, can give War and Peace a run for its money, length-wise, but that didn't bother me at all, because YES, it was as good as I remembered.  Parts were somewhat sensationalistic, and I had to kind of skim over some of the more-graphic parts, but oh boy, this is a good book.  Highly recommended.  Very good.


So!  That's what I've been reading.  How about you?

Rainbow Horse in the snow

Winter.  Ugh.

Another brilliant invention, continued

Here we go!

See Part 1 here.

Okay, so, I bought a giant, clear storage tote and took it back to the office so MacGyver could cut a hole in one end.  I figured I'd give that to the woman as Step 1, to find out if the cat would enter an enclosed space.  And I Youtubed the subject, to try and get a better idea of the actual mechanics of cat trapping. There were a wealth of videos on "how to build a live animal trap", most of which involved construction similar to a Havahart.  No good.  Then I found a video of this dude from Serbia, who had build a very simple trap to catch weasels, of all things.  His trap was built out of wire mesh, which would not work for the wary cat in question, but the actual set-up was very do-able, with just plywood scraps and some wire comprising the basis of the "trap" part.

I took another look at the plastic storage bin I had purchased.  "I wonder," I asked MacGyver, "If we could just build the trap out of THIS?"

We were on our way.

 MacGyver cut a hole in one end of the tote, and built a sliding drop-down door.  A piece of plywood was zip-tied on one side onto the bottom of the tote.  A piece of rebar wire was connected to the plywood and angled up the side of the tote, where it was placed through a hole in the door frame.  The plywood door was placed vertically in the frame and set against the wire, which was pulled up to make the plywood on the floor angle up.  The weight from the door kept the wire in place, but when a cat entered the tub and stepped on the angled plywood on the floor, it would pop the wire out of the door frame and enable the door to drop down.  The top of the tote was zip-tied on, and airholes were drilled along the sides.

*whew*

The finished product:

I covered the plywood on the floor with a piece of blanket to disguise it.  I placed bowls of food at the back of the tote, past the angled plywood that would trigger the door.  Now the big test - Would it actually WORK?

Oh, Sodapop, come here a minute ...

Hmmm, Sodapop said, what's THIS thing? (you can see the wire to the right of Soda, angled up from the plywood on the floor to the hole in the door frame.)

Oh look, there's FOOD back here!

Sorry, Sodapop, you've been TRAPPED!

Yippee!

Okay, so, the trap worked on *my* cats.  Would it work on stray cats?

The woman decided to try the trap first on not the wily Walmart cat, but on a mama cat with kittens she'd also been trying unsuccessfully to trap. It was very important that the kittens be brought into care as soon as possible, before they became too old to be socialized.

Sunday morning, the trap was set.  On Sunday afternoon, I got a call ...

She'd trapped the mama and kittens!  They were now safely in rescue care!

Next stop:  Wily Walmart mama.  I'll keep you posted.

The "this-is-not-a-cat-trap-this-is-just-a-feeding-station-come-and-get-your-dinner-little-kitty" feral cat trap is a success!

Next stop:  Shark Tank.  hahaha.

Another brilliant invention

Remember that feral cat I was feeding?  The woman who regularly feeds her asked for my help.  She wanted to trap the cat, but the cat was so wary of regular Havahart traps that the woman was trying to figure out a different kind of trap.  A trap without steel or wire mesh.  A large trap that would just look like a feeding station, except that when the cat got to the food, a trap door would close, enclosing the cat in the space.

Hmmmm.

She had given me a sketch of what she was looking for.  It looked do-able, but it also looked like a trap.  With wire mesh on the sides. It was basically a homemade Havahart.

Humpf.

I took the sketch in to the office, and asked my co-worker, who is pretty much a MacGyver,  what he thought, filling him in on the situation.  He agreed that the sides should probably be clear, so as not to look like a trap.  We discussed using a wooden frame with Plexiglass sides, but something like that would be both bulky and (relatively) expensive to build.  I thought that maybe before this woman went to the expense of having something like that built, we should find out if the cat would even walk INTO an enclosed space.  So I went to the Dollar General and picked up a gigantic, clear storage tote.  The plan was that MacGyver would cut a hole on one end of the tote, and the woman could start leaving the cat's food in the upside-down tote, so that we could see if the cat would be willing to enter it.  THEN, if the cat would go in the tote, we could discuss the logistics of building the wood-and-Plexiglass model.

Hoo boy this is getting long, ain't it?  To be continued ...

A little experiment

A while back, I was complaining on Facebook about how cling wrap doesn't actually CLING.  A friend of mine said I needed to try Glad Press n'Seal.  "It works!", she said.  "I promise it works!  I'll bring you some to prove it!"

Well, months went by, and I forgot all about it, until we met up the other day, and she had actually remembered, and handed me a container of Press n'Seal.

When I got home that day, I took my glass of orange soda, put some Press n'Seal over the top, and turned the glass over, copying the image on the side of the container:


And?

It wooooorrrrrkkks!  IT WOOOOOOORRRRRRKKKKS! 

Magic.

Facebook. Hoo boy.

Yesterday, an acquaintance re-posted a thing on Facebook.  One of those annoying re-posted ... things.  I don't know what you call them. Those sayings that get re-posted all over the place.  This one was all, "My parents spanked me when I was a child and I turned out okay!  Kids NEED a little discipline.  Lack of discipline is what's wrong with our country today!  Spanking is not abuse.  Share if you agree."

I'm paraphrasing, here, because I'm not about to go digging through my feed to find that piece of work again, but that was the general gist.

Um.  Man oh MAN, I wanted to reply:

Physical abuse is not okay.  If you messed up at work, would you think that a logical reaction would be for your boss to put you over his knee and spank you?  No?  THEN WHY IS IT OKAY TO HIT A KID?

Do you think it's okay to hit the family pet?  No?  THEN WHY IS IT OKAY TO HIT A KID?

You know, I was never spanked as a child.  Not once.  My parents put up with a lot of age-typical bullsh*t from Toddler Me, loved me dearly, and as I grew older they made clear what their age-appropriate expectations were of me.  If I got out of line, all it took was a look from Dad or a word from Mom and I was so embarrassed that I had disappointed them that I corrected myself.  And really, I don't know if they had an actual No Hitting policy or if it had more to do with the fact that my parents were not the touchy-huggy physical contact type in general, but regardless, I was never hit as a kid.  And somehow I came out FINE.  Go figure.

And you know, I used to be of the "spanking is NBD" persuasion.  But after enduring domestic violence myself (no, not recently, many years ago), I just can't justify hitting other people anymore.  LEAST OF ALL CHILDREN.

I didn't say anything in reply to that post last night from my acquaintance.  It wasn't going to change her mind.  And, I mean, that is the same person who says she likes Trump because "he says what he thinks", so ugh, consider the source. You say tomato, I say tomahto, whatevs. Plus, having never been a parent myself, I suspect I may lack a vital perspective when it comes to issues involving offspring.  But more and more, I AM SO HAPPY I HAVE THIS BLOG RIGHT HERE, because this is where I go to vent about Facebook.  Ha.


And now I'm curious - Where do you stand?  Spanking, right or wrong?

Sunday

Sunday I headed for the reservoir, which was frozen over.

Six months ago it looked like this:

Sunday, it looked like this:

*sigh*

I headed up to the ponds at the far end of the lake.

Jesus, what a gloomy morning.

A deer had met its demise.

Can you see the plane in this pic?  It circled around for quite a while.  I don't know why.  There's not a whole heck of a lot to see this time of year.  Maybe someone was taking a flying lesson:

I was following the snowmobile trails.  I don't know who Joyce and Harold Penningroth are, but they've got a nice sign:

Somebody had hauled an old treadmill all the way out to the middle of nowhere to dump it.  I don't get it.  They could have put it out with the garbage, or put it on Craigslist, or put it out to the curb with a "free" sign on it.  Instead, they hauled it all the way out to a campsite.  Go figure:

Trail crossing!  Not confusing at all:

Bird's nest:

A little bit of color:

See the shapes out on the ice?:

Those are ice fishers.  Those dudes are NUTS.

Not long after I got done walking, the sun came out and it warmed up and was quite a pleasant day.  Spring is coming; I'm quite confident of that.  Thank goodness.

Saturday at the shelter

Saturday, I spent the day at the shelter.  So last week, I made a cardboard cat condo to take with me.  Of course, my boys had to check it out first.  "Okay, laydee, looks good; we think the shelter cats will like it!":

Soda decided that further quality control testing was warranted:

Saturday morning, it was time to head for the shelter.  I made a stop along the way, because this kind woman was donating lots of stuff! She didn't have time to run it up to the shelter, so I took it along with me.

Now for the big moment - Would the shelter cats like their new condo?

Yep, it was a hit!

Plain cardboard is also fine, as far as the cats are concerned:

No, the floor isn't dirty.  It's just an old concrete floor that's all scuffed and stained.  The shelter is going to cover it with easily-cleanable tile, just as soon as somebody hits the lottery.

This pretty girl is looking for a home:

And here's my favorite part of spending time at the shelter - Time for a kitty pile!  Come on, guys, I'll sit on the floor, now pile on!:

At one time point I had a lap full of cats, plus not one but TWO cats up on my shoulders.  Covered in cats!  No good for my allergies, but always lots of fun.