One of my neighbors got hauled off in handcuffs this afternoon — not an everyday occurrence, but not an unusual one ’round here. Cops followed him into his driveway, pried him out of his car, then set Officer K9 dancing around the vehicle.<\/p>\n
I was walking Ava past the place and feared that K9, a cute black lab, would get excited about the passing dog and get the poor guy in worse trouble than he was already in. But those drug dogs are focused<\/i>. Fortunately this one didn’t alert to anything.<\/p>\n
Anyhow, it was only a three-cop bust. Small as things go, business as usual hereabouts.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
I’ve been trapping feral cats this week. That’s a new one for me. Our group does catch-neuter-vaccinate-release. I’ve never been a cat person. Still, I figured this would be a good hands-on project and appropriate work for a hermit. <\/p>\n
Ha. Turns out I drew a cat colony surrounded by neighbors who … well, let’s just say really need hobbies. The man across the street watches the traps through binoculars and comes running out every time I check them. Several neighbor ladies are right behind.<\/p>\n
Getting away can be tricky. During one visit, as the chief cat-trapper and I were driving off, the man flagged us down. What did he want? To explain that he really did have false teeth, he just didn’t happen to know where they were at that moment. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Then yesterday afternoon I get a call from a woman from one of the big cities. Not the nearby berg we laughingly call The Big City, but a real one. One of the ones you’ve actually heard of where they’re all full of social consciousness and stuff.<\/p>\n
Chirpily, she announced that she<\/i> had placed cat traps at my location while on her way to her beachfront cabin and oh by the way, would I take custody of the cat the little neighborhood social group told her she just caught?<\/p>\n
“Huh?” I’m saying. “You’re who?” I’m saying. “You’re doing what<\/i>?” I’m saying.<\/p>\n
I’m also saying, “But we don’t catch ferals on the weekend because it’s too stressful for them to be in captivity for days before surgery. We catch them only on days the vet can neuter them right away.”<\/p>\n
“Oh, that’s no problem,” says she. “You can keep him over the weekend. My group in the big city does it all the time.”<\/p>\n
I’m half laughing, half grateful to have one more adult cat who won’t be breeding anymore, and half flapped that this person — who knows darned well a local group is working on the colony — is placing traps willy-nilly without word one to anybody, then expects local rescuers to hop to it when she needs us.<\/p>\n
When I email the other cat catchers, they don’t find it amusing AT ALL. They are livid<\/i>.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Today Ms. Big City comes by my place to get her trap and transfer the poor, captive, exceedingly stressed kitty into a carrier. With ferals, there’s an art to that and she wants me to learn it.<\/p>\n
When I explain that we never need to do that because we take them to the vet immediately, right in the trap<\/i>, she starts in about how every, single thing we do in cat trapping is wrong, wrong, wrong. She goes into great detail about our methods being inferior to hers. (Never mind that some of what she insists on is strictly big city; some would make rural rescuers and vets howl with laughter.)<\/p>\n
I finally say, “I’m sorry. Under other circumstances we might appreciate having your expertise. But I don’t think anybody in our group is willing to take a lesson right now from someone who went around the local rescuers and<\/i> trapped this poor animal, knowing full well it would have to live in a box for two days — when we could have saved it all that stress if you’d just let us manage our own project.”<\/p>\n
She sniffed that she most certainly did not<\/i> “go around” us (because after all, she notified me after<\/i> she caught a cat). And we should be grateful for her “help” — which she felt she had to give because she knew that people in this area had [sniff, sniff] “different attitudes” about animal rescue. (Read: Even the rescuers hereabouts are a bunch of Billy-Bobs who would probably drown cats in the river if she didn’t save them from us.)<\/p>\n
Another big city do-gooder who knows nothing about rural life — except exactly how We the Inferior should live it.<\/p>\n
—–<\/p>\n
Despite neighborhood adventures and continuing deadlines, I got all the absolutely necessary exterior painting done on my house after months of not accomplishing enough. Now the rains can come and I won’t care. Still have to finish shingling one wall, but that I could happily do in a downpour.<\/p>\n
And hey, look. The sun’s still shining!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my neighbors got hauled off in handcuffs this afternoon — not an everyday occurrence, but not an unusual one ’round here. Cops followed him into his driveway, pried him out of his car, then set Officer K9 dancing around the vehicle. I was walking Ava past the place and feared that K9, a cute black lab, would get excited about the passing dog and get the poor guy in worse trouble than he was already in. But those drug dogs are focused. Fortunately this one didn’t alert to anything. Anyhow, it was only a three-cop bust. Small as…<\/p>\n