Nothing’s Easy In The Snow

Snow – two to three feet of it – blankets the region we now live in.  We used to pray for it – now we just want it gone.

Snow was a major event back where we used to live. Highways would turn into skating rinks, school would be cancelled, and twenty-four-hour news coverage would begin with reporters positioned around the region for the latest coverage.

Snow was a happening – an event. It was cause for socializing and celebration. Cul-de-sacs would become snowball-fight war zones and snowman central. It brought people out of their houses – back in western Washington.

Now we just want it to go away.

Here, snow is simply a fact of life; something you deal with. It’s regarded as inevitable and celebrations happen indoors in crowded kitchens or close to the nearest fireplace.

Four wheel drive is mandatory, especially if you have unmaintained road. You make sure you have a chord of firewood and someone in mind to plow your driveway if you don’t do it yourself. Snow shovels are dug out of the shed and snow tires go on the truck.

People adapt – we have adapted, socially and logistically, to their climates. But still; no matter where you live, nothing’s easy in the snow.

 

Cats, Dogs, And Politician Control

My heart breaks when I look at the picture above of the feral cat we caught on our property night before last. Our goal was to take it in to animal control to have it fixed and/or relocated to a better place such as a barn cat type of situation. Here, it is just hungry, cold and gets into fights with our fixed house cats.

We should have done our homework before we trapped it as we discovered there are no animal control services in Stevens County – for cats, at least. They have limited services for dogs but cats – forget it. Thank God there are some non-profits in the area that are filling the vacuum.

What is wrong with the local officials that they are ignoring this problem? Could it be money? The culture? Whatever it is, it’s bullshit and it pisses me off badly. There is a problem because there are no services. Ignore it and it will get worse!

I looked up animal control in the Revised Code Washington and in black and white there it was; there is no requirement for a jurisdiction to have services set up for animal control. Wow.

Once we had kitty, we made some calls and got the runaround. Animal control referred us to the sanctuary but they are closed for a few days (bad timing for us), and the Stevens County Sheriff who told us they don’t offer any services referred us to Spokane County’s SCRAPS program. We drove eighty miles only to find they didn’t accept out-of-county cats.

That’s when I posted on Facebook.

There I learned a little about the local attitude: dump ’em in another town or take care of things the – you know – old fashioned way.  I’m not going to give that disgusting option any words on this page.  One person mentioned that they’d heard cats taste like chicken. What kind of human being could say something like that? Answer: it wasn’t a human – it was a pig.

After the SCRAPS program turned us away, we drove home with kitty and let it go for the time being. Luckily, there are people here who have evolved past the Crow-Magnon stage of evolution and with their help, there is a plan in place to re-capture kitty and find a good home for it.

I’d like to re-home a few politicians while we’re at it – oh – and take care of couple of assholes on Facebook – you know – the old fashioned way.

I’m joking, of course.