CATS!

Feral Cat, December 2011

We've been hosts to a feral cat colony since we took over this place -- they were here well before we moved in -- and except for the Church Lady down the street, pretty much everybody around here is fine with the cats. We feed them and so do a number of neighbors. They keep the rodent population in check, but I've been concerned about the birds, as they tend to take some of them, and not necessarily the ones we would rather not have nesting in our eaves. (A story: last spring, a nest of sparrows in our eaves by the side door lost a chick that fell out one morning; a feral espied the event and took the chick within seconds, carrying it away in triumph to consume at leisure with its friends and relations. This was not by any means the first time this has happened. The grackles come by now and then to assess the cat situation from on high; we've had cats stalking birds in the trees at night -- how rude -- but at other times, they pay no attention.)

The feral population was more or less stable at 7-10 for years, but then all of a sudden, it exploded to almost 30, and then fell back to 20 where it is now. There was one breeding female who we call Queen, but her litters tended to be small, and there was usually only one or two survivors until recently. Since last year, however, there have been two or possibly three breeding females, and that has meant more CATS!

Time to do something to control the population. We've decided to take them all into town to have their health checked out and to be neutered. It's going to be quite a task. We've arranged to pick up traps and set them out and take as many cats as we can trap into town today for treatment tomorrow morning; then hopefully we'll be able to deal with the rest of them within the next couple of days, so as to get them all done this week.

Of course, we'll keep the colony together and return them to this location as it is their home place, and as I say, everyone around here except Church Lady is just as happy they're here.

I shouldn't be quite so sanguine. Actually quite a lot of people who used to live in this area are gone and there are empty places all around. Eric and Karen, our neighbors on one side,  have been gone for over a year, and no one is quite sure what happened to them. [UPDATE: Word has come along with the Men In Suits. Eric and Karen have officially "disappeared," it seems. Their house is in foreclosure. The Men In Suits were there to supervise changing the locks. The city came by to drain the pipes and turn off the water. As Eric is a former mortgage broker and the house was (so far as we knew) paid off, it's probably fair to suspect they refinanced at some point, pulling out whatever they could, and then did a strategic default.] They left one of their cars and a truck, so it was assumed they'd be back, but they haven't been. The Valencias, our neighbors on the other side, are gone. Their house has been vacant for almost a year after it failed to sell; they decided they couldn't keep two houses anymore, as they had a place in Albuquerque too. Once their daughter finished school here and was planning on going to UNM, they said there was no point in continuing to pay for two houses. My sense is they did a strategic default when their place here didn't sell, but I'm not sure as we weren't here when they finally left. The property is being kept up by someone. The only thing we've heard from the people who have been over there is that they were sent by "the real estate company" to do this or that bit of maintenance, and they think the house will go back on the market soon. But it doesn't. Then we were shocked to find that Gauchy's place on the corner was vacant when we finally moved in for good in October. We had no idea. Apparently she was foreclosed, though we haven't heard the whole story. The Chaney place across from hers is also vacant and on the market. That was a surprise, too. It's been in the same family for many years, and I have no idea what caused them to sell and up and leave. Then there are the vacant places on the next street over, one of which happened just a couple of weeks ago. I think there are four vacancies altogether on that street. And so it goes.

There just aren't that many people living out here anymore.

Some days, we think there are more cats than people!

[UPDATE: We got twelve cats into the clinic. We still have eight to go; they include the four females that have been breeding so extravagantly. We are convinced they know all about these trap thingies and will not be easy to lure... A neighbor came by while the traps were being set: "'Sup?" "We're trapping the cats to get them checked out, vaccinated, and neutered." "Oh. Well you could get rid of them, you know. They make my dogs crazy." "Oh really? Didn't know that. They don't go down by your place as far as we know." "Oh yeah, they're down there all the time, make my dogs bark their heads off." "These cats have territories, and they stick pretty close; there are other cats around that aren't part of this colony, though. And I see and hear your dogs barking any time anyone walks down the street. They go crazy if they see someone in the street. Seems like they like to bark." "Well, those cats..." "Yeah, they're really something. The number of them will start diminishing pretty quick, and they won't be able to breed anymore. That's going to make a big difference." "I sure hope so..." Well... yes.

Oh. While we were rounding up cats, a large flock of sandhill cranes came trilling and honking up from the south -- there must have been 50 or 60 of them -- and swooped down low to circle and wheel over our house for it seemed like 20 minutes or more. There are open fields all around, and one, about a quarter mile away, has recently been cleared of corn stubble. I'm told the birds seek out recently plowed fields for forage. Eventually, they headed off north and west, away from the recently cleared fields. But it was quite something to have them so close above us...;-)]

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE (12/12/12): We got eight more cats to the clinic yesterday... and there were still six more, including two of the main breeding females, that refused to be trapped. We didn't have any more traps anyway. But this large a miscount of the colony was surprising. We'd been tracking 20 cats for weeks. All of a sudden there were 26. We think some of the additional ones have come from elsewhere. When we talked about it at the clinic, it was explained that cat colonies usually top out at about 20-25, and that additional cats coming around are from other colonies or households. They are looking for females in heat. Oh. That. Sure. Should we trap all of them? YES! Even if they're from somewhere else? YES! Trap them all, bring them in, get them fixed, and they will be much better "citizens." What should we do about these breeding females who refuse to be trapped? Be patient, try to make the traps less obvious (covering them and padding the floor with newspaper or cardboard), if nothing else works, get a larger trap and let cats wander in and out to eat, then, when the female we want is in there, spring the trap with a string. Ho ho. We pick up the first twelve today to return them to their territory... Should be interesting.

The Housing Mess via Econ 4

The Bottom Line- Housing from Softbox on Vimeo.

Better late than never, one supposes.

Foreclosures have been at crisis levels for years and it is still nearly impossible to shake the media and their elite sponsors and owners out of their lethargy about it, let alone to get governments to engage in more than token remediation efforts, most of which seem intended to plump up the banks at the expense of the People.

While the problem has been mentioned periodically among the so-called liberal media and elites, what to do about is an uncomfortable question for those who see mortgages and debt in general as moral rather than practical issues, and who insist on blaming the victims rather than the engineers of this ongoing catastrophe.

They have to play to their audience I guess.

Lives, families, and whole communities have been destroyed by this indifference at every level.

I hope this video will help turn the tide...

Occupy Our Homes

Occupy Our Homes from Housing is a Human Right on Vimeo.

This is a day of national action highlighting the shame of millions upon millions of foreclosures in the last three years, many of them fraudulent and illegal, contrasted with the titanic profits of the bailed out banks that have been so relentlessly throwing people out if their homes during the economic meltdown.

Millions and millions of Americans have been forced into poverty since 2007, and more and more of them are winding up homeless, yet millions upon millions of homes lie vacant all over the land, seized properties that are little more than a glut on the market.

1) Do not dispossess or evict any more Americans.

2) Make foreclosed properties available to those who lack shelter

3) Refinance all existing mortgages at .01% interest; reduce principle by 50% or more.

4) Nationalize all TBTF banks.

The Biggest Fraud in Human History

According to L. Randall Wray, the blossoming mortgage and foreclosure crisis represents the Biggest Fraud in Human History.

That's saying something. But given the nature of the beast, it's probably quite true. Much of the real estate bubble was based on fraud, perpetrated by almost all the players, deliberately engineered to produce enormous profits at the top of the pyramid, not so much as you slid down toward the bottom, but still, even there, an illusion of profit could be manufactured or maintained for as long as housing prices kept going UP.

Drill deeper, though, and we find that the whole structure of capitalist economies is built on fraud, complicity, conquest, exploitation, theft, and sleight of hand. That's what it is and has always been. Don't like it? Move to Russia! As they used to say. Only you won't escape there any more. If anything, it's worse there than it is here.

The deregulation of the banks and the financial "industry", combined with the pretense of an "Ownership Society" caused this situation. Unraveling it is going to take some heavy lifting, but I think it can be done. The outlines of a solution have been clear enough for years now. The avoidance of a solution has characterized the entire Recessionary Period. We can assume the avoidance is due to the fact that the predators are still making out like the bandits they are, and they have no intention of setting their ravening aside for the Greater Good. They won't do it. Don't ask them.

What should be done is simple: 1) Nationalize the banks; 2) Prosecute criminal fraud; 3) Provide substantial and sustained debt relief to households until the recessionary pressure is relieved.

None of that, of course, is being done. Consequently the Endless Recession continues; the banksters and fraudsters continue to prosper; the People suffer and pay for it.

And of course the TeaBagging segment of the People like it that way.

James K. Galbraith has suggested approximately the same solution I've been yelling about for years. He doesn't do it quite as straightforwardly since he's an economist, but he gets to approximately the same place nonetheless.

• Nationalize the banks
  
• Prosecute criminal fraud
  
• Provide substantial debt relief to households.

As long as there's a banker's grandson in the White House, unfortunately, and as long as the banksters rule the roost in Congress, regardless of which major party is nominally in power, none of that will be done.

But it is interesting to see all the hankie wringing over the little problem of "documents not in order" that is causing the supposed freeze on foreclosures which apparently is as fraudulent as any other aspect of this whole miserable mess. But then, that's been true every time a "foreclosure freeze" has been announced. It's true of all the myriad work-out programs, too. The whole system is fraudulent, top to bottom, inside out.

Home Aid!

Back in the '80's -- Reagan Era -- the banks decided it would be in their interests to foreclose on family farms so as to enable farm conglomerates to scarf up properties at low prices and drive individual farmers out of countryside. Several thousand, perhaps tens of thousands, of family farm properties were involved, and it was a fairly simple process: deny the farmers credit for planting and equipment, raise the interest rates on previous loans, wait for the farmers to default, move in, foreclose, take the farm, re-sell to conglomerate, dispossess the family farmer, or sometimes keep them on as tenants, but usually just add the property to other holdings.

Protests were mounted all over the country, fundraising concerts were held to help the farmers stay on their land, banks were excoriated, some were even shamed into backing off -- at least temporarily -- and some family farms have been saved from the sheriff.

Farm Aid concerts are still going on, even though the situation now is somewhat different than in 1985.

Today, millions of Americans are seeing their homes foreclosed on year in and year out, in waves and waves of defaults, foreclosures and evictions, and nothing at all is being done about it by government or lenders -- except perhaps for making the situation worse for many, and there are no concerts, no fundraising efforts, no marches on Washington with torches and pitchforks, nothing.

Millions of Americans are being thrown out of their homes every year.

And the expectation is that this will go on for many more years to come. Some state governments have tried, rather ineffectively, to intervene. The Federal government, while dumping trillions upon trillions of dollars into the laps of the banks and the lenders, absolutely and rigidly refuses to do anything substantive to assist homeowners facing foreclosure, despite the fact that most of the economists say the fundamental problem with the economy is all those foreclosures which continue to drag down house prices.

The answer has been repeatedly stated: help the homeowners first. And top to bottom, the lenders, government agencies, and Congress refuse. They have been refusing for years.

And the People do nothing. They sit passively in front of their Big Screens, a take and bake pizza at their side, while millions get thrown out of their homes every year, millions more are thrown out of work, the overall economy swirls down the toilet, and the Plutocracy -- Kakistocracy, Kleptocracy, what have you -- sucks up every last dime there is in the whole world.

And nothing is done...

At least in Reagan's time, people actually did resist, and sometimes their resistance actually did change the course of some events.

Now, some fellow throws his shoes at Bush in Baghdad, and it's on endless loop on the Big Screens, entertainment for the masses. That's all it is, entertainment. Because Bush was amused, so must we all be.