The Year In Review: Cat-astrophe

I'm usually hounded by the dogs on my weekly trips to Tracy Animal Shelter but this year it was the cats that seemed to have it in for me. Sure they sit there all nice and quiet but they were just plotting against me. I can see it in their beady little eyes.

So between the cat screaming for the warden to let him out, the pair of cats we stuffed into a box for a picture for my Christmas cards or the Axis of Evil Kitlers at the shelter it was an exciting trip every week. At least I didn't clawed by one of the furry little monsters.

The Year In Review: No Ordinary Year

What went wrong? That is the one question I have been asking myself over the past year. Standing behind crime scene tape, shivering in the cold during a candlelight vigil and standing in a courtroom photographing yet another arraignment of someone accused of a crime I can’t keep from wondering how did things get so bad so quick?




This year has been like no other I can remember. It seemed like we had a new crisis, some kind of tragedy emerge every month. The year did have some bright spots, a championship run by Tracy High football team, the return of the Tour of California to Tracy streets and the opening of Kimball High School. But has high as those moments were the tragic events of 2009 plunged us into the darkest valleys of despair. The kidnap, rape and murder of Sandra Cantu, the brutal killing of Cynthia Ramos, the killer of Clayton Riggins still among us and the gang shooting of seven people ending in one death were just part of the dark times this year.




Throw in the various acts of perversion by a doctor, substitute teacher and a softball coach and add the rash of burglaries, armed robberies and occasional drive-by-shooting and you realize the small town is gone. What went wrong? We grew up and gained our big city status along with the big city problems and crimes.


As bad as things seemed to get we always had room for them to get worse. Tracy saw the first death of a soldier in the war in Afghanistan when Marine Staff Sgt. Matthew Hansen was killed by a bomb. Oakland Police officer Mark Dunakin a Tracy resident was killed in a shootout in Oakland with three of his fellow officers as our year of despair continued.


If I seem doom and gloom about this past year it has been a difficult time watching the misery that befell our city through the camera. Through tears and silence it has been a trial to keep a positive outlook on our town and what it has become. And before you think I am blowing the events that happened out of proportion know that I had to stop in the middle of writing this to go to the scene of a pair of bank robberies. It was truly no ordinary year, and I don’t think I will ever see a year of news like this again.

Fa-lal-la-la-la

With all the bleak and depressing things that happened this year the thought of one assignment kept me going these weeks like the three kings following the Star of Bethlehem. One happy assignment I look forward to for months. Today we were going to “Dress the Dog” at the Tracy Animal Shelter for the holiday edition of the pet of the week.




Yep today was the day where we take a festive tone on assignment and wrestle a Santa hat, scarf, maybe a pair of mittens and a string of lights on an animal shelter resident for their holiday portrait. The picture goes in the Our Town section and we try to give it a Christmas theme for one issue. At least that’s our excuse; it has become a holiday tradition to take the pet portrait and every year the staff tries to make the holiday pet of the week more spectacular than the year before. We had though about wrapping the dog with garland this year and maybe adding a tree somehow but when I arrived at the shelter they had come up with a new twist for this year. Forget about dogs wearing mittens, we were going to dress up a pair of cats.


Cats you say? That was my first reaction. Dogs are bad enough try to make sit still but cats was going to be a whole other ball of yarn. And two of them? Are they insane? Have they been dipping into the eggnog early? Animal Control officers Lisa McDonald and Beth Palacios assured me they had a plan. They had even practiced dressing the cats up to make sure we would have smooth sailing in front of the camera. This was a recipe for disaster worse than any Christmas fruitcake. But bravely we picked up our box of lights and cat hats (yes, hats for cats) and headed to the cat kennels.




Our lucky models were two neutered male Persian cats named “Binx” and “Burton”. First step was to carefully put stocking hats to transform them into Santa and Mrs. Claus. This is where the fun begins. After a few attempts to figure out which hat went on which cat (“No not that cat, the other one”… pause… “No the other cat!” ….odd when there were only two cats in the cage). Finally attired with the finest in fake fur we set to placing them in their home-away-from-kennel, a wrapping paper covered box covered with Christmas lights. God help us.

Ok so first of all cats don’t like boxes. Don’t believe what you hear they don’t like the concept of being stuffed in a boxed. Maybe stuffed is a strong word… they “placed” gently. Anyhow they don’t like it, especially when a camera is pointed at them. So the keep is to work fast. Shove ‘em in the box, hope they look at the camera and fire away. So then I discover that the cat wearing the Mrs. Claus hat doesn’t want to go along with the program. To show his displeasure with our plan he decides to bolt from the box. Now I realize we forgot the hot glue gun (just kidding, a staple gun would have worked much better). So it becomes a matter of retrieving the one cat, keeping the other cat from eating the plastic Christmas tree next to the box and making sure I have the camera focused.




So after about 5 minutes of shooting the cats are humiliated enough to accept their fate and stare numbly at the camera. I fired away as they made a face sadder than a 2-year-old sitting on Santa’s lap for the first time. With thoughts of catnip dancing about their heads I took a few final shots and came up with our holiday picture. It was everything I had hoped for, Christmas lights, arguing and cuss words, just like the holidays at home. Yep it’s starting to look a lot like Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year to all!

Sudden impact

You would think the phrase "lucky" wouldn't apply to the drivewr of this car but sure enough he got off with minor injuries after this spectacular crash earlier today on Joe Pombo Parkway.


The driver may have been speeding when rounding a curve he over coreected and crossed the roadway striking two trees, flipping over, ripping a wheel off and landing on a speed limit sign.


The driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries which consdiering the force of the impact was lucky indeed. It has been some time since I have seen a collection of car parts debris scatted along the roadway at a crash scene.

A Charlie Brown newsroom

So we put up the decorations on our newsroom Christmas tree today, and in a word I guess you could say it looks "unique"

With leftover decorations from the front lobby tree and stuff we had lying around the office we concocted something that looks sort of like a tree. My contribution was a roll of film for garland and an old Adobe Photo Deluxe program disk ornament. Someone even made a garland string from old newspapers. Definitely unique.

The scoop on the poop

While we hike Alice and I are always keeping our eyes open for signs of company on the trail. One of these easiest ways to tell is by the scat (feces) we find along the trail. On today's hike of Olofson Ridge at Mount Diablo we found this still wet cat scat probably from a mountain lion that had passed by maybe an hour or two earlier. Older scat appears dry and gray like the collection below. Yes I guess you can say we are turning into poop experts.

Light show

Marv Lima's house on Travao Lane isn't hard to miss during December. You can see it glow from a block or two away. Lima is working on final assembly of his annual Christmas lights spectacular which set to go live Saturday night.



His home and grounds will shine from the light of over 100,000 Christmas lights strung over his home and grounds. In the display are a forest of multi-colored trees, a star of Bethlehem and a 20-foot-tall mega-tree made of tubing and clear lights.


This is the third year Lima has assembled his display and every year it grows bigger. The theft of his truck and a burglary of his home almost stopped him from making this year's show but friends have pitched in to help him assemble the show and keep his Christmas tradition going.

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

And then to sink them into the flesh of the chubby photographer on the otherside of this cage.