Southern Oregon Coast

Wild iris were everywhere on the southern Oregon coast.










Up at Gold Beach is a sanctuary for stray and abandoned cats. Not only are there little houses for the cats, but volunteers feed them, provide them veterinary attention, and, where possible, adopt the cats out. One of them was there when we arrived and decided to pose for the camera.

This is an article about the cat sanctuary:

Because the Curry County Animal Shelter doesn't accept cats due to space and limited resources, a few dedicated Gold Beach residents have created their own cat haven on the north jetty adjacent to the Port of Gold Beach, called the "North Jetty Cats Plus Sanctuary."

About 10 miniature, hand-made houses, big enough to comfortably fit anywhere from one to four felines, cluster along the bank of the jetty with the Isaac Lee Patterson Bridge in the background. The wooden structures mimic cottages, castles, fortresses and modern homes all intended as shelter and safe places to eat for the feral cats that are living among the rocks in the jetty.

Ursula Elliot, known by many as The Cat Lady, drives to the sanctuary almost every day to feed her family of wild cats, and to check if there are new additions. If any of the cats are tame, she scoops them up and takes them to her home where she tries to adopt them out.

Currently, her home is owned by 20 cats strutting their stuff across her carpet, furniture and counters.

"I've been feeding the jetty cats since I moved here in 1989, and then started rescuing them about three years later," she said. "It never occurred to me to stop saving them, because people would resort to dumping their unwanted pets some other place."

Today we drove over to the southern Oregon coast, including Brookings and Gold Beach. The weather was in the low to mid fifties, so it was a bit cold and overcast. Still, it was well worth visiting.

We always go to Harris Beach just north of Brookings. Today there were scads of mussels and barnacles washed up on shore. I thought they made a neat picture.

We also stopped along the way at other beaches, where I snapped some pictures of the coastline, and some wildflowers including wild iris. We drove back through the redwoods, part of the national park system.