Carole Baskins Diary

Don left for Costa Rica today and for the first time, I really hated to see him go.  All that I have been reading tells me how sad and scary his life has become.  I’ve started looking back at his increasingly odd behaviors.  At some point in time he began avoiding public restrooms.  He would tell me on many occasions that  “a pain had hit his tummy” and he had to go so quickly that he had to pull the car over and run in the woods, or behind a building.  Once he even said that he jumped in a dumpster in a parking lot to relieve himself.  It wasn’t until he would do this sort of thing, when I was with him, that I realized he would pass by a public restroom and opt for some open area to soil.

 

Even if I pointed one out to him, he would say that he didn’t want to use that restroom.  As early as 1993 I can remember him having a fit if anyone flushed the toilet in the house.  He would get hysterical over how much water was being wasted, so it just became second nature to wait until Don left the house to flush the toilets.  As long as he didn’t hear it happen, he never seemed to notice.  We are on a well, so there isn’t a cost factor in flushing.

 

One of the things that I most admired about Don was his business savvy and his ability to calculate long strings of equations in his head.  Yesterday when we were discussing the cost of a fence he couldn’t do simple division or multiplication, so I gave him paper to write it down and he could not remember the symbols for multiplication and division and when I wrote them for him, he couldn’t discern between the two.  Today he asked me to go to a closing in his stead.

 

When I got there the Buyer had prepared a contract that was 10 pages full of self serving legalese, including a paragraph that said we would loan him all the money he needed to build houses at prime plus 2%, with no cap on the amount or the loan to value ratio.  He assured me that Don had already agreed to sign the document.  I called Don and explained how dangerous this would be and Don agreed that the closing should be cancelled.  The man was quite upset and said that Wendell Williams had assured him that “he could get Don to sign anything he wanted”.  It’s a good thing that these were not in Don’s name.   The builder went on to tell me that he had just gone bankrupt after losing millions of dollars and he was really counting on Don financing him in the building business.

 

I had asked Don what it was about Costa Rica that most appealed to him and he said “the people there are so stupid that it makes me look smart”.  Don can’t find his way around town anymore and that is probably why he hangs out with Wendell Williams all day.  In Costa Rica, Don is still lost, but things move so much more slowly and he doesn’t know the language so he is under no stress to even appear like he knows what is going on.  He has no desire AT ALL to learn the language and keeps telling me how wonderful it is that he can communicate using crude gestures and pantomimes.  He could not do that here without people treating him like the mental case he is, but down there it does not seem that unusual.  He is having a harder and harder time making his desires understood and the opportunity to give up speaking and just use motion is probably a great source of relief.

 

He has been very depressed lately.  He just picks at his food, he has no energy, he looks so sorrowful and says he just feels “blah”.  I suggested a doctor and a remedy and he got very defensive and said he could “cure himself with his mind”.  I argued that depression is a disease and not something that a person could will in or out of their life, but he protested stating that his mind was stronger than most peoples’ and could get rid of this bad feeling if he just didn’t have so many other things always bothering him.  I took the opportunity to ask what was bothering him and he said the Boarding House is “not doing right” and the grass needs mowing and nothing runs like it use

05-27-1997 It took Don all day to set two pieces of concrete; something that used to take him 15 minutes. He couldn’t remember how. 05-28-1997 Don and I were both deposed in the slip and fall case on 6001 Sheldon Road. The tenant said he’d broken his back moving his armchair across the room. Don spent the rest of the day hanging out in Gale Porter’s office talking about Joe Ryan. We won the case in the end. 05-29-1997 Don stayed gone all day. He said he had to load two trucks for Kenny Farr and would be back by noon. 05-30-1997 Don and I went out to breakfast and took a cat to the Vet (Dr. Stacie Wadsworth, DVM.) Later I worked with Dad and the boys on ridding some of the cages of the ant infested dens that Don had made out of orange crates. Don said not to remove them, unless they had ants in them. The ants were the reason we were removing them in the first place, so we removed them. Don gave a couple of tours to people he had told to just show up out here. I made him do the tours because we cannot allow people to wander and Don always tells everyone he talks to that they can just come out any time. He stopped the tours several times to threaten me that he would tear down the pens altogether if I didn’t leave the old dens in there. I explained calmly to him that he had agreed that it wasn’t good to have the cats living in boxes full of ants and that the ants would kill the little kittens and he would agree and then a few hours later he would come back around and say that he was going to tear down the whole pen if I didn’t put all of his ant infested orange crates back in the cages. This went on all day. I had to hide all of the tools from him to keep him from letting a cat loose. 05-31-1997 Like every Saturday, Don left out at first light to load up a van with everything he can buy at yard sales. We have several commercial trucks full to the back doors with all of the stupid, worthless things Don has paid good money for. I won’t let him take the cats with him any more because he forgets that they are in the car. I have to fight with him every Saturday to protect the cats. Don lost 1200.00 and is accusing me, Jamie, Susan Aronoff and Sandy of stealing it from his favorite hiding spot. Wendell Williams probably talked him out of it.

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/ I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet. 5/15/1997 Had to sneak our two mutts into the vet to have them neutered and spayed; something Don forbids. 5/16/1997 Don has been running all over the place accusing everyone of stealing his car phone and his handkerchiefs. He found the phone later that day under the seat of his car. Why would anyone steal a used hanky? 5/17/1997 At first light Don was off, with Sundari our six month old Leopard to go yard sale-ing. When he came home the refuge was very busy and the gates were open, as always on Saturdays. He got out of the van and left the windows down and the Leopard loose. Two of our Volunteers, Troy Valentine and Judy Watson discovered her hanging out the window and put her away. Don never asks before taking a cat and I have to watch him all the time to keep him from doing dangerous stuff like this. I got a call one day that he’d done the same thing with Sundari in a neighborhood, where she escaped and was scaring people half to death before he rounded her back up. 5/24/1997 I had to give a presentation in Arcadia with the cats and asked Don to feed for me. It is the second time I have asked him to do so. He forgot several of the cats and I had to recheck everyone when I got home. 5/25/1997 I had caught up a Bobcat (Elsa) and put her in a cage attached to a 1200 sq. ft pen, where Cerange just moved, in the hopes of acquainting the two before putting her in his pen. I told Don I wanted to make sure they were going to get along before opening the door. Behind my back he sneaked out there and let her out, but did not fasten the gate and she escaped. He did not tell me that she got away, so I don’t know if he saw it or if she got out after he walked away. The next day a tour group saw her out and told me. When I asked Don how her door could have been opened and left standing open he said that he had done it. When we couldn’t find Elsa anywhere on property, we began expanding our search outside our gates. Jamie went down N. Meadowview Circle and a neighbor said they thought they had seen her, so Dad, Jon, Kenny and I took nets and a big carrier. We found her in the backyard of a house on N. Meadowview, so we set the carrier up in the narrowest spot where the shrubbery came around the side of the house to the front. Some chased her from the back yard into the narrow space where she ran into the familiar carrier to escape them and Dad and I were able to slam the door shut behind her. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/ I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet. 4/1/1997 Don gave me $3500.00 to help pay the workers. It is the first time this year he has helped out. He is leaving for Costa Rica today. Returned 4/6/97. 4/7/1997 When Cachanga and Cachinga first arrived from a broker named Tim Ming in Central or South America, Don would lay in bed, with a carrier on his belly, and feed the hissy caracal kittens from long handled forks. They never did tame down much, but Don kept trying to gain their trust and would often go in their cage and try to pet them. After one such visit, he left the door standing open again and Cachanga wandered over to Food Prep to see how dinner was coming along. The cats always know from whence the food comes. It comes in buckets and it comes from a certain direction down the path. Food prep was a short trailer body, sitting on the ground, opposite the path that ran along the north boundary of the lake. There was a three section freezer outside. Every day we would pull the meat from the freezer and take it into the box trailer to thaw. Down one side of the box trailer was a metal table for cutting meat and down the other were commercial style sinks and more cutting space. Because there was no cooler to defrost the meat, it was always a few hours of trying to break it up in water and hacking at it with machetes. I’m surprised no one lost a limb in there. To have so many people slinging blades, back to back was so dangerous. Jamie looks up (because she can just sense this sort of thing) and there is Cachanga Caracal standing in the doorway. He seemed pretty pleased with himself to have divined the source of all food. Reading his mind, Jamie took a bucket, walked past him, and said, “Come on...let’s go eat.” Cachanga happily trotted alongside her and back into his cage in anticipation of being fed first tonight. That didn’t happen, but it worked for getting him home without a fuss. 4/23/1997 Don said he revised his insurance policy with Anne McQueen’s help. He said the first $250k comes to me, then it pays off the 200k mortgage to Gladys Lewis Cross on the Easy St. property and then pays off Mr. Baker’s 100k, then pays Roy Dawson’s 130k. If any of these are already paid off then that portion goes to WildLife on Easy Street, Inc. 4/30/1997 Don turned 59 today. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

Don told my dad that he would be late coming in tonight, so I asked Jamie and JD to help feed.  I took them out for ice cream afterwards to celebrate their awards.  I asked Don if he wanted me to bring him anything (he was coming in just as we were leaving) and he said “No.”  I could tell by his tone of voice that he was out to pick a fight.

 

My period was over three days ago but Don had refused my advances every day and that was after a week of supposed abstinence.  He said that the last time we made love it made him sore and that was why he didn’t want to have sex.  He’s been hiding himself so I expect he’s had another VD outbreak.  This is the third time since he began spending so much time in Costa Rica.  I found out while working at the shop (office) that Don hasn’t been there, like he’s been telling me for months. Anne said she thought Don was spending all of his time here at home and she resented that.

 

She just now found out that he has been lying to her too.  He has always told me that he spent the day at the office, with the exceptions I’ve listed here, so I haven’t worried much about what he was doing.  So where does he go all day every day?  He’s not doing any real estate work and he’s never dirty enough to have been playing mechanic.

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/ I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet. 3/25/1997 According to Anne, Don went out to dinner with Anne McQueen our office manager. He did not come home to feed tonight and did not call to say he would be gone. He stayed out all night. 3/26/1997 Don stayed gone all day and all night again without calling again. 3/27/1997 Don told Anne he was staying in a travel trailer here at the house, but I had already looked in all the trailers here and he wasn’t here. In my notes after looking all over for him it read “This morning there was no sign of him. I know that he can’t help being senile. I love him and want to express that love to him, but he runs away like this for no reason”. Don got a health certificate from our vet, Dr. Stacie Wadsworth, DVM to take a 3 year old, male Bengal cat named Andre to Costa Rica on 3/24/1997. Attached to that document is a Spanish notice signed by a Veterinario Costa Rica dated 3/27/1997. So was Don in Costa Rica since the 24th and what was he doing taking cats to and from there? You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

1997-02-18 I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/ I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet. 2/7/1997 First thing Don does when he gets back is to try and tear down the great new Bear Cat cage we built while he was gone. It is 1200 sq. feet with trees, a den, two lock outs (one portable so we can take Banjo to shows) and everyone, especially the Bear Cats, who have been in tiny cages, just loves it. When we wouldn’t help him tear it down then he wanted to cover it and straighten the sides so that photographers could not get a good view of the animals. The photo tours are what is paying for these wonderful pens. Next he wanted to size down all of the doors (so small that the bear cats couldn’t use them). We finally got him distracted onto something else. Don keeps getting into cages with cats and either leaving the gates standing open, or he will cut a hole in the side of the cage. When we discovered Callie Cougar wandering around we called everyone together with nets to chase her for hours. It was an easy game for Callie, but we were all getting exhausted. Don devised a plan where I’d stand on the path, net outstretched, and he and the goons would chase her in my direction. Dumb plan, but nothing else was working. Here they came: Callie leaping effortlessly ahead of them and the rowdy mob of four or five men chasing her. The nets were heavy, as Don had welded them for use with super heavy duty commercial fish netting. I held it out to one side as Callie closed the gap between us. At the point of impact, I shut my eyes because she was right on me. She had leaped into the net, but with such force it pulled me completely off my feet and I skidded on the ground behind her. Scrambling atop the rim of the net, to keep her from standing up and backing out, I could not believe that of all her options she would have leapt right into the net. That was a lucky, lucky catch. Thank you Callie. 2/10/1997 Gladys’ Case Against Don was Dismissed. 95-DR-005258 was voluntarily dismissed in Hillsborough county O.R. Book 8438 on page 1606 but I don’t know why. Did Don pay her more money when he realized none of his kids or his secretary, Anne McQueen would back him up in court? 2/11/1997 Don was gone until after midnight. I assumed he was at the Imperial Auto Auction. We don’t need a car and he never sells any that he buys. He just drags them into the front yard and dumps them. 2/17/1997 Don was at an auction all day. 2/18/1997 Don was at an auction all day in Kissimmee. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

1/27/1997 Don did not show up tonight to feed the cats he usually feeds. He came in after 10:00 p.m. but refused to say where he had been. 1/28/1997 Don woke up in a wonderful mood. We made love, went out to breakfast and he agreed to allow me to insure the sanctuary, finally. He said he wants to make sure that I am always taken care of and he even had me draft a Will and Power of Attorney. He had me change the Will a few times because he seemed to just delight in making sure that none of “his greedy kids” were in it. Anne & I both agree that he should not leave them out in the cold though, so I did not mention to him the fact that they are still getting an inheritance through their PRSL Land Trust that I drafted to contain all of his properties for them right after we were married. 1/30/1997 Don left for Costa Rica for a week and returned 2/6/97. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/ I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet. 1/2/1997 Don left for a week in Costa Rica. He doesn’t buy anything any more, so I don’t know what he does down there for a week at a time. He doesn’t call me anymore when he is gone. 1/23/97 is not today’s date but it is the time when my life began to change for the better. I have been so isolated here, taking care of the animals and getting Don out of trouble that I have lost touch with the outside world. The Tampa Tribune did a very nice article about WildLife on Easy Street today and they distributed it state wide in their Baylife section. Since then we have been bombarded with new visitors and our volunteer staff has grown from 12 to 120. New people with new perceptions and one of them, Rich Reed, was trying to comfort me for running such a huge place and managing an Alzheimer’s patient/husband as well. I’ve thought Don was loosing his mind for a long time but thought it was noticed only by me. For a casual acquaintance to see the problem so quickly made me wonder more about this dreaded disease. I bought every book on the subject that I could find and now I understand why he acts the way he does, but I still don’t know how to protect him from himself. His driving is a menace to society, his forgetfulness with the cats not only jeopardizes their safety but the public’s safety as well. His financial indiscretion is going to keep me from being able to properly take care of him if I cannot find a way to control the situation. Having him declared mentally incompetent is only the tip of the iceberg as I will still have to watch him day in and day out to keep him from hurting himself and others. Tracking his decline is all I know to do. You can help feed the cats at no cost to you using Amazon Smile! Visit BigCatRescue.org/Amazon-smile You can see photos, videos and more, updated daily at BigCatRescue.org Check out our main channel at YouTube.com/BigCatRescue Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.

Today I told Don that I wanted him to be honest in his answer to a question that I was going to ask him because I had asked it before and had written down his answer then and I would ask him again in the future and would expect the same answer each time.  I asked him for the second time what was going on at the TriPlex the night I returned from Bagaces and why he was not there to pick me up at the bus terminal.  He said that he was expecting me back at 10:30 and that Martha had told him the last bus out of Bagaces would put me back in San Jose at 10:30.

 

Don had gone with Michael and Vic to the government auction that day.  He said he had not come back to the TriPlex when Martha called and told Garro that I was on my way earlier than expected.  He said Garro decided to come pick me up when Don had still not arrived back at 8:15 p.m.  Don can’t remember where he was that night.  There could  have been a time discrepancy if I was going by Florida time and Don was going by CR time, because 10:30 to me would have been 8:30 CR time.  We went out to eat at the Chinese Restaurant around the corner and if that was charged on a card it would tell me if it was 10:30 CR time.

 

I asked Don why he was standing out in the street when we drove up and he said he was on his way out to the car and saw headlights and was waiting to see if it was us.  I asked him why there were clothes all over our bedroom and he said that he had let Garro’s girlfriend and Carmen with her two brats, go through them earlier that day.  He was sure that no one else had been there.  He did not remember the room being a mess, nor my clothes having been ransacked, but rather said the clothes had been stacked in neat little piles.

 

He kept asking me with every pause in my speech why I was asking him what I was, and I kept on going without acknowledging his inquiry, until he had answered all I had asked.  I finally responded by telling him that I had received a phone call a couple of weeks prior from Karina who had said that she did not know Don was married and was in the room with him when he found out that I was on my way there.  They had just been intimate and she had a fit when she learned he was married.

 

I told him she said that Don then assured her he was divorcing me because I interfere in his business dealings and spend too much money photographing the cats.  His uncontrollable smile let me know that he had been caught, at least in what he said, and that I knew who he had said it to.  Don denied knowing anyone named Karina and that there was anyone else in the room.

 

He went on to say that Michael Sedwick had decided to sue him recently and was probably behind this because Michael had threatened to do several things.  Don said that Michael did not threaten to say anything to me.  He then backtracked and said that Bertha had also been allowed to look through the clothes and take whatever she wanted and that she must have seen the condition of the room and fabricated the entire story.  I asked what benefit there would be to her or Michael to do this and he could supply no answer.  Don asked if I had Karina’s number and I told him that I did not, but that she was going to get the other girls Don was accused of chasing and was going to call me with their numbers.  This seemed to make him very nervous.

 

Don asked who the other girls were and I told him that two were named, one of which was Olga.  Don said that Michael, Bertha, Olga and he went out to dinner one night, but that she was with them and she took a bus home before any of them left.  Don said that I would probably take it wrong, but that he had told Bertha to have Olga get an estimate from a dentist to remove her two deformed “vampire teeth” (they stick straight out) because he said that although she was quite over weight, the change in her mouth would make all the difference in the world as to what her life would be like if she weren’t so “scary looking “when she smiled.

 

He said she had