Difficult Day

I am stressed. A posting on craiglist a few weeks back said Too Many Cats in Lebanon. I responded, as did many others, asking why they were not fixed. Many people offered to help get them fixed. The woman responded only to one Albany person who offered, but was vague, would put her off, would suddenly call saying they were all in her tack room and to come get them immediately, when the offer was to help get them fixed. She is moving from the property.

Today the Albany woman said she was going up there. I offered to ride with her. I did not know she'd told the woman she would pick up six of the cats to be fixed. She had no appointments made to get them fixed anywhere. I didn't know that either.

Nobody answered the door when we arrived. The Albany woman finally called her, and she said she wasn't home. She said some of the cats were in the barn in a storage container. Sure enough, cats were huddled in urine and feces, inside a plastic storage container. We couldn't leave them like that. They're in my bathroom and I am not happy.

The three kittens, and we couldn't find the fourth, are at a friend's place.

There are sixteen or so cats up there. All unfixed. All orange tabbies.

I got home and a Corvallis woman I've helped over and over again called wanting me to take on and find homes for the strays she feeds and has fed for years. I've sat out there time and time again, trapping them, taking them to be fixed.

So she tells me management wants them gone and we've had the conversation many times over many years. I"ve told her to find them homes then. I tell her she needs to put up fliers, advertise online, take out a free ad in the paper, things I've told her over and over and over. She wants to talk to someone at Poppa and wants them to take them, so I tell her, Poppa only fixes cats. She wants to express outrage that no one will do all the work for her and says she's going to write a letter to the paper. I tell her that's nice, but why don't you work to find them homes, rather than do the outrage thing.

Because I'm getting iritated at her once again. The entitlement attitude, the someone should do everything for me attitude, the "You sacrifice to help me, but I won't sacrifice a thing" attitude.

So I finally hang up on her. Then she calls back to very smugly tell me how wrong I am about Heartland, that they won't kill them because the cats there that she feeds are tame. Uh huh, I say, then how come, if they're so tame, I had to sit out half the night, in freezing weather, over and over, to trap them, if you could pick them up, and then I hung up on the entitlement queen.

I'm sick of people right now. I wish could run away again. I blew up at Circle K when the very nice clerk asked how I was and I told him exactly how I was, that I didn't want to take on more cats, but these people had stuffed six into a storage container the day before, and I just couldn't leave them like that, and I've never encountered so many people who are so irresponsible and so selfish and cruel towards animals in my life and I just want to get away from all these freaks who shove responsiblity off on someone else, and laugh about it and use emotional blackmail to do so on people who care.

I went outside and sat in my car and cried and wondered how I ended up in Albany, Oregon and not some place happy and enlightened or at least where half the populace isn't looped on drugs or alcoholics.

Not a good day. Maybe I'm worn out. Maybe I need a vacation.