The Clinic

I paid for seven Monroe Cats, the Cottonwood boys, a kitten taken from 33 Cat Trailer in Albany, a kitten abandoned on Harvest drive, with three others and their mom, a Lebanon feral, Bad Black Teen Mom, and 8 cats from the collector across from the grange, to be fixed yesterday.

I save up small donations, I might get, although they are extremely rare, adoption donations, and my change in a fund to pay for spays that I can't get paid for otherwise. But the 8 from the collector across from the grange, I had to take that money for those unexpected fixes out of my own extremely shallow pockets.

I had thought neighbors out there were going to take care of that situation. I had urged them to get the cats into the last FCCO clinic. I had urged them to get permission to be on that property, only a tiny bit of it inhabited by the woman who feeds cats, from the landlord, too. They did nothing, until yesterday, they wanted me to sneak over there, and get the cats. I was exhausted because I set traps at the grange late, then had to get up frightfully early to check them and caught one cat.

Finally, day of clinic, and I wasn't going to stay, I got a little bit upset with the grange people, for doing nothing about the collector across from the grange and expecting me to sacrifice to clean up their neighbhorhood. I told them they needed to get permission from the owner of the property because I wasn't going onto his property without explicit permission and that that permission should have been gained long before, even before the FCCO clinic last month, so the cats could have been fixed there.

They went and got permission then we went over and found five kittens in the grass near death from starvation and flea anemia. They were literally alive in fleas and had earmites boiling from their ears. They trapped two more adults. There were cats skulls and cat bones everywhere, like a graveyard.

Only a portion of the property is occupied, but I don't know if the person who used to live there still lives there or if so, is even alive in there. The grange manager pounded and pounded on the door. There was no answer. I've tried to get someone to come to the door before. The window is open and the cats come and go, but they are feral. The five kittens weren't because they were near death.

The rest of the property, an open barn, is used to store old broken down equipment and piles of lime. There are bones everywhere.

The grange people had tried to get a deputy to go talk to the woman who allegedly lives there. They don't think he ever did anything.

There was no answer at the door. But once in awhile, once very close, there was a man's voice. It's so strange it's like a horror movie or a really bad nightmare.

There are lots of cats but they only caught the three adults and the five dying kittens. There are lots more.

The Neuterscooter vet said if the kittens had not been gotten today, they probably would have been dead within two more days.

Flea anemia.

I was going to take them, because several also suffered from severe URI's. I couldn't stand the thought of taking them back over there to lay in the filthy dirt and die. But I was so exhausted by clinic's end. I had not planned on staying to help at the clinic. The Cottonwood boys were going to a home yesterday in Oregon City. I was to meet their adoptor halfway, in Salem, mid afternoon.

When it was apparent I could not get away, that I was needed at the clinic, I called her from home, when I went home to get traps. She gladly came all the way down. She paid an adoption fee for the boys, and is a very nice woman. The adoption fee covered 60% of the price of their neuters, which, to be quite honest, is more than I ever get in an adoption donation. And I needed that money yesterday.

I think the grange people might be going to get serious about the conditions over there, and all the cats, who still need fixed. Because the cats, searching for food, end up at houses in the area, having kittens in wheelbarrows and sheds and its not necessary for this suffering to occur if they'd just get them all fixed, make a little effort.

I called KATA then who said they'd take the kittens because they couldn't stand the sound of how bad off and sick they were, to be put back over there, after being fixed, just to die.

I was so exhausted and dehydrated by the end of a clinic, to be doing lifting and carrying and all that, after being up most of the night checking traps, I had a break down of sorts near the end, trying to do so much. Finally Oscar of the Neuterscooter told me straight up, "You can't save them all, Jody. Those kittens will have to go back. You've done your share. Go home."

I knew he was right, but I broke down in tears, and told the grange people I wasn't taking them. I paid for them to be fixed and those blessed Neuterscooter folks washed out their earmite impacted ears, and cleaned their crusted snotty noses and eyes and gave them antibiotic injections and in the end, kind people swarmed around them, there to pick up their own cats, and they were swept away into other arms of love.

The grange woman had come to me in the back, where I pretty much was propped up, unable to move, from pain and exhaustion, and said there were people in line who would take them and I needed to go talk to them. I said "They're not my cats and I'm going home. You do it." She said if they're not yours then they now belong to the Neuterscooter I guess." I gave her the glare of a lifetime.

I muttered loudly to anyone near, "Changing the world, in even tiny ways, is hard, painful, sad, expensive, yelling, dirty, filthy aching hard work."

The grange people didn't cause the collector problem. I know they couldn't deal with more cats either. They'd taken in the mom cat with four newborns found in a carboard box near their road, likely from this place across the street, and also nine other kittens and one female, from the grange last year, also likely from the place across the street.

I would be camping right now, halfway to Crescent Lake, if I didn't have that one eyed cat here, not picked up by the Lebanon woman, who never once mentioned she was not going to pick her up until tonight, until I get an e-mail late last night to that effect.

I called my brother and told him that I have no idea when that Lebanon woman will show up for the cat and we had to cancel the trip. He said maybe there will be another time he'll be free this summer, but that I doubt. I have no camping equipment and don't like to go alone. I think I just blew my one chance at a getaway this summer.

I'm really fried, to be honest.