Thursday, August 27, 2009

Abby, Buck, Rowdy and Tortilla Get Their Home

Abby today, right before I took her and three other Lebanon collector cats, to their new home. Abby was pregnant when spayed. And skinny. She's looking great now! Abby is tame.
This is big Buck, and was trapped at the second go round by KATA up there at the collector's place. She'd left a lot of cats behind. The prop management company working for a Contractor Corporation that house flips wanted them killed or gone. Buck is a sweetheart, scared, worried, but he will be fine. Buck is tame.
This is Rowdy, a young brown tabby male.
Tortilla, the torti, who also was pregnant when spayed, and Rowdy together. Four collector cats, now fixed, two boys and two girls, get a great new start to life.
This is Abby when I first trapped her. She was pregnant, yet very thin.

Last night, I got Buck, Rowdy and Tortilla from KATA. They joined Abby, who has been here since I trapped her at the Lebanon collector, in a cojoined cage, two rabbit hutches zip tied together with holes cut in each so they can move from one to another.

Afterwards, I was able to begin petting the big brown tabby male, Buck. He's tame, but has a worrywort, over all the trauma he has experienced with being abandoned by he collector, harried and hated by neighbors up there, finally caught, fixed in Corvallis by KATA at a clinic they arranged, then living up there. He's such a good boy.

It was nice to see Rowdy and Tortilla again, both cats were ones I took in to be fixed, after the first night up there trapping. I took all four this morning to Countryside, where, I let each out into my net and they were vaccinated for rabies. All but Tortilla had already received a three-way vaccination. I updated their flea treatment and paid for each to have Profender applied, to treat round and tapeworms. KATA footed the bill for the rabies vaccinations.

Then it was on to their new home, which was only a few miles from the vet clinic. I had loaded three hutches into my car and set them up for them at their great new home, all interconnected with holes, so the cats have plenty of room, during their acclimation period. They looked pretty happy already, when I finally left.

They are a wonderful family. They had rescued a cat they found running under moving cars in Salem, outside a restaurant. So that cat is up being fixed today.

In addition, after responding to a craigslist plea for help with a kitten rescue, off Cloverridge, an Albany woman rescued a mom cat with her seven newborn kittens. Another woman is trapping the remainder of the cats, fed by somebody who then moved out and left them, and the landlord, who won't donate or get involved, wanted them gone.

So the woman helping trap those cats called me this morning and said she'd trapped a big male. My vet clinic agreed to fix him also, so he is up being fixed today, too.

KATA just got called by local folks here in Albany trapping cats she feeds. I called them and they're very nice. I gave them all the information they needed to get them fixed under the Albany grant and they are in the process of making appointments. They feed about ten cats and have caught three of them, which is a good start. They attempted to get help with the cats from SafeHaven, who referred them to KATA, and since it's an Albany situation, when KATA told me, I called them.

A man was involved in a dispute chronicled in the crime report, that prompted a letter to the editor response by a Tangent woman, regarding the police telling this man, when one of his unfixed cats was shot in the eye by a neighbor, that this was a cat problem and to stop feeding them. The Tangent woman was angry about such a police response to animal cruelty since there is no law against feeding cats outside but there are laws against animal cruelty which the police were not enforcing.

Anyhow, I called him after being referred by KATA who was referred by a Philomath dog group, one of whose members used to work with this man. He said he was flying out for the east coast that very night I talked to him, but would be back today and so I made appointments to get the first five to seven of the cats in tomorrow. He is not responding to phone calls. I hope he does by the end of the day. He's let this go already way way too long.

Earlier this week, I ran a lone wild kitten up to be fixed at the kitten fixing clinic. The caretaker, up in Scio, had about given up on catching the last kitten, then decided to try once more and caught her. I told her it was going to be a girl, because girls are by nature far more cautious. They have to be, because they will have far graver concerns and responsibilities down the line. They will get pregnant over and over, if not fixed, and often have to not only nurse their kittens, protect them from danger, but find food on their own and later for the growing kittens as well. These responsibilities require a more complex view of the world, than males need. Tough lives. The males run around breeding, fighting and eating. Their lives are far less filled with danger and responsibility. When males are fixed, their lives become far more meaningful and useful. In my opinion.

We don't need more cats, so we don't need their breeding, which also spreads disease. We don't need their fighting, which spreads disease, stinks up properties with spray marking and wakes people in earshot of screaming face offs. So let them males too be fixed and freed of following pre ordained hormonal behavior. Fixing cats sets both sexes free.

Human males often have trouble with this concept.

Think about our human world. Think of the rage and aggression, the spray marking, the loud face offs, the wars ravaging the planet. Think about women, with six or eight kids they can't support, too. We solve these same problems in the cat world easily. We humans can't think of ourselves as animals, for some reason, so the solutions to these same problems, are debated in complex think tanks and political arenas. My solution: fix everybody. What a wonderful world it would be.

It doesn't surprise me one bit it was a torti either. Now that group is all done: two adult females, and four kittens, two boys and two girls.

6 comments:

  1. This is all great news to see you dealing with nice,normal people for a change. And someone adopting some barn cats,who is also kind to animals. Imagine her job,dealing with mental-problems all day!..
    Keep up the great work,there are nice,kind people out there-somewhere-it sure is nice to deal with them,and help them too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. yeah i was thinking my god - others are trapping and getting kittens fixed - how wonderful its not all on you this time....

    ReplyDelete
  3. OH, how I love what you do and empathize with all of it. And Amen on the "Fix Everybody" part...i agree with that!!! I always tell my husband that i wish we could spay/neuter every cat we see (which we try very hard to do) and most of the people i know :)!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This is the main problem, every human has forgotten that they are an animal.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Snow, are you and Peggy going to the Eugene celebration"

    Probably not. It costs to get in, and the one time we went, there didn't seem to be much there of interest, at least to us. Are you going?

    Interesting advice the cops gave.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A positive day!! yeah!!!

    ReplyDelete

Round Up

Today is cat round up for tomorrow's five spots.  Two more came up from the vet student in Harrisburg late this morning.  Over 60 fixed ...