Monday, September 07, 2009

Pippi is Gone

The last of Jade's kittens left yesterday for her new home. I will miss Pippi. The Millersburg Garage kitten saga was both sad and wonderful. Only Linus died and I wish I'd caught his extreme dehydration from chronic undetected diarrhea much sooner. I don't what had made the kittens sick in foster care. Due to the white color of the diarrhea, my guess would be milk consumption but I don't know for sure.

Because even their backbones protruded, my guess is it had gone on at the foster lady's house for some time and she didn't notice. They all recovered once back here merely with sub cu fluid therapy and probiotics, no antibiotics needed. They recovered in one day, in fact. Except for Linus, whom I found dead with Micro cuddling next to his lifeless body, when I got home after running some errands. He died so quickly and so suddenly that first day they were back.

I'll never forget how Linus cuddled next to Micro, when they first came here. Micro was so sick and had trouble getting over the original diarrhea that plagued them. I did not think she would live. Linus would not play with his brother and sisters. Instead he lay worriedly next to his little sister. And when he died, it was her I found next to him. I just want to cry thinking about it. I wish...well, there's no sense to beating myself up over what can't be changed now.

So the three girls survived. Micro and Lucy went to a family in Albany. Bear, went with the older returned male from Jefferson, Yoyo, to the apartment of a disabled woman in Lebanon. Pippi went to an OSU student, who, with his fiancee, had adopted Peko, one of the Kelly road starving teens, last spring. I was really really happy to have one of the kittens at least go this wonderful young couple. I wish they could have taken all of them. I think the world of that young man and his fiancee, even though I've not met her.

Jade is still here. I was going to return her, then realized I just couldn't return this beloved young female to die young and be unnoticed there. Cars speed along Conser, killing anything in their path, including cats from this very house, routinely. Their bodies lay in the road until flattened into nothing. Nobody bothers to move them. I couldn't take this wonderful fun loving kitty, vibrant and full of life, wanting to be noticed and petted and loved, and to behave silly, and be laughed at for it, like a kid doing something and wanting parents to be sure to see it.

Her eyes are too alive to kill her hope and funny ways and dreams by taking her back there. She thinks people are wonderful now, that they love her, that she's valued. She doesn't have any choice in things. Like kids don't. I'm going to do the best I can for her. It's a responsibility. I won't take it lightly. But I'm not killing everything she's come to believe in by dumping her back there. No way.

Mowgli's leaving in a couple hours. It's a nice gay couple. I love adopting to gay couples. I know it's stereotypic thinking. They're more loving to animals, more attentive, less likely to dump a cat or abuse them, more empathetic, more likely to take them in for vet care. Gay couples are the gold star of adoptions, along with single middle aged employed women, stable middle aged and older couples, and disabled people who are not on drugs or alcohol.

I do not like adopting to someone who says "Me and my boyfriend want a cat". To me, when someone is living with a guy, and has only done so for under a year, that says to me that they can't commmit to anything. Is this just old school thinking? If people are living together and have no plans to get married or commit in another way to lifelong love, they're just sex partners, in my opinion.

Sex partner relationships often explode when one party has sex with someone else and the other half of the couple gets jealous. Seems strange in a way, since the relationship is just for convenient sex anyhow basically, to not understand that. If you want a lifelong relationship, then build one. Sex is sex, an animal act. Love is something different entirely, even though it involves sex, in my opinion. Anyhow, sex partner relationships are out, in general, when I am looking for stable homes. I don't see them as stable usually, is the reason why.

Single moms with kids from a variety of dads, same thing. Unemployed young men, same thing. In this world, a young strong man can find a job if they want one, I think, even if it's in the fields. When I see young men without jobs, I automatically think they're addicts, pushers, lazy asses, or criminals. Maybe that's old school thinking, too, but that's what I think.

A man living with a woman who has kids with him, but yet the guy isn't working: loser written all over that situation.

Loser men also try to attach to women with kids because they know they likely get HUD, welfare and food stamsp and might have low self esteem, so might easily be talked into things. Such situations explode routinely with eviction or jail time and pets and kids are caught in the middle unnoticed. They suffer. These all become red flag behaviors.

Houses crammed in junk and piles of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes, with TV running and computer on: that's a no too. That's lazy people who live there.

I'm not that picky with homes, and I'm not perfect either, in finding responsible homes for these precious lives. It is hard to find good homes. People without much often make better adoptors than those who have lots, too. There aren't set rules to go by. It's just hard is all, and I don't like it, because there are so many scammers and liars, too, mixed in with the very good wonderful people who want to adopt. Sorting them out for me is just awful, because of these precious lives at stake.

I hate handing out lives to strangers. I hate it.

The missing cat is Sashi as I suspected. The woman says her husband claims to have seen a feral cat stalking her, and there was a fight and Sashi ran off, but I guess it was way down in some brush or something, and it very well could have been a predator.

Feral cats don't stalk and eat other cats. Unfixed feral males, just like unfixed tame males, can be territorial and fight for that reason, but not to kill and eat another cat. A cat fight can be fatal, but is most likely fatal ten days or so down the road, after bite wounds absess, not immediately. An injured cat would return to its owners unless mortally wounded. But a young spayed female would not stand and fight any cat. She would have no reason to, unless cornered and unable to escape.

Was it a juvenile bobcat the husband allegedly saw, and not a domestic cat at all? They are oft mistaken.

I can't get a reply from her as to whether the "other cat" she referred to in the e-mail, that allegedly ran off the cat fighting with Sashi, is the other kitten they adopted from me because that kitten was even smaller than Sashi. Or if that kitten too is gone. A fixed young female like Sashi would pose absolutely no threat to another cat, unfixed or not, is what doesn't make any sense.

I e-mailed her and told her to call me, that I'm a very good tracker. I am. No call and no more e-mails. It makes me want to curl up inside, to be told something horrible like this, and not be able to do something about it, to track her down, or at least use sign, left behind, and there is always sign, to find out what happened. Predators aren't murderers who cover their tracks to remain undetected. They're animals hunting to eat. The story is there waiting to be read.

Things like this get to me lately. I don't sleep well anymore. I've had no recreation since moving to Albany. I don't see anybody. This life is killing me. I need to have some fun, but I have no one to have some fun with. I want to go camping, hiking, swimming, but the summer is now gone. I don't have a life at all, just aodpting out these unwanteds to people who treat them like disposable diapers without any value. There is no reason to continue.

8 comments:

  1. "I hate handing lives out to strangers. I hate it." Ditto, ditto, ditto!!! It is the hardest part of this whole crazy TNR and cat/kitten rescue work. I know EXACTLY how you feel. Every time i get a kitten out of some awful, dangerous situation, nurse them back to health, love them as if they were my own children and then have to hand them off to a stranger, it kills me. Like you, i do my very best to screen potential adopters and do everything in my power to assure they will be taken care of and loved endlessly for their entire lives, but there are never any guarantees. I sob uncontrollably every time I let go. It's that treacherous uncertainty.
    I have tons of empathy for you...just wish i was closer by so we could join forces...might make life a little easier and more enjoyable.
    Thanks for your post on my blog! I will take some photos of the front of my cat tree for you soon.
    Thinking of you and sending many purrs your way,
    Carrie

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  2. I can't take it, to think of Sashi torn apart. I don't think the other kitten is still with them either, which, if it isn't, means she got killed, too. I don't know that for sure. The woman did not respond when I asked, which leaves me here, with my heart tearing out. All that love I put into those two, not to mention money. All that lost in under a year. Those beautiful lives.

    I need some human friends, but I can't even find anyone else doing this around here who is interested in socializing with other people. Everyone is so busy in their own lives, with their families, friends, jobs. There are a couple people in Sweet HOme who help cats, but they don't socialize due to time and when they do, it's with their friends and family. It's like living in a desert or in a cabin in the Arctic. May as well be.

    I advertised on craigslist for exercise partners, then video watching friends, for a movie night once or twice a month, then a book club, and got zero responses. Oh my I don't know where to try anymore.

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  3. At least I can you a week, Jody - wish it could be longer but thats the longest i can safely stay away without incurring rook's wrath! I've never been seperated from him before...left the family before, but not this cat. There is reason to continue - the ones who make it into good homes who would otherwise be dead. No one can win them all. Even
    God has to let go of His people and let bad things happen because to try to control all of it would rob us of our free will. And its unfortunate, and we kill each other, and hate each other, but there are those who reach out to others in need, and life goes on...

    it ain't all good, but it ain't all bad, either...

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  4. I'll give you tech support for you starting up helping the strays there in Baltimore big time, from here. Ok? You do it for awhile.
    You know I"m not religious and you're giving me religious stuff sermons and that's ok but it doesn't mean a whole lot to me. But as for the helping the cats, I'd like to see you take up the challenge there in Baltimore. How about it?

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  5. And you should bring Rook along. I have extra catnip and I bet the cats here would love to quiz him on life in Baltimore, what he eats and smells and how good the catnip is there. Bring Rook along! Just kidding, I know you can't.

    Well, I have your plastic cups with lids for your coffee now too. And have been asking people the best way to do an airport pickup. The consensus seems to be, if the plane is fairly on time, to keep circling past the terminal area. You can't stop or park, but if the plane is on time, I'm told, you should be out there, ready for pick up with your luggagem, 30 minutes after you arrive, sometimes 20. Which would mean about 11:15 a.m. I hope you don't have plane delays or anything.

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  6. well if i am delayed in chicago there's always Keith to keep me company...i know you aren't religious, Jody - and i'm not preaching at you, either. Its just an analogy....and yes, i know what its like to help strays and ferals here. I lost three of them and i cried and cried and cried. My friend Fran does a lot of the work - if i had a car I could do more. We have meetups here at the animal place on stockholm street which is in an impossible to get to area unless you have a car so i'm stuck. i've posted several times letting members know that, but no one has ever goten back to me.
    and its true - iot ain't all good, but it ain't all bad, either....because if it was, no one, no one, would be doing this.

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  7. I know you aren't religious and all that, Jody, I was just giving an anology more or less...as far as the cats in baltimore go - damn, my m key is sticking...i've been there - i lost three in less than a year - and spent weeks crying over them - and we do have links with alley cat allies here - meetups and such, but they are held on stockholm street which is impossible to get to, esp. at night, without a vehicle - and i've left messages and posted about that on the web site, but so far no one has offered to bring me along...they all want help with trapping and such, but without a car i am limited. My friend Fran does a lot of this work but she lives a little distance from me.

    so, you'll be driving in circles till i arrive huh? not even there yet, and i gotcha going in circles already....

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  8. Meant to add - if there are any delays in chicago i've got keith to keep me company....ah!
    and - to reiterate - it ain't all good, but it ain't all bad, Jody. You do your best and the rest is in their hands - and so far, it seems, you have found many many good homes. Here's a truism for you: one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch..ala michael jackson...

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