Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Push for Homes

Torbi from apartment complex, now in my bathroom.
The calico, daughter of the black and white now at Heartland, from the Albany apartment complex. Heartland has an Alsea stable taking the black and white, once she is over a cold she caught there. She was handed over to a Corvallis woman by the woman who feeds the cats at the apartments in Albany. However, the cat bit her new adoptor and behaved feral. The cat was taken to Heartland on a bite hold, although she was fully vaccinated when I got her fixed last August at the Neuterscooter. The black and white had two kittens at the complex, whom I caught to be fixed in November. The calico is now here.
Willow, the orange medium hair female I trapped in my yard, whom Heartland took, then returned, citing ringworm.
Valentino!

I am trying hard to find cats homes. I paid for a 30 day ad on Oregonlive. You get to post 8 photos and continually edit, all for $15. I got an ad there once before that resulted in two cats getting homes.

However, I also paid $6 once for an ad in a McMinnville paper, out of curiousity, and got two cats homes that way. That was cost effective.

I like to track where people find out about a cat here up for adoption that they then do adopt. By and large, fliers have been the most productive at finding cats here homes, and the most productive fliers have been those posted at vet clinics.

I have found cats homes through the free ads allowed once monthly in the local paper, but the last two ads I've run have resulted in only one call. However, that call produced a home for two cats, two of the four cats abandoned in Millersburg.

I have found homes through craigslist ads, but that is a very very labor intensive endeavor because of the high number of e-mails I get through ads that are spam or mean nasty people, venting their personalities on anyone and everyone, or people faking that they want to adopt a cat for sport or because they're nuts or people responding who would not provide good homes. Craigslist is the wild west. Criminals love it.

If I have the time to sort through the good, the bad and the ugly responders from a craigslist ad, I post. But time is something in short supply in my life. I also now have a firm policy that I deliver the cat to out of area homes, where I cannot arrange someone else to do a driveby or home visit.

So it's flier time. Even though Valentino is still limping, he could go to an experienced adoptor. He needs a quiet home.

I'm not so sure Willow, the orange cat I trapped in my yard, really has ringworm. Sure looked like it, but that spot, crusted and the area now is clean and shiny, like a scab fell off. My Woods lamp burned out and I can't find my little tiny fishermans' blacklite I got at a Walmart.

I bathed her in antifungal and have been spraying the spot, alternativing between betadine and antifungal cream. She's in a cage. She does not like being in a cage. My bathroom is occupied still by the pair from the Albany apartment complex.

My neighbor says I should just let her loose, since I trapped her in the yard. But I'd still be feeding her then. Better to try to get her out of the area and into a home.

I'm already feeding the white cat. Now I think she's been abandoned if she was ever owned by the people the neighbor thinks sort of owned her. I see her crawl out from under the other neighbors shed in the morning, like she is having to live now under there, then comes to scrounge in bits of food in my driveway.

I wish there was somewhere to take strays in Albany. You have to pay $50 to take even a stray in to Safehaven, if they'll ever take a cat. That's what my neighbor says and she volunteers there, so she should know.

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