Kittens!

Bambam
Rocky, Pebbles and Giggles.
Bonkers, the tabby male kitten.
Whimsy, the delightful little girl Siamese.

I began trying to retrap the rural trailer cats, although most have disappeared. The 350 pound daughter moved out and to Lebanon. The trailer sits empty and I think other family members are going to demolish it. They are grass seed farmers, some of the family. None have helped or expressed interest in the cats. These are breeders from way back. I trapped a possum Saturday night, then a Lynx Point Siamese. He isn't fixed. He's the only one two years ago I did not catch, if it is even the same cat by now.

When I told her I caught the Siamese, she was all happy and said, "I wish I had someone to breed him with."

I said, "What in the world are you talking about? Do you think I sit out here, nights, on my time, to help you, so you can breed more cats?"

"Well, I want Siamese kittens. I don't have any."

Again, I tried to tell her, on the phone, sitting there out in the black of night, at the empty trailer her daughter occupied, that she has plenty of cats and many are dying because she has too many and doesn't care for any of them very well, as her daughter didn't, at this trailer, when she lived here.

I got 8 fixed at the trailer and ten at the mother's barn in another location. Then the daughter took in two of her mother's barn kittens and showed them to me once. They were covered in fleas and inside the trailer were piles of trash and filth with even a mouse flattened from being stepped on repeatedly, crusted into the smelly carpet. I got those two fixed, too, eventually.

And the first thing this woman thinks about, when I trap an unfixed Siamese, is "Oh, let's breed more."

She will never learn and there is no sense arguing with someone who doesn't learn and never will change. If any of the poor cats left behind when the daughter moved out are still alive, I hope to catch them. The mother will take them on at her barn, supposedly.

I'm trying to get a donation from her for my bait and gas. I think she probably will cover that. I hope so anyhow.

It is often hard to get people to understand fair play. I am a stranger to her. I am getting these cats fixed because she and her daughter neglected personal responsibility and did not get it done, then her daughter left them behind when she moved. I am helping her relocate them to her barn because neighbors, who know them, won't help. Neither will their family members, who live very close by.

It's the new America, where neighbors don't give a rip about neighbors and family doesn't give a rip about family.