Nightmare in Kitten Fosterland

I took up six more Albany cats to be fixed. Five are from just one house and they also have six kittens. Do people never learn?

I'd received an e-mail from the mayor too, last night, wanting me to "take care of" a cat left behind by tenants, an unneutered male, for the landlord. The implication was I was to take the cat in. I told her I had quit the city grant at least two months ago, maybe longer. I got a half line response then, after my resignation letter, but that was it. The resignation didn't take with the city.

Obviously.

I replied to her this time that it was never part of the deal, with the grant, that I take in cats, and that being asked to take cats in, was the reason I had quit. I told her how frustrated I am with Albany and how many cats I have as a result of answering grant requests, without any help.

So I take up the cats to be fixed. I'd also received a call from the woman fostering the 8 kittens from Albany for a Portland adoption group. Why she was calling me, saying she was out of food for them, and that they had not yet been fixed and needed to be fixed and adopted at the Petsmart, I don't know. I was no longer to be part of it, since I am an hour and a half drive from her.

But the adoption group does not return her calls or get them fixed and up for adoption, she said. So I can sympathize with her concerns. She and her husband are elderly and poor.

I finally bought food for the kittens myself and went up there after dropping off the cats to be fixed. However, the husband immediately told me he wanted me to take two of them. Then it was all of them he wanted gone. He said his wife is "too easy" and he must defend her. I don't know these people at all.

I told him I had no carrier to take them, nowhere for them to go, no way to adopt them out. My heart was racing because he seemed very angry, dangerously so. I told him if I took them, I might have to have them euthanized if I could not find another group to take them because I didn't even have a carrier. I had no idea I would face this. I was just going to drop off food, since the adoption group hasn't done that.

At this point, the old woman began to sob and the old man picked up a chair, his face red with rage and I thought he was going to throw it at me. I'm running for the door, cat food cans flying out of the bag of food I bought for them, moments before, at a nearby Petco. He's screaming that he's going to call the cops and chasing me out and down his porch. The old woman is sobbing.

I get in my car, shaking. I call K, who is the one who lined the whole thing up over a month ago but she's tired and tells me she has no time for this and hangs up.

There's no one to call. I turn off the phone, stone faced, shaking and wanting a private place to sob. Before leaving I sneak back and leave the wet food, KMR, and kitten dry food, inside their gate. They need it. I like them, at least I think I do, despite the old man chasing me and threatening me. I think he has me confused with someone else, maybe the adoption group people.

The adoption group woman is under stress because she and her husband just had to move her 90 plus year old father in with them. Everyone is under pressure and fire right now.

The old man's rage is natural born, I think, and borders on insanity. The old woman's sobs might have more to do with having to live with an angry man with only the love of foster kittens to provide her respite. My own frustration was born of the mayor's request of me last night by e-mail, to take in another cat despite my "I quit" e-mail, citing exactly that problem, of two months back. Makes me feel sub human.

My frustration was also born of the lengthy list of free kitten ads dotting craigslist today and yesterday like they will be next week, and the demands on me, that never end, and are surreal in severity, painting a picture of the vicious underworld that exists on every street but a world most are lucky enough to never see.

The knowledge grows inside me, to see that list of free kittens on craigslist, to know of the nine now in my bathroom and the hordes more just out at that one colony, that they all will not survive and even the kittens born only in this valley, in these shitty little towns here, will never find love and stable homes.

There are simply too many.