Cat Eyes---A Cat Woman's Photos: 11 Local Cats Take a Road Trip

Have you ever wanted to travel with cats, maybe take a little road trip with about 11 cats in your car, most of whom you just met? It's probably something like driving a bunch of frat boys home after a party.

Now I travel with a jar of Vicks ointment and I put some in my nose. I have to. The cats invariably start pooping about 15 minutes into the trip. Sometimes, it's really really smelly poop.

I took the three kittens from south of the high school. Jonny, Stamos and Suzy. Stamos died in surgery, probably had a heart defect.

Jonny, one of the two boy teens. Stamos, his brother, died in surgery. His heart stopped suddenly.

Suzy, Jonny's sister.

I took the Corvallis OSU campus abandoned male. Buddy is sweet and tame, but I thought he was going to die on the way down. The business owner whom he had asked for help in his plight told me he couldn't meow. Would sound like a hiss. I knew something was really wrong.

Well, turns out, he has a bilaterally paralized trachea and voice box. He's going to die one of these days from inhaling food or if he gets a cold and stuff runs down his throat, there's no way he can keep that out of his lungs. So far so good though and he's just a lover boy. Sure had huge balls though, the key word being "did".

Buddy needs a special needs home.

Then the Grand Prairie Maine Coon stray, Jessie, turned out to be an already fixed female, and at least middle aged. Poor girl. At least she well cared for by that man whose door and food she found.

Jessie, the stray Maine Coon, turned out to be already spayed.

The Siamese mix "female" from Sherman street turned out to be a very loud already neutered male. When I say "very loud" I mean exactly that. From the time I picked "her" up late Wednesday night until I got the clinic with "her", "she" never shut up. I got used to it though. At times, she seemed to meow in time with the music I played, louder and louder. I thought about gouging out my eardrums in the end. I didn't though.

The "girl" who was really a neutered boy.

Elvis, from same complex, a handsome brown tabby male, did lose a couple items on this road trip. He rewarded me by shooting out a foul smelling pile early in the trip. And where was his carrier in relation to me on the way down? Right behind me.

Elvis lost his balls today but gained his manhood.

Then there was Ebony, the black stray male, known to have been mating with Josephine, the wayward escape artist stray teen calico, who was not pregnant after all.Just full of worms.

Ebony, who likes having sex with Josephine.

Josephine, who was not really pregnant.

Ebony was a perfect gentleman the entire trip as was Milton, the handsome black tux teen from Millersburg.

Milton from Millersburg.

I also took along a little charmer. Tuffy, the Lynx Point Siamese kitten, who slept all the way down, woke up briefly for his neuter, then slept all the way back home.

A very bad photo of Tuffy.

While there, late in the afternoon, clinic director Tamara, and myself, headed off to Huckleberry Hill, where there was a very trashy trailer park riddled in cats.

We drove the narrow road up the hill between trashed out tiny travel trailers, cars and RV's all surrounded in trash and rusted out junk. At the very end, Tamara knocked on a door. A man came out then some cats. We got three into carriers. He signed the forms. Tamara was off talking to somebody else. I handed him another carrier for a cat inside his place. And suddenly, he froze in mid step on his porch steps.

I mean froze. One arms was extended out in front of him. He had his feet on two different steps. He made some awkward noises and his eyes were wild. I asked what was wrong. He couldn't move forward and looked about to fall over. He didn't respond and suddenly went into a grand mal seizure. I tried my best to break his fall by grabbing on to him.

He fell onto the top of the porch and his legs extended outward, above the steps, rigid, but convulsing. I yelled for Tamara, who came running as did many park tenants. He has seizures all the time, they said.

We put a cage cover under his head for a pillow, which soon was stained in blood from a cut he suffered when he fell, on his forehead.

A man comes running down, pulling out a six inch blade knife. He turns it around and sticks the handle of the open knife into the guys mouth to bite on. I'm meeting Tamara's eyes. I guess I wasn't that surprised. A woman rushes up who also knows him and offers him a beer. Soon however she is rocking him in her arms. Someone called 911. All of a sudden about four emergency vehicles come rushing up the narrow one lane road. I decided it's time to back my car to the other end, out of the way.

We're catching cats though and they're everywhere. We already have four from the seizure man's trailer. We don't have many traps. We have a few carriers. At the other end, there are so many cats we can't keep track or decide who to grab, but we wanted the two calicos and trapped them then transferred them to carriers. We set out last trap at the vety end trailer. About seven cats were all excited over the tuna inside. One went in. Trap didn't spring. We were cursing Little Giant traps, as crap, because of their length and steep trigger plate, but two more cats went in and we started getting excited over that. Then one touched that trigger plate and we got three!!!

Tamara comes walking up then with a long hair scrungy manx male by the scruff. I'm thinking, 'like what am I supposed to do with him?' We had no more traps or carriers. "Let's wrap him in a net," she's says eagerly.

He started thrashing then and she had to let go.

We got 12. 11 are females. We need lots of money to get all the cats fixed in that area. It's over run. That was just drop dead fun though, grabbing those cats in the trailer park. Tenants were cheering us on, most with beer cans or bottles in their hands and a day long drunk under their belts already.

We could have caught another dozen had we had carriers and traps to contain them in.