What is Wrong With People? Unwanted Siamese, from Salem Shelter with Embedded Collar

Tonight, I'm out trapping for some Albany strays for fixing.  The woman who feeds them does not live there.  Her son does and he does not like cats.  She takes care of her grandchildren there and when she does, she feeds them.  There is a young black tux female, her teenage Siamese daughter, the only survivor of the last litter, and then her most recent litter, that include a black kitten, a black tux kitten and a Siamese kitten.

I caught the black tux mom.  I caught the teen Siamese.  I caught the black kitten.  And then I see an adult Siamese in the yard next door.  He is meowing pitifully and limping.  I shine my light on him.  He is skinny and has a collar with a yellow tag hanging from it.  Only then do I see that he has a right front leg through the collar and that the collar is tearing at his flesh in his armpit and embedded in the skin on his belly.  I'm horrified.  He'll almost come to me, crying so hard like he is.  So I urge him into the trap and in he goes.

I bring him home and cut off that horrible pain he has born, a collar put on and forgotten, like him.  There are two tags, the yellow 1800pets one, then a smaller one, with a number.  If  found, call.....so I call.

I tell the woman who answers I found her Siamese.  She's guarded.  turns out, she lives only two houses from where I found him.  She claims they got him from a Salem shelter and he got out a window immediately and the humane society wouldn't do anything to make it right, like come down and find him for them.  I said "It wasn't their fault you left a window open."

But she goes on, that they made them give her a kitten in exchange since that Siamese was an expensive cat.  Yeah whatever bitch.  The Siamese crying as I talk to her.  I look at him, his state of starvation, the wounds.  I'm shaking my head.  I want to jump through the phone line at this woman's throat.

He was two houses from her house, sitting in a yard in plain sight crying pathetically.  Don't tell me, lady, that you ever cared about what happened to him.

She claims they immediately returned the kitten because her son is allergic.  She claims she has nowhere to put her Siamese if I bring him back and that tomorrow she'll take him right back to the humane society.  She claims it's a no kill shelter.  I tell her Willamette Humane is a very high kill shelter.   Finally I tell her, if you won't take care of your cat, take him to the vet, do anything to help him, then I am going to help him, even though I don't have money and he is not mine.  Goodbye.

I believe she'd already hung up though, at some point, because there's nothing now on the other end of the line.  Tomorrow I will call the police to tell them about the situation, just because I don't want any drama from this woman over this poor cat, who now just needs love, food and healing.

He's a chirper and a talker and so grateful, wants held, petted, to rub his face on mine. I got to find him somewhere where he will be safe, loved and if he goes to a new home, somewhere that actually checks out the people who are walking away with a precious life completely dependent on them.  It's a very grave responsibility.