Two Deaths in Catland

Today, two female kitties died. Both deaths were tragic. I had arranged to pick up two cats on Oak St. The owner had left them with a friend and moved to WA state. The friend had come to love the pair as hers. She contained them inside last night, but said the female was crying a lot to get out, but that she'd keep her in. She felt the cat was pregnant again. She'd already had one litter this year.

Before picking up those two, I went and checked traps again on Clover Ridge. Inside the trap, was an abbytorbi, medium hair, the cat I thought was the third torti. I put her in the car and went to pick up the other owned cats.

The woman came out to the car and got the two carriers I had brought to transport her male and female up for fixing. She went back inside with the carriers, but didn't come out. I finally went over to the door. Inside, I could see her sobbing. She came out and I asked "What's wrong?"

"My girl's dead," she sobbed.

"Dead?" I asked, "but she was fine last night."

"He found her dead this morning," she said, motioning to one of two shady character guys on the couch.

My immediate thought was 'why wouldn't he have told her she was dead before this moment, when I arrived.' My immediate thought was 'your shady character friend killed her.' I wasn't far off.

She was inside a green storage container, laying on a towel. The lid was on the storage container. I lurched back. The sight took my breath away. She'd suffocated to death. The insides of the storage container were wet with her respirations, at least, until the air ran out. I stared at that man and said "when did you put her in this?

"About 5:00 a.m.," he said. He claimed to the woman he'd found her dead and put her inside that. Yeah right. I didn't believe that for one moment. This is what I believe went down: she was crying and he got irritated over it, so he crammed her in that and put the lid on then went back to sleep.

I couldn't get her out of my mind, as I drove up to the clinic. I called from the vet clinic, thinking maybe she isn't dead. Suffocation takes awhile, and the cat can look dead but still be barely breathing. One of the two loser guys answered. I tried to tell him to touch her eyeball, to see if there was any reflex, to be sure she was dead. He said he threw her in the dumpster. I knew he wouldn't go check. He wasn't that kind of a guy.

When I returned from dropping off the cats I checked the traps I had left set on Clover Ridge. Another black and white male was in the trap. I ran him back up to the vet and asked if they could work him in.

When I picked up the cats tonight, the tech took me in the back and showed me a cat in a plastic bag. It was the abbytabby female. She was pregnant, the tech said. She said she survived surgery but then crashed and died. They couldn't revive her. She said she was very very thin and probably the strain of pregnancy, coulpled with starvation, that she couldn't survive it all and perhaps had a heart defect, too.

I brought her back with me. Otherwise, it would have cost $35 more. I had paid to have the little torti with the corneal ulceration tested (she was negative) and I'd paid to have Smolder, the short hair orange cream male, have the tooth he broke off biting the trap, extracted. So, that was already $52 I owed and I couldn't justify $35 more, not when I can bury her some place myself and give her some respect at least in death, not like that other kitty, who was smothered to death this morning then tossed into a dumpster.

When I returned the Oak St. womans' male, I asked her "Is that man going to be staying here tonight?" She said, "No." If she had said "yes", I would have driven off with the male.

I then went door to door in the complex. There are several more unfixed males and another owned female with a fresh litter of kittens. I hope to get all the cats there fixed by the end of the month. I"ve been there before to fix cats.

I have a barn home lined up for the two black and white males. I haven't gotten the one with the flea collar fixed yet, still hoping, sort of, probably not realistically, that he has a home. No lost cat fliers were tacked to telephone poles, however, along Clover Ridge. No lost cat ad matching him graced the LOST column of the classifieds. I don't know. I just keep hoping some of these cats have someone out there who cares.

The calico and her kittens have not been seen for three days now. I don't know what happened to them. I believe I am almost finished catching cats there, unless I find those four. There is still the big Siamese male, but he is also being fed someplace else. If I catch him, I'll go over to that house, and let them know he's getting fixed, but he will return. So there are at least five cats somewhere out there, unless they have died. There may be more.

Both tortis, the sisters, are extremely emaciated. One has the left eye ulceration and the other has diarrhea that has the look of giardia. But they're alive and they're negative on Felk and now they have a chance.

I need to find both of them homes and a home for the brothers Orange, as I call them. I have named the broken tooth male Smolder. And the big orange cream male? Twister is his name now. The flea collared black and white I christen Jack the Cat. And his brother, his mate, I hereby name Frap.

So, it's only the torti sisters who need names. Ideas?