Five Gore Colony Cats Being Fixed Today

The new colony I'm trapping is out on Gore, between Albany and Lebanon. I went out this morning, and in ten minutes, trapped six. Two traps sprung with two cats in each. One was a kitten too young to be fixed at my vets. So five went up this morning.

After dropping them off, I was upset. At the vets', I saw two dogs. One very cute, a cross, with huge ears, but not much bigger than a dachsund although it didn't look anything like a dachsund. He was nervous but interested in the cats I was bringing in. For security, he'd stand with his front legs on the back of the bigger dog, a mix of some sort, but also with very large ears and a cropped tail. A man and a woman with permed fancy hair were talking. I said something about how cute the dogs were. They didn't respond, just kind of looked at me.

The man was shaking his head over how many cats I was bringing in, so I tried to say something about how I was trying to solve the overpopulation issue.

Later, the assistant asked them if they wanted the same for both dogs then---euthanasia and they said they did, then talked about whether they were picking up the remains and collars or not. I didn't catch much of their answers, because my mouth had dropped open in horror.

These two lovely dogs were going to be killed by these two apparently tin hearted people. In my mind I was thinking "heartless monsters". I couldn't even think at all after that. I sat out in my car wanting to just sob or scream at them or run my car into theirs over and over and over again.

I thought about how I might save them, buy them from them, grab them and run, find some rescue to take them. I should have done that. Instead I drove off and ended up at the BS colony, in tears.

I'm just too tired to save them.

Then I became obsessed with trapping the one remaining adult, who hangs out in the cat laden garage out there at the BS. She has three kittens, tame and five weeks old. She's the only adult left unfixed of some 80 cats.

But she wasn't in there. So I went out to the back barn, set up my drop trap and nabbed the final unfixed teen out there.

Then I went to BS overflow and nabbed two of three left unfixed there.

I'm down to two adults and three tame kittens. Out of about 85 cats. Today's effort was propelled by outrage and sadness, over this cold hearted world. But is this world really so cold hearted, when this couple and their neighbors feed all these strays? Sure, now they're all fixed and it took a lot of work for me to do it, but these folks just stoically feed them all. That's hardly cold hearted. They're not rich, none of them.

Perspective.

Five cats are up being fixed today. I'm taking five kittens up to Tigard to be fixed tomorrow. The kittens going will be one from the Gore colony, one from the Hate Thy Neighbor colony, one from BS overflow (Aces sister) and hopefully two from the Corvallis colony, if I get over there and catch them before the rains hit. So I better get going.