Goodbye Jiggles, Maryann and Old Sal

Three cats here got homes today--Maryann, Old Sal and Jiggles. I am kind of choked up over the day's events. Because also today, one of the three little kittens from Hate Thy Neighbor died--the torti. She had showed up in the old car first, sleeping next to males and older kittens, either forsaking her mother, or abandoned by her because she was so sick. She fought for life out there for two weeks before I grabbed her and asked the colony caretaker to keep her warm inside the garage, but he turned her back outside. I grabbed her along with her two siblings a few days ago.

They were all desperately ill and starving. Kittens can't compete for scarce food with 30 adult cats.

Today, thanks to a donation, I took them all to the vet. Her body temp was only 97, meaning she was shutting down in preparation for death. She was euthanized. It was very sad.

The other two siblings have normal temps but are still fighting pneumonia and herpes conjunctivitis. I am giving sub cu fluids twice daily, antibiotics, anti virals, steaming them and force feeding them, although for two days now, those two have taken up eating on their own. When that started, I wanted to jump for joy and I had so hoped the torti kitten would follow suit, but she never did.

I am also now petting and handling the adult feral orange and white male whose eye was removed two days ago. He wants loved, is the thing, so he's getting it, no matter what comes of it.

Jiggles was born to an abandoned mother cat, Hope, in downtown Albany, on the porch of a run down tenant house. I met Jiggles when I picked up her mother for spay after being contacted about the situation by a neighbor. I handed Jiggles, Teddy and Scuffy over to the good neighbor, who said she would find them homes. Instead she gave them to a tenant in the tenant house who said she would find them homes. They were turned back outside.

Hope, their mother, was also. Weeks after her spayed, I was called by the good neighbor who said Hope had sustained a horrific injury and an eye was hanging from its socket. She and her kittens were inside the empty run down single tenant house, behind the tenant boarding house. This is the place where the tenant lived who abandoned her.

I went over. Hope remembered me from the spay and saw me through the window. I believe she was waiting for me and me alone, because she trusted me. She not only came out of the house through the foundation hole, but also brought me her kittens. A kind Corvallis woman took over Hope and got her into a vet there, paying for her care, and then finding her a foster home after her eye was removed. Teddy, Jiggles and Scruffy came here.

Scruffy was adopted out almost immediately despite the fact all three kittens broke in ringworm, and infected other kittens here. The adoptors didn't care.

Jiggles has been here ever since, receiving baths three times a week, in anti fungal shampoo and loving life. She's a joy. And now this little nowhere girl, unwanted by seemingly everyone, and yet somehow noticed, in the chaos of this huge world, has a home.

Maybe there is a big eye, with a weakness for strays, watching over this world afterall. I believe this.

I know we humans think if there's a god only we could be important to a god. But are we? Maybe this god loves kittens very much and uses humans, who are willing, as tools to save the strays.

Old Sal is an older gray tabby male who wandered up my driveway, when I lived at the shack in Corvallis, starving and previously neutered. I looked out my window and saw him under my car. I went out to coax him to me and he ran off so I just trapped him, which was easy.

I posted fliers, ran found ads, put a notice at the humane society, in hopes he was just lost. Well, no action on that, so he stayed with me, settled in and became much loved and cherished. Now he has a home of his own.

Three young women, in college in Eugene, but also with a backup plan for where he will go, even for school breaks or should one of them drop out, which is what I ask of students adopting cats. They are very nice young people, if my opinion counts on that.

Maryann comes from the BS situation, where there once lived over 80 unfixed cats. Not so anymore. Not after I met that colony and those cats met my net and my traps. I wanted to find as many of the kittens as I could better options. Maryann is one of those kittens. Now she too has a home.

I will miss these cats. It's not like I don't bond with each one. I'm not crying right now, but I'm on the verge and when I'm worn out days' end and the lights are out, I will be sobbing. In my worn out daze, I will reach to put an arm around Old Sal then wonder, briefly, why he is not settling in clumsily next to me.

It hurts me, but I know they must go because there are so many out there in need. Doesn't stop me from missing each and every one of them. I love them all.