Battered

I am battered.

This morning, early, way too early for someone trying to catch up on sleep, for someone disturbed late last night by someone calling through the disabled/deaf relay call system, the phone rang. It was the mill. They caught the big boiler room male. I was very happy.

In the meantime, two adoptors backed out. In the meantime, someone called for whom I'd gotten two lovely male strays fixed, a couple years back. One went missing a week ago. The second never showed today.

I told them to go talk to neighbors immediately. I told them that when this happens often someone is trapping and killing cats, or a new dog that is vicious to cats has moved into the neighborhood, or someone has closed something up with them in it, or some kid is getting their kicks out of killing pets, something. But I don't think they've gone around to neighbors. It hurts to think of those two very close buddies, former strays, abandoned by area residents, dying violently.

One is a Lynx Point Siamese male, with long hair. The other has very short hair. He is gray, with a white chest and no tail. He has no tail because we had to have it removed. He'd had an accident and when he ran it would just whirl, because it was a dying tail. I called him the newly minted manx. They called him Bob.

Then I went down to the mill. I saw the Siamese mother in the driveway and tried to catch her for about an hour. Then I went to the office and got the big male, who is now up being neutered. The office personell told me the old woman wanted to talk to me again. I went over.

She was in a mood. First she'd claim the cats were starving, and should be hauled away and destroyed because they were starving. I tried to tell her they are not starving and that all of the cats who were here last spring, when I trapped, are still alive and well and looking good.

Then she claimed she wanted them taken away because they might kill the birds she feeds. She went on and on, in circles really, and I said I'd take care of it, finally, out of frustration, that eventually I'd find them all barn homes.

I wanted to save their lives. I wanted to save them from a bored woman who has power and sometimes likes to show she still has power if she feels what she wants done isn't getting done right now.

I tried to tell her I just removed seven more cats, so there aren't that many left there. But that didn't matter. Fact is, they rarely frequent her property at all. But that won't matter either.

In the end, she directed her secretary to write out a check for my time down there. I'd spent days and many trips back and forth in this last effort. I got no renumeration when I was there last spring.

She directed her secretary to make the check out for $50. I stared at this woman, a woman of great wealth, in disbelief. Then I became hurt. I told the secretary and the old woman, although I don't know if she could hear me, because she's hard of hearing, that this was a slap in the face in light of the money and time I've spent helping her out down there, when called. I wanted to tell her something much worse. I wanted to tell her where to shove that $50. Instead, I walked out. I told the secretary she could keep her precious $50.

Had I taken that pittance, for many days of work, with more to come here, in caring for and finding homes for mill cats, it would have cost my mind, my self-esteem and it would have eaten at me. It would have been like taking a penny and then kissing the feet of the rich person who tossed it my way.

I'd rather starve.

I was supposed to pay the FCCO for the cats from the mill. I told them the money was coming, because I thought it was.

So I drove back. I stopped at Heartland because I wanted to talk to them about the mill cats. She told me she donated about a hundred grand to Heartland once. So I figure she'll want them to do something next, although there are now only two unfixed cats down there, and I have plans to catch both. The rest are fixed now. I wanted to ask them, if she had animal control trap them, to call me if they came through Heartland.

Heartland would kill them as unadoptible. I can find them somewhere to live their lives, can't I? After all the hard work and long long hours I put in down there, for them now to be killed, what an outrage that would be, for the cats, for me.

One employee was outside and said she had to finish something and she'd be back out to talk to me. I waited 15 minutes and nobody came back out. Finally I left and drove the male up to be fixed. I stopped briefly and tried to find the two boys, probably dead now, then I came home again, to find yet another adoptor has backed out, wanting younger kittens than I have here and I just want to lay down my head and cry.