Frustrations at the Junkyard

UPDATE: Woohoo! The cat I caught is the mom. She's lactating. I knew it was. I'd seen the cat farther up the dirt road, but intercepted her return to the junked car with a live trap, because she was starving. I've seen that cat hunting the ditch along highway 34 for almost a year, periodically. Woohooo. I've got a mother to go with four newborns. Yahoo. I told the tech, when she called to tell me she's lactating "Gawd, I love you. I can sleep again!" Woohoooooooohooooo!

I could not come up with a cat to trap or take in today yesterday for the life of me. A colony I'd been contacted about, by a family member on Spicer, was prime candidate number one. The caretaker of an Albany colony that "failed to trap" for the FCCO clinic, because it is by the canal and ducks and ducklings kept getting in the traps, also failed to respond.

What to do? I had one lined up from the Felony Flats district of Albany. The Front street Felines cat owner, with five females left to get in, said she was ill with the flu and didn't want to catch anymore of hers for a few days.

A wrecking yard had called a few days ago, saying they found kittens in the floor of a junked car. I called them and they said I could go out and set traps. They said there were several cats out there and that the nightwatchman would open the gate for me.

I went out.

I found the kittens in the hot car, panting, open mouth breathing. I wasn't sure what to do. I should have let nature take its course. Should have.

Instead I took them to my car and fed them the little KMR I had with me and water. They eagerly ate. Their eyes aren't even open yet. I got varying descriptions of the mother. She hadn't been seen for a day. This would be abnormal with kittens so very young. She wouldn't want to be far from them. But, nobody was feeding that young mother and for her to try to subsist, in scorching heat, on her own, with four kittens to feed--I felt for her. I decided the liklihood that she had abandoned them, or that something had happened to her, was very high.

I took the kittens and put them in a carrier behind a set trap. For three more hours I was on the property and saw nothing of her. The watchman was drinking and surly by this time. He would at one point say he'd seen lots of cats behind his RV, then would say he hadn't seen any cats. He then told me he thinks cats are garbage anyway.

Out on a dirt road, leading to the wrecking yard, I spotted a gray tabby and white. I set a trap and just after dark, caught her. Is she the mom? Hell if I know. I showed her to the nightwatchman and he said it wasn't the mother, but that she was far prettier than the mother of the kittens, but then said he'd only seen her running off. By this time, I figured he didn't have any idea what the mother looked like and may have never seen her.

At 10:30, I finally left, leaving a trap set within the fenced gated property. He said he was up by 6:30 a.m. every morning and would call me after checking the trap by 7:00 a.m. It's almost 7:30 a.m. and no call.

It is extremely frustrating. And now I might be stuck with four bottle babies and I don't have the time for that.

The good thing is the Heatherdale old couple caught that final brown tabby this morning, so I picked her up on the way to the vet. I took three cats and did finally go retrieve my trap in Turner, after dropping off the three cats.

I then checked on the HTN mother, who was suppsed to be spayed, with the four male kittens. They're looking good. The boys, close to two weeks old, are fat and happy. I don't know if the fifth kitten from her, the torti who went to SafeHaven, survived the weekend or not.

I am totally exhausted and should have left these four kittens in that car. I know they would have died. I was told she's been around there over a year, the mother. No one feeds her. She has to hunt for herself. So none of her litters have ever survived. I suppose she just leaves them, knowing she can't even feed herself and couldn't possibly feed kittens, too. I mean, how could she?