A Trap Too Small

These are all photos of Vision, my own cat, the last of the river cats, up today at the vet getting a haircut and a check up.



After dropping off three more Albany cats at the vet today, to be fixed, I stopped by the street off Queen I've been working on, to return a woman's carrier. I spotted the long hair white male I'd been told about, and he looked hungry. I had only a very small trap along and didn't think he'd fit in it. But I set it and tried. It snapped down on his haunches, when it sprung and he vamoosed out and gone. A trap too small.

I then when in through the closed chain link fence, to try to talk to the woman whose four adult females I've taken in. She has that ten year old female, who just gave birth to three more and she has three 8 week old sick kittens. There was no food to be seen and they were all hungry. I went back to my car and got food and put a lot in their bowls. Two of the adults immediately broke out into loud purrs. She did not answer my knocks, so I left.

There are two houses within two blocks with unfixed cats. The one is the man who became angry at me for even suggesting I could get the kittens fixed too. And one block up, many cats lay in the yard beside another residence. I left a note and my card, but have received no response.

I was also called by a woman who had found a tiny kitten. I couldn't take in the kitten, but she told me about her neighbors, an older couple feeding strays who also have unfixed house pets. This is not far from the Front Street Felines location either, another area over run in unfixed cats. So she gave them my number, but they never called, so I called them and left a message but they never returned my call.

A Lebanon woman had called yesterday. She is an animal lover, that's for sure, and was very worried about a cat in Albany, unfixed, whose owners declared if she wasn't fixed they would dump her in the country.

So, she called them up, after calling me, to get permission to go inside their Albany house and get the female. They were, for some reason, in Eugene, but they gave her permission and the cat is being fixed. She also told me about a female roaming a complex in Lebanon who has had a lot of litters and a friend of hers, who hates cats, wants to kill her, but not if she's fixed. She failed at catching her yesterday, but she tried and will try again.

The second orange brother from the two-to-three job woman was in their house when I returned the first orange male and the little teen torti last night, after they were spayed. So, she lured him into a carrier and he's being fixed.

Then, the folks at the Albany complex, where the disabled dialysis woman cares for the abandonees there, rounded up yet another unfixed female. This is the third from that complex.

I also took in one of my own cats today--Old Vision, who needs a haircut. She is so overgrown and lately, twice now, has taken to urinating and defecating in a cat food bowl. Yes, it is a new smellier type of food someone gave me, Eukanaba or something, that seems to make some cats want to use it for a litterbox. It's all gone now. Most of my cats loved the food, but some, for some unknown reason, wanted to poop on it.

Vision will be shaved. Her mouth will be checked. Her rabies shot updated and her abdomen palpitated for any tumors. Her claws will be trimmed, too and her ears cleaned. Vision is a very old river cat from Corvallis, the daughter of Captain Courageous and only surviving member of my river cat family.

I first trapped Vision for spay down below Mater Engineering back in 97 or 98. I returned her to the river but when the river project happened, and so many cats were dying as a result, I determined to retrap her and save her. She would play nights on their bulldozers. I finally "rented" a live mouse from Petco to get the job done, securing the mouse in a wire cage behind the trap. Using this tactic, I retrapped her in five minutes.

I then returned the mouse to Petco for a full refund. I told them I was dissatisfied with the mouse, that he wasn't the mouse I'd thought he was. They happily, but with sly looks and rolling eyes, refunded my money.

Poor little guy. Probably was bought as snake food later.

Vision then went to a self-proclaimed rescuer in St. Helens. Her brother lived behind me. She had taken in many ferals for high level FCCO volunteers in the Portland area, so she came highly recommended. Her brother took Vision up. She promised to keep Vision in a large 12x16 foot cage on her porch, until I could come for her. I had just moved into a duplex in Corvallis, after living homeless. My neck was failing from the psyche ward beating. But, I later learned, instead of keeping her in the porch habitat, she released her immediately into her large feral area.

For a year then, I went to St. Helens once a month to clean for that woman and to try to find and catch Vision. She was no legitimate rescuer. She was a hoarder and I could not believe those FCCO volunteer people would place ferals there. There was not a place you could step on her one acre of fenced property that was not feces piled and not just the volume of feces, it was all filled with worms. Vile. HOrrible. I could not believe I had made such a mistake. I had gone on the word of others.

She had a feral containment area, of low wire, and various bed houses, all hooked to a filthy old trailer. You had to stoop to be inside it and every litterbox was overloaded in cat poop and cat poop all over the ground, alive with roundworms, and even inside the filthy housing boxes. I could not find Vision in that large acreage for an entire year of travelling up once a month to clean her filthy yard and trailer. she had 14 or so big dogs too. She could not stop taking in more. She would pull out a shoebox filled with pot when I'd be there and begin smoking pot, which is one reason she never got anything done on the weekends.

I began talking to a former Navy three star colonel about it, who had begun helping animals once he retired and had worked as a cruelty investigator for a few years before he began to trap cats for spay/neuter. We were set to turn her in. But he confided the plans to an FCCO volunteer, one of the big ones, he trusted in Portland. When he told me that, I freaked, because I knew she would not hold her tongue. I rushed to St. Helens, to try one last time to find Vision. While I was out in the filth with my net, the woman came out on her trailer porch screaming at me. She'd just gotten the call from the rat-me-outter, who told her I was turning her in as a hoarder, and ordered me off her property. At that moment I caught a glimpse of Vision out of the corner of my eye, was able to turn and net her. Within two minutes, I had her and we were driving away. I looked back, at the other cats there, and felt extremely sad that I had no place I could take them.

The support by some FCCO high up Portland volunteers of a hoarder whose animals were kept in filthy conditions astonished me. What were they thinking?

She said they would use emotional stuff that she couldn't resist about ferals needing homes so she would take them. I don't know if that happened or not. They would promise to help her clean up and stuff, but never would, she said. I said "Why don't you just say 'no'?" She said because she knew they'd be killed otherwise, and the feelings of the volunteers who placed cats there, I guess, was that they were better off in filth than dead.

I beg to differ. If you're going to place cats with someone with that many, you have to check it out, and help maintain the rescue, at least until you move them somewhere else.

Anyhow, she was a very kind woman, but a woman who couldn't even see the filth, thought it was normal to live that way.

I brought Vision home. It had taken me a year to get her back. Vision is an old cat now. She adored my Moby whom we lost here a few months ago, whom we all still badly miss. She's funny, and still very feral. She's my baby. She's also got very very long hair which mats after time, and I can't give her a shave by myself. So she's going under today and will be checked out too while they're at it and oh how I hope she's not going to have lumps or something.

I've lost so many this year. My dear Hopi and Moby. River cat Scully, whom I loved so, too. And Old Butterscotch. We lost Bart and some kittens. It's just been tough the last few months on everybody here. I know how Electra, Hopi's best friend, is still having a tough time without Hopi, as I am.

Miss Daisy and Vision miss Moby grandly, as do Brambles, Shady and Mooki. Mobi was my official greeter for the fosters. He just loved every kitten and cat I brought in, even for overnight. He loved other cats so much. Moby went easily, washed in the dementia of electrolyte imbalance brought on by kidney failure.

Hopi's death was horrible. She was filled with cancer. The regrets are large in my mind, at night sometimes, with Hopi, wishing so much my beloved Hopi was still with me, that I'd been there with her when she died. She had exploratory surgery that day. The X-ray showed nothing, but the vet felt a lump.

When I got the call that the tumor involved many organs, including her large and small intestine, her kidneys and liver, and because I knew she was so frightened of everything, and of the unknown, I didn't want her to have to wake up and be scared anymore, so I told them to give her the injection and I had no time to get up there. I regret that. I should have been with her. It makes me cry still.

I know Vision's time left is short, due to her age. I know Electra won't be with me much longer either. Dex, too, is an older cat now.