Reflections on Unlikely Hope

Last night's exotic adventure in a troubled Albany neighborhood was frightening. The first time I met last night's combatants, three days ago, another resident of the neighborhood, for whom I'd taken in two cats to be fixed, was with me. She had wanted to go door to door to find unfixed cats. So we did.

I met her through a friend of hers living in a low income complex not that far away. She had three unfixed kittens and two unfixed adults. I met her through calling free kitten ads. I got her kittens fixed and the adults and she was, in the meantime, in the process of being evicted. She took her adult cats and one kitten to a brother and I do not know what happened to the other two, nor where she ended up.

Before she disappeared, however, she wanted me to help this woman, with her two unfixed cats. I got their male fixed, then the female kitten. Three days ago, she told me that two days before that the female kitten vanished. In that neighborhood, that poor little girl kitten likely did not meet a kind end.

So we went door to door. She seemed to know the older woman who went off on me last night prior.

She told me about her uncle or father's pig farm. I had given her an information sheet on ways to get cats fixed throughout Oregon, mainly for her brother, who feeds four cats in Springfield or Eugene, somewhere down that way. I gave her two copies of the sheet, one for herself and one to give him. I guess she also gave a copy to her father or uncle, who owns what she described as a notorious pig farm NE of Salem.

She said there are cats there and that her family isn't very nice. She said one meth head uncle feeds the kittens to the pigs, that she's tried to pull some out away from the hogs, but that they are torn to bits, eaten alive. I guess the good uncle or her father, not sure which, has decided the cats should be fixed instead of feeding the kittens to the pigs. So, they're taking them to an FCCO clinic.

That is unbelievable, that people who behave that badly towards animals would make that sort of change. Almost like hope.

I asked why the pig farm had such a bad reputation, outside of feeding live kittens to pigs which is quite bad enough.

She said, "Well, it's been in the news." My mind began fast track reviewing files, so to speak. 'Pig farm. News. Bad.' were the search terms. The number one result listed in my brain's memory involved an aerial view, from a news helicoptor, of a McMinnville pig farm and blue barrels, crime tape and some brush, cops swarming the place. "Oh," I said, "that pig farm. The cut up body in the barrel pig farm."

"You got it," she said. Her uncle is a meth man. She said it was all over an 8-ball, like I was supposed to know drug terms like they're everyday common. I pretended to know.

I guess the kid got murdered for stealing an 8 ball of meth from dealers.

Somebody the one uncle was involved with, in the meth trade, asked a favor of him. They needed a body fed to the pigs. Her uncle agreed and picked up the barrel containing the body and transported it to the pig farm. But, this woman told me, he took the lid off and peaked in at the body, cut into pieces to fit into the barrel.

She then gave an explanation. "Our family is racist," she said, "and he was sure the body was a Mexican and he had no problem feeding a Mexican's body parts to the pigs. But when he looked in, he saw it was the body of white kid, so he put the lid back on and rolled the barrel into the brush."

Apparently somebody in jail began yapping their mouth about the murder and who took the body. That's how come the cops swarmed the pig farm and found the body in the barrel. I asked if her uncle was in jail and she said he wasn't, cause he cut a deal and named all the names of the big players and then got to walk.

Kittens are still being fed alive to pigs up there, she said. You better think twice about eating anything made of pig, she said. But she'd given her uncle who owns the farm, not the meth head one but another one, the paper about ways to get cats fixed, and urged him to do it, and she says he is going to.

So just maybe, things will change for the cats at the pig farm, where the body in the barrel was found in the briars. Maybe change is possible in the deepest darkest hearts.

Maybe...maybe......

This story also makes a very provacative arguement for a vegetarian diet.