Cats 903 and 904

Cat 903 I've taken in so far this year, the third teen female from the Overpopulation Photo child colony of three teen females, their mother, with abandonment issues, and one angry big black tux tom. All five are now fixed.
Here's mom. She was fixed yesterday, too. Cat number 904 taken in to be fixed this year. I'll get a better photo.
The two other teen girls plus the big black tux tom were fixed on Friday.

Mr. Angry, now becoming a nice guy already. Although he was just fixed Friday and returned last Saturday and this is just Tuesday, in trying to catch the mom and other teen girl, we caught the big black tux guy twice more, which is why I refer to him now as a trap whore.


Poppa's money will be gone sometime next year, is what I found out. Unless I can come up with grants and donations to extend and replenish it. I put a post on craigslist about Poppa and what Poppa has accomplished for the mid valley. I stated I was looking for 150 people willing to donate $20 per month or 300 people willing to donate $10 per month and I got absolutely no responses from that post. None. Nada.

I have three people willing to donate--the same three people who have been donating to Poppa already, when they can. Diane is from Corvallis. Midori is from Ridgefield, WA, and Jeanne, well she's from the east coast!

I'm not giving up.

The Overpopulation Poster Child colony is just one really good example of the good Poppa does this community. This poor couple has already taken in 12 dumped out cats from that neighborhood and they can barely afford to feed themselves. To have a mother with kittens show up almost made them cry. They could not find anybody to help them out, were given no useful information by the major shelters of the area as to what they could do.

Then they ran into me at Wilco. The next day, I trapped the first three. They were all fixed using Poppa funds. The couple could afford to donate nothing. These folks truely have nothing. Inside their place, an old TV, a couch, some chairs with broken parts, so you have to be careful when you sit in them, and that's about it.

The woman brought out a little box yesterday and gave it to me. Inside were a about ten quarters. She said she'd been saving for an emergency and wanted me to take them. Can you believe that? The poor feeding the strays. Without apology, without reservations, without complaint. Like Jesus would.

So Poppa funds helped them and these funds are crucial to take care of situations exactly like this. The cats were helped and so were these people.

The other recent situations: 34th street. I've been back to the former boondoggies apartment complex many times. This couple, formerly homeless, now gainfully employed, got housing. When they moved in, they found a tame abandoned mother with three teen girls living under their complex. They got my number through the City Council woman, Sharon Konopa, who helped them out of homelessness, when the City of Albany bulldozed homeless Camp Boondoggle.

I trapped all four cats. The mother, after she was spayed, got a home. Poppy, the torti, is still here over a year later, never got a home. Well, I guess you could say she's got a home here, and she does, until, if ever, she is adopted. The other two girls I returned. One was eventually adopted by a neighbor while the fourth lives now inside their place, happy, healthy and looking good.

Then, more strays showed up or were abandoned there. An orange male, then three more kittens they found. I got those four fixed, along with helping them out with a sick male that showed up there. He had stomatitis, a mouth full of overgrown tissue. The usual treatment is cortisone injections for life and pulling all the teeth. They at that time were floating from job to job, and doing seasonal work and could not pay for the cortisone injections.

So we got experimental. Some cats with stomatitis benefit from three weeks on zithromax. Dr. Anderson was willing to try since he was treating other patients with stomatitis, who never seemed to live long, on monthly cortisone injections, and he was curious to see if it would work. Well, the cat is still doing just fine, two years later, with no stomatitis, after three weeks on zithro. Can you believe that?

He doesn't get great food either, nor adequate parasite treatment. Finally they again have wormed all the cats and treated them for fleas.

So, when I heard they had a mother cat and two kittens dumped off I trapped all three. I returned the mom after spay last week, but the two kittens, both long haired brown tabby beauties, about three and a half months old, are still here. They had severe URI's. I didn't catch it before they were fixed, or I would have held off on their spay and neuter. The little boy has bloody drainage out his nose. They're gorgeous kittens, and have tamed quickly. But they are still in my bathroom undergoing antibiotic treatment and nutritional supplements.

The mother cat was in heat at spay. I also took in a stray male they were feeding. Another disaster of population explosion averted thanks to Poppa funds.

Also on 34th street, I've taken in 8 of ten cats roaming another complex. They're in danger, since the owner of the complex doesn't want them there. But at least now most are fixed. Of the 8, five were females including a beautiful torbi kitten I sure didn't want to return. But I have so many here already.

And there's that recent trailer park situation. I've trapped 12 of the 16 cats there an old woman feeds. Four of the five adults I took in were females. Three of the seven kittens I took in were females. The woman's son did finally donate a hundred bucks to Countryside which I immediately used to pay for some of the 34th street cat fixes. $100 donation covers the cost of fixing two females or three male kittens.

On Tudor, two residents were feeding strays and everybody on the street wanted them fixed. At one house, I trapped and took in three male kittens and their mom. At the other house, I trapped six adults to be fixed. Three of them were females who had had multiple litters. There are two more cats in the area I know of whom I need to trap and get in, one a female, the other a male.

Poppa helps this community and its people. Of course, Poppa Inc.'s funds help cats immensely by humanely reducing the population in this area. How to keep the funds coming for such an extremely important nonprofit?