Tiny Tiki Tests Positive

Tiki, the little torti, is positive on Leukemia. I knew she would be. She would first have a swollen up belly, odd, then diarrhea. Her fur feels hollow, dry. She cries all the time. Her two sisters, from same litter, have disappeared.

The vet didn't want to euthanize her, I don't think, and yet I can't keep a Felk positive kitten here. They roll and wrestle with others, biting and licking them. She has runny poop and it could be spread that way, too, when others step in that poop in the litterbox and then groom.

The vet said I should cage her for two months and retest. She'll still be positive. And now, every single cat from that trailer colony must be tested. I've descended into financial and emotional hell. I was cursing Linn County when I heard she was positive, cursing the people here, wanting to leave, to run away again.

I took three kittens up to have tested, one from each of two litters at the trailer, at least I'm told there were two litters, but the old woman, before she died, didn't know who was a mother to who. Nobody seems to know whose mother is who there.

I trapped four adult females. I have two of them in hand. One, the muted calico, appeared later in the summer, long after the kittens were born. She won't be the carrier. The black tux female, likely candidate, but another neighbor said the torti kitten just appeared, and is not one from any of these mothers the old woman was feeding. She's also tame, while the others are skittish, which makes me think she was dumped separately, but one of the assholes in the area.

I also took up Tex, the black tux male kitten and he tested negative and Soda, one of two kittens from 34th street, dumped there, tested negative.

So I put Tex in the bathroom, since he is clear and Tiki is for now in a rabbit hutch, in the bedroom with the others from the trailer park, while Slurpy and Soda are running free in the house. I went to Coastal and bought 5 leukemia vaccinations, which cost me $50. I vaccinated Slurpy, Soda and Tex.

While I was at the vets with the three kittens I got tested, at $33 each, I had left a trap set at the trailer park, because there are still five kittens in the colony out there. One was caught, one of the female tabbies I already got fixed. She, the two adult females and the two tabby males here all must be tested. I wish they all could have been tested today. If any are negative, I'll seperate them and vaccinate them. The torti kitten's life will likely end on Monday. I want to both sob and slam my fist against the window just to even write those words.

Where will the money to do this come from? Well, I have some left on the gift card account. I don't know how much, but likely not enough to test everybody. This is why I am cursing tonight and angry, that I took this on, the responsibility of some asshole who didn't fix their cats then abandoned them. This is why tonight again I am fed up with this pseudo religious county and the conservative morals, which translate to zero real values prevalent here.

It didn't help that I ran into a woman there, at the vet's office, who had adopted two kittens from SafeHaven in early September, unfixed, and, she said, she was told by SafeHaven they should not be fixed until they are six months of age. She told me, "Can't they go into heat at four months?" "Yes," I said, "they sure can."

This further made me realize, that I am uselessly pummeling my head against a wall here. The biggest shelter in Linn county is not fixing kittens before adopting them out and thus contributing to the overpopulation problem. Not only this, they're handing out false information about spay/neuter to boot. Why should I bother?

And then along comes my big supporter, with a huge truckload of supplies for me---bags of dry cat food, boxes of wet cat food, cat litter and even towels and sheets for my bed (I had only one set of sheets).

It was unbelievable and the cat food will last me a long time. Melodie---THANK YOU! Her timing also was perfect, arriving just after I returned from the vet clinic with the bad news. Maybe it wasn't good timing for her, since I was downcast and full of hot anger, over the whole thing and sad and fed up. Having her arrive, (she's the woman who took the bottle babes home to foster, then kept all three), probably saved me. Thank you for that, too, Melodie.