I Finally Said No

Someone was wanting to contact me, advertising on craigslist they were looking for me. Someone gave this person my contact info. They want a certain cat trapped that they've been feeding, for a couple of years, because they're moving. At first I was going to do it. Then it turns out there are lots of other cats she's been feeding and she's not taking them. She thinks they might be owned but she doesn't know. Then it turns out there was a cat living under the house they bought and they made the old owners hire someone to "get rid of the cat" by getting it out from the under the house and sealing the vents. I asked what was going to happen to that cat and I guess it was going to get dumped on a Scio farm. They apparently didn't know if it might be owned by someone else.

This made me change my mind about offering up my time and help for free to her. I give myself away too much. Getting involved in a situation where someone is feeding cats and only taking one or two with them, when they move, that's too sad for me, and I don't get involved in that kind of thing, having a kind heart, and unable to handle taking in anymore cats.

I haven't had an adoption now in a long time again.

When I learned she has kids, I wondered why they couldn't catch that cat. I told her they could borrow a trap from SafeHaven or rent one from a feed store and do the job themselves, that I don't do these sorts of favors for people I don't even know. Not without being compensated.

I'm not the slave of the world. I need to start saying no to people who are fully capable of doing something themselves, but instead want me to do it for them for nothing. So I finally said no to this person, along with telling her where to rent a trap and how to selectively trap for one specific cat.

That's all I'm going to do. People can do a lot of things for themselves. Or they can pay me to do it. But asking a stranger to do something for them, that isn't even part of my mission, well, I need to stand up for myself. There's nobody over here helping me with my projects or with anything else in return. I need to set some limits with people around here.

That old couple, feeding neighborhood strays, all I did with them, was show them how to set and bait traps and they did the trapping and the man can barely hear or see. People might be surprised what they can accomplish themselves. They really might surprise themselves.