Tiki, the torti kitten, Retests Negative for Felk

Tiki, the torti kitten, from the deceased woman's trailer, had tested positive for Feline Leukemia in the first week of December, right after I took in 12 cats, nine of them kittens, when the old woman who fed them had died.

The vet urged me to hold her two months and have her retested. Keni, Poppa's president, agreed to foster her for that time. Today, Keni called me, knowing I'd want to know. She retested Tiki today and she was negative. They let the test run an extra two minutes to be sure no dot would appear on the Felk side and none did. She was negative! I knew it! Yahoo!

Keni says she's an absolute sweetheart. She always was.

I took in seven cats from a rural Linn County location today. One of them was a big hairy Maine Coon looking sweetheart they said showed up a couple months ago, as a stray. Due to their isolated location, the cat had to have been dumped off. They thought the cat to be a female. But, when looking at the cat after arriving at the vet's office, we all agreed the cat looked like a male. I suggested, since the folks thought it to be a female, it must be an already neutered male and he was.

Of the other six, two were females and four were males. They're still here, with me, since they have no place to hold them overnight inside. I have a trap set out there tonight, because they've seen another cat in the field, that occasionally sneaks to the garage to try to eat something. They believe he also was dumped.


Councilman Olson called tonight. He had someone call him, wanting help trapping a feral cat, but I think the man wants me to actually take the cat. I told Dick he could have the man call.

I told Dick about the Neuterscooter clinics upcoming in Albany and also my fear they will not fill, due to the fact so many people in Albany will not pay a dime towards getting their own cat fixed.

I told Dick many people's attitudes these days is they don't want to sacrifice a thing. They want someone else to sacrifice but never them. He asked how many cats I took in last year and I told him close to a thousand and most of those were from Albany. I told him getting the Albany grant was very helpful and that paid for about a quarter of the cats fixed. He asked how much I spent on the cats taken in, with just getting them fixed and I said about $40,000 for the one thousand cats, which comes out to about $40 per cat.

I told him that doesn't touch the costs I swallow, in transport of cats and bait and flea and worm treatment, nor for the costs involved when I take cats in. I told him about the deceased woman's cats and how the family promised to help financially and in finding them homes but never did.

I told him about the Fischer Funeral Home fiasco, with them supposedly setting up a memorial fund and any donations received in memory of the old woman, who loved these cats, were to be sent to me, to offset my costs. But, when the family set up the memorial fund Fischer never got any contact info for me, as to where donations, if any came, would be sent. In that regard alone, the Fischer Funeral memorial fund was bogus and a scam.

I told him about how I finally called to see if any donations had come in and they said two had come in and I had to give them my address so they could send them to me. They never arrived so I called them again and this time they were rude and aggressive with me, accusing me of accusing them of stealing the donations. I had said "What else am I supposed to believe?" and finally hung up on them after their outrageous inflammatory remarks created evidence to me they were not very nice people.

I told him about how worn out I get, with so many calls from so many people who want me to help them for nothing, how hard it is for me, to stay in the black doing this, to stay emotionally sound, with so many demands on me, bearing so much abuse, seeing so much animal abuse and neglect, to have any free time and I also told him how much I miss Corvallis and dream of returning.

I told him of the $40,000 or so, I spent on cat fixes in 2008, about $27,000 of that came from Poppa Inc. funds. Another $10,000 came from the City of Albany grant and the rest was money from here and there, donations, my own money, etc. He doesn't know if the city can come up with funds again this year, but he said he would try. That would be wonderful.

Well anyhow. I do appreciate the support of the two city officials who believe I can solve any cat problem somehow, no matter how huge, on my own, which is really nice to have a couple of people believe in me like that. Those two people are councilman Olson and now Mayor of Albany Sharon Konopa. I think they think I can move mountains. I have solved some huge problems for the City of Albany, alone too, without support, and I am proud of those private accomplishments.