Unbelievable

The Lebanon people KATA referred me to are unbelievable. Talk about liars. They have had two of my traps since Friday morning, when I returned three cats I trapped there on Wednesday night. The daughter who is like late teens or early twenties, is there all the time, because she doesn't work.

There is absolutely no reason she couldn't trap those cats given her excessive free time. She said she would set the trap right away Friday morning. I actually thought she would. I showed her how, even how to keep the wind from blowing the paper. I tossed a few rocks inside on the paper to show her how.

And then I never heard from them. Finally Sunday I left two messages. Sunday evening the mother finally returned the message and said she'd been trying all day to catch those cats without any luck and was so tired she was going to bed. I tried to call her back. No answer.

With the appointments tomorrow and no answer when I tried to call today, to see if they had any, I finally went over tonight. But, I had a flat tire on the way.

My tires are bad and one has a slow leak. I had to stop and put air into it, but that's just a very temporary fix.

So I finally got on the way again. I got over there and it was like the mother was trying to avoid me. She finally came out and said she'd tried all day Sunday. I'm no dumbshit. I can see when a trap hasn't even been moved. Those rocks I tossed onto the paper, last Friday, when showing the daughter how to trap, still there, no bait in the back, same paper, not messed up at all. She just continued lying to me, straight faced as hell. It was almost comical. She hadn't touched that trap.

I asked her to go get my other trap. I'd had the daughter put the other one inside, on Friday, not wanting them stolen. Took them a long time to find it. In the meantime, one of the unfixed cats showed up and I set up the drop trap and sat in my car for an hour. Every time the cats would go under it to eat, the daughter would rush to the patio glass door to watch, spooking the cats away. This happened over and over, until I finally went and asked her to pull the curtain.

Twenty minutes later she came and said her dad wanted me to pack it up for the night, they were going to bed. They'd sat in there watching TV, while I tried to trap the cats they never even tried to trap. That is more than pathetic.

The daughter said "You didn't even call us to tell us you were coming and you should come at a decent hour." She seemed outraged. This didn't set well with me, after all their lies, about spending all day Sunday trying to catch the cats, when that trap hadn't been moved from the spot where I left it Friday morning.

I said, "I did call you. You don't answer your phone. And that trap, you haven't set it at all, or even tried to catch them."

She then told me how god awful rude I am and when I come back, it better be during the day, not at night. I looked at her increduously. Her mother had told me the cats only come at night, which would make it kind of tough to catch them in the middle of the day. I know she likes to sleep in, before her busy day of doing absolutely nothing or hanging with her friends and boy, how awful I might inconvenience her.

I said "You might be confusing me with a slave. I'm a volunteer." She again looked at me increduously, like a slave owner might if their slave talks back to them, and again told me how rude I was.

And then I said "I'm not coming back. Why would I? You folks have the money to get these cats fixed and you could have trapped them yourself." This seemed to shock her, like how dare I not serve them with free labor, or consider that they should do any part of the work or share the cost.

"Well then, we'll just get somebody else," she said, with attitude.

My mind ran over, in an instant, the faces of who that "somebody else" might be. Would it be Vicki, of KATA, who rises at 5:00 a.m. to go to her regular job, then does cat stuff afterwards. Would they try to get her to do work for free these lazy liars could do themselves and pay for themselves? Every damn one of them has a cell phone and car. They're not hurting that I can tell for anything. I wanted to vomit to think of them demanding help, these able bodied adults, from the likes of Vicki of KATA. Sure, we've had our differences, but one thing is not in contention: she works her ass off to help cats. The thought of these folks calling her up just fired my blood.

Or would it be Sharon they'd try to bamboozle, who works hard long hours in a stressful county job, and helps cats on the side, or Lila, who doesn't have much herself and way too many rescued cats. Which one of these ordinary heros will these sit on your butters make demands on next?

They have no clue, no respect, no character, no nothing.

Now I understand why they never returned calls. Because they were not actually using those traps, or even trying. Man, they can lie.

I picked up stuff, grumbling to myself about losers, about entitlement mentality, about how dare they call me rude when they're sitting on their asses watching TV instead of helping solve a problem they created, about how rude it is to just outright lie and to take my traps and not use them, to make such demands on me, to treat me like a slave.

And then I tripped in the netting of my own drop trap and the live trap I was trying to pull out, went flying and I really felt like a person who got involved trying to help people who are just basically not very nice. I picked myself up, retrieved my traps and left in my car with the deflating tire and came home.

My anger quickly turned to hysterical giggling, because it is funny to think about them lying like that.

The mother said the daughter never even tried to trap because she's lazy, then went on to tell me how hard she herself tried to trap on Sunday, and I'm staring at the trap in exactly the place I left it Friday, with the paper in it just like I left it and thinking, 'man, she is one practised liar.'

Then, when the daughter got all outraged over me telling her they don't answer their phone, that I had been trying to call them, because afterall, they have had my traps four days and said they'd have two cats for me today, she claimed she tried to trap but just kept catching the same cats.

I said, "Your mother already told me you didn't touch the trap so you can quit telling me you did right now. Besides, nobody touched the trap. It's exactly as I left it." This only made her really mad and she told me again how rude I am. I think she told me that at least three times.

I couldn't stop laughing on the way home. Like mother like daughter.