Overdone. Extreme Bullshit.

Well, it is my birthday. I celebrated by trapping 15 cats. Update: Make that 18. I'm supposed to pick up five, in addition, in the morning, but now I can't get ahold of them. Their phone--busy all day.

I went first to the desperate woman colony in Jefferson and pretty much picked up the "feral" mom. Then I set traps for the three teens, mediated a neighborhood myth, that a man down the street had a million unfixed cats. In fact, his are all fixed and well cared for.

This is a fifty something woman living with elderly parents. Their house is cool. The old woman collects things. Like she has a dozen or more stuffed Kermit the Frogs. She has a Christmas tree collection, an elephant figurine collection, you name and she collects it.

The desperate woman is truly desperate. She was in a car wreck that nearly killed her a few years back. Before that, she was in an abusive marraige and got beat up routinely. Now she has a boyfriend who isn't very nice, she says, and will only come over at night, making her "feel like a whore". I said, "well then don't see him." She went over to somewhere he hangs out to ask if they wanted to get their cats fixed and came back sobbing and mad both. She said the man yelled at her for spending her money feeding cats and he was just going to get a skinner down, from somewhere, to catch the cats and skin them alive. She said he said that only to make her cry, and it worked. How mean.

Anyhow, she told me about lots of skinny kittens at the pink house. I knew the pink house. When Marta the Mormon still worked at the paper office, she wanted help catching cats at the pink house. So I went with her, in her car, and we caught a few, for a clinic. That was a long time ago.

So I cruised by again. Looked exactly the same. Lots of cars parked out front. House in disrepair. Cats around it. It looked exactly the same as it looked years ago.

I knocked. A woman's voice yelled from somewhere inside "Come on in."

I cautiously pushed open the door. I saw no one in the large kitchen and said "Hello?"

"Well, I can't see you, I'm in here," the voice said again. I replied "You don't even know me."

"That's ok," came the jovial reply, "this is the cat house and I bet you're here about cats."

I thought to myself "that's pretty good."

She was propped in a chair in the corner by the window. The area was crammed with stuff falling off of stuff. Old pop and beer bottles cascaded here and there. One of the Lord of the Rings movies was running on the TV. Gandalf was making a speech at Frodo's party. "I loved those books," I said.

She began chatting like we were old friends. In fact, we were complete strangers. I told her I was indeed here about the cats, that a desperate woman who had cats needing fixed said she needed some fixed, too, and so I came by.

I knew she was a bullshitter from the moment I sat down. She started in about the cats, that the deputies had been there two months back, because she got reported as a cat house and they laughed and liked the cats and adopted three, then came back the next day and strung blinking red lights all around the eaves of the house and told her, "now the neighbors can talk about the cat house even more." She said they were very cool red blinking lights, but she took them down.

Well, she can't even stand long, due to being quite overweight and arthritis. Taking down lights strung at the eaves, probably not something she would undertake. But I said nothing.

I pressed on. "So, how many cats do you have now? I was here before getting cats fixed. I figured you'd have them all fixed by now." I was trying to play on her know it all attitude about cats.

She diverted. "You were here? When? I don't remember you. And you took some to be fixed? Well that must have been from across the street. They had a zillion and they just didn't take care of them."

My mind skipped to the hungry skinny kittens I'd passed on her own front porch, some with runny eyes and noses.

"So how many of yours are fixed?" I went on, undeterred.

"Oh, I got appointments for three of them next week up at the Jefferson clinic, the three little ones." I didn't believe her, but said nothing.

"I got 13 in all and all but two are fixed," she said, straight faced. "My cats have won awards you know." She nodded importantly. "And I didn't have to put em in no show or nothing. Nope. The award people were just driving by and saw em and came in and told me how wonderful they were and wrote me up an award on the spot."

I didn't even blink. "That's wonderful," I said, "doesn't get any better than that!"

"I got two black bobcats coming in the morning. They must weigh 50 pounds each and they're pure black."

"Black bobcats, eh? I'd like to trap them, just to have a look at a black city bobcat," I went on, getting into the bullshitting spirit and running with it. "I bet my vet would love to have a look at a pure black bobcat too."

"They got the tufts, the hairy tufts and they growl and they only come really really early morning, like at 4:30 and they ate a couple of cats already."

"I know what you mean and I want to catch them bobcats, just out my own curiousity now," I said, "but right now, I got to deal with getting my quota filled of house cats, for the clinic tomorrow and the clinic for tomorrow, won't do bobcats, sorry to say."

"Now, how many may I help you get fixed tomorrow, because I got spaces I just cant' waste, you know?"

"Oh I know. Let's go see em." Out to the front porch we went. She wanted to show me what happens when she rattles the front doorknob from the inside. The cats get excited and swarm, hoping for food. She filled an old tin can with cat food and we went out. We were swarmed. At least four black cats, most young, a pregnant Siamese she first claimed to be fixed, then that she was nursing newborns under the house, a brown tabby male, some brown tabby kittens, and a gray tabby male, all just starved.

I said "Let me get my traps." At that point, thankfully, the husband walked up. He's Hispanic and speaks no English. They began fighting in Spanish. Then he looked at me and waved over all the cats and said "Todos". That I understood. I now had the edge. He was on my side. So she said "Take em all in." I knew none were fixed. I grabbed six. I only had room for that number. The two adult males and the pregnant Siamese disappeared. I told her I'd be back tomorrow, to get the rest. This time, the pink house, the cat house bullshitter, needs to cut the bull and fix the cats.

So I got six from there, four all blacks and two little tabby teens. I got the mom and two of the three kittens, plus a feral male, a tame black and two Flamepoint tame males from the desperate woman colony. And I trapped two so far down at the Columbus colony. 15 cats.

I just caught two more down off Columbus, bringing my total today, my birthday, to 17 cats. Taking 17 cats out of the reproduction game was a fitting way for a obsessive spayaholic cat trapper to spend her birthday. My only regret is that I didn't catch more.