Requests to Take in Cats Skyrocketing

It is dismal to get so many requests to take in cats every week. I don't take in cats and I state that clearly both on my petfinder site and on my phone message. That does nothing to stop the requests. It's so hard to get so many.

I now have three Jefferson situations, all of whom wanted me to take in the cats. The Desperate Woman colony has those three teens, not that wild either, whom her elderly mom wants gone. The Desperate Woman herself understood how I just could take in more and took them back, even that last male the elderly mother demanded "be put in a pen and taken away". The daughter who is near my age, says she will try to tame them and find them homes and hide the fact she is feeding them, from her mother, in the meantime.

I would love to have taken in some of those Pink House cats, so underfed and underloved, but the burden of caring for so many cats is overwhelming. I got an e-mail from a woman moving who wanted me to take in her cat too. The Columbus colony folks wanted me to relocate at least half of the 8 they feed. They backed off when I told them just how many I already have and how difficult it is to find even a tame kitten a home right now.

A Corvallis woman e-mailed wanting me to take in an undesignated number of cats, saying someone told her I take in cats and that these "just showed up". I was not that nice in my response to her, telling her, after she offered a couple bags of food, to take them all in, just how much expense is involved in "taking in a bunch of cats". These expenses including getting them fixed, testing at least a couple, flea and worm treating them, vaccinating them, treating them for earmites, and litter and food costs, the difficulty of meshing more cats into a small place, and the expense and frustation and extreme lengths of time involved in finding even one cat a home. She never e-mailed back, which actually made me quite happy.

Then the four Jefferson cats the DD woman owns, none fixed, and now the house she lives in is getting torn down. The group working to find her a mobile home now is trying to find a barn home where those cats can go, if fixed. I was very happy about that.

I went yesterday to Winco and was dismayed to find their small cans of cat food close to $.50 per can again. I didn't buy any and hope the price comes down somewhere.

I went to Rite Aid, who was advertising the small cans at two for one. But the price is jacked to begin with and two for one still made them close to $.50 a can. I didn't buy any.

I went to Fred Meyer then, to find their prices sky high per can, which did not surprise me. I didn't buy any.

I went to the Grocery Outlet and bought a few Friskies kitten cans, for 3 for a buck, but the cats have never liked that canned kitten food and will ignore it, which is why it probably ends up often at the overstock store. I won't buy more. I thought 'well, maybe they'd eat it.' But they won't.

I am holding out. People weren't buying cans at such high prices at Winco. They used to be reasonable but no more. I will try Walmart, although they are not known actually for reasonable pricing on cat food or any grocery items, not in this area at least.

I used up all the Advantage I had left, on the scores of cats that went through my hands the first few days of the month. The other clinic I take cats to, in Wilsonville, requires they be flea treated before they come. I flea treated three dozen cats in the last few days. That leaves me with the remnants of one tube of Advantage. Yikes! I also wormed them all, mixing Strongid into wet food and that takes a lot of strongid for all these cats going through. I'm out of everything.

It's expensive doing all this. Maybe the good thing is I've burned almost through my Poppa allotment for the month, so I won't be needing to flea treat and worm hordes of cats until next month.

I wrote a letter to the paper yesterday, in part to let the public know about the private individuals the paper never does stories on, out there trying to solve the overpopulation problem. There was a front page story about an old couple given a free roof by a local roofing company and comments afterwards, from people, about how they didn't think people help each other out anymore, especially in these times, how nice that is to see.

Well they don't know about the extreme volunteerism going on by cat fixers, all around the state, sacrificing greatly to help people and their cats and in the process improving the livability of entire neighborhoods. People need to know this goes on and the hundreds upon hundreds of hours volunteers, like myself and so many others, put in. But I also wanted to plug Poppa Inc. So many thousands of dollars have gone into this area from Poppa, I was hoping that a plug for Poppa maybe would generate some donations to Poppa, which would be wonderful!

I am hoping if they print it I don't just get trashed. It happens a lot to letter writers in the local paper. Well anyhow, I've been trying to think of ways to raise money. Not easy in hard times.