Kittens in the Wilderness

This is where the kittens were dumped.
Watch a video of the expedition to find the third kitten below:









A lot of this goes on up there.
The saved. Her brother was not so lucky.

A Sweet Home couple, who enjoy driving logging roads, called in a report of seeing cats, way out in the middle of nowhere above Marcola. Since no one in Eugene seemed willing to go help them, Vicki of KATA asked me if I would go with her, since it is an extremely remote area, and the logging roads can be confusing.

So this evening, after I got my car back from the shop, I met her in Crawfordsville and we went on up and met a Springfield woman, who, with her children, had been up there trying to find the spot and the kittens. Just before she came down off the mountain to meet us, to take us up, she caught the little calico.

The initial report was of two white calicos kittens seen by a mudhole. The mudholes are created by four wheelers, up there tearing everything up in monster pickups and four wheel drives. Although no shooting signs are posted everywhere, a lot of shooting and teen partying goes on up there, too, in various spots. The quarry, half way up, was the scene of a drunken shooting a couple months ago, between two target shooting parties. And, the very top is a hotspot for hang gliders, a jump off spot because of the cliff. It's redneck heaven, in other words.

And it's beautiful.

It is extremely remote, however, and to take kittens that far into the middle of nowhere, to dump them out like trash takes a certain breed of monster.

The little calico caught was so skinny it was sad. Cherie's elderly mother actually spotted the dead little white male along the road, not far from where Cherie had just trapped his sister. But was there another up there or had the old couple, the only people to claim to see two calicos, been mistaken and instead seen the white male and the calico now caught and safe? We didn't know for sure and may never know for sure. WE followed Cherie into the woods because she had to leave and take her mother home. We were up there for hours with half a dozen traps set. We saw nothing.

Cherie was the only person of the Eugene cat people crowd willing to act, I guess. The Talking Heads just talked, for two days I guess, on message boards and e-mail lists about it, according to people in this area, who are on the same list. But nobody did anything. That's why Vicki finally decided "enough" and went down clear from Sweet Home. She didn't want to go alone, so called me. I'm not on the lists and had not heard of the situation. In honor of Cherie's "Action Hero" work to save this calico, and because she even had to rent traps to bring, I gave her one of my traps, as a gift. I know she will put it to good use.

It is not safe to be up there alone at night, so we all left just as dark was setting in. I stopped between Brownsville and Lebanon and hurriedly picked up six cats from a woman waiting on me to arrive.

Wish I knew some men, who'd like to camp out all night up there, and check some traps periodically, for the third kitten, the second calico, if she exists--men with guns preferably, since there are too many drinking men with guns who frequent that area, therefore it isn't really safe for anyone else.