I went out to Cottonwood last night, just as a massive rolling thunder and lightning storm got into gear. I thought I was going to pick up the one remaining unfixed male, Socks. Socks was nowhere to be found, however. Only the foster kids were out, no adults came out to talk to me. There were kittens found, the kids said, three of them. A friend of theirs took one. One of the girls quickly dutifully got the man on the phone to talk about spay neuter. It was cute, really. I thought she was handing me the phone to talk to somebody else, who has a female who needs fixed.
These kids have mutliple issues from the lacks of their biological parents. But they're trying their darndest and were so eager to help. One girl and a rather big young teen kid, went over to a junk pile and began tearing it apart very very loudly. I went over and tried to get them to quiet down and be gentle because the kittens, if they were in the junk, were scared and could easily be injured. At first the young man became slightly hostile at being told what to do.
I told him I needed his muscle to lift the junk pieces, and I did. Just then he startled and yelled, pointing to the dark gray sky, "Did you see that?" Lightning, very close, jagged and stark against the ominous sky.
I said "That was close. You guys, you should go inside, to be safe." They refused, citing the kittens safety. "Ok," I said, "then let's find them quickly."
The thunder rumbled. The rain pounded down, spastically, in wild mood swings.
The girl suddenly held up something brown and scraggly---a little long hair brown tabby boy kitten with his eyes glued shut with pus. I put him into a carrier in my car. Then we carefully began looking for the other little boy. They knew it was a boy, they said, "by the look of him" and because they'd been coaxing them out and holding them.
The big kid directed me to lift one end of a heavy pile of metal siding. When we did, a gray kitten darted out and into a PVC pipe. I put my net over one end and the kids hoisted up the other end until he slid out into my net. "Good job!" I said. The little gray tabby boy is very tame and sweet. The little longhair tabby wants held and comforted. Both have slight colds but are already playing in my bathroom.
I had no intention of taking on two more kittens. But now they're here and I feel slightly overwhelmed. I'm still sleep deprived from this weekend. I have the white girl and her two kittens in my bedroom in a rabbit hutch. The sisters over in that neighborhood are taking all three on Thursday, thankfully.
I had continued on, last night, up to the Hill Colony and picked up the last unfixed adult there, the female with three kittens. Lightning was splitting the gray sky as I drove the two lane roads through muted bright green grass fields. It was beautiful.
I ended up with only her, that last young mother, to take up to be fixed today.
On the way back, I stopped at the Conser colony. I instantly saw the black mother and was taken to the junk filled back of the garage, where the kittens lay, where they had been born, on the filthy concrete strewn and stained in age old poop and urine. What would possess a mother to bear her kittens in such filth and then not move them? It was as if she yearned for their deaths, so she could be free.
I picked up the five two week olds, eyes open, but underdeveloped for their age. They had raw butts and one had yellowish poop clinging to what was left of the fur around his rectum. 'Coccidia,' I thought immediately. No surprise, given where they were born and living.
I put them on a towel in one trap, covered it, set another ahead of it, hoping to catch the young mom. She was frantic, but the husband was power washing their porch in preparation for a graduation party of this coming weekend. I don't know if she'll go in or not. The kittens are likely doomed. They asked what they should do and I told them, "Either let nature take its course or rabbit hutch them all and treat them with Albon or take them to a vet and have them euthanized."
They hemmed and hawed. They want me to take them all. I know that. But I won't and I can't. I'm really kind of fed up with the country folk mentality. They knew to watch for eartips and they didn't. And now they have more and want it someone else's problem.
Vicki of KATA had someone with a not completely fixed colony call her to tell her a kitten was hanging by a leg from a ribbon and was going to die. Vicki tried to get her to take the kitten to her own vet, you know, take some responsibility. She said, "Who is your vet?" The woman said, without a pause, "You are!"
KATA did finally pick up that kitten, leg all gangrene, and he had to be euthanized. If they had not, the kitten's death would have been prolonged and very difficult. The woman would not have taken him in, or ended his suffering herself in some manner. Vicki told me the story because they get it too, emotional blackmail and outrageous expectations of free service.
I couldn't even stay out there, while the trap was set, due to their two constantly high pitched piercing dogs yapping. Across the road, the white dog who once bit me, leaving me a nasty scar, and another, ran up and down the fence, barking their yappy heads off too.
I can't take high pitched dog yapping. It's like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. I told her I had to leave and why. She said sometimes the yapping drives her nuts also but she doesn't know what to do about it.
Speaking of high pierced screeches, Lightning, the gray tab boy kitten, does not like being left alone and literally shrieks after I leave the bathroom. It's grating on my nerves big time.
75 more Albany jobs were lost Friday, when Weyerhauser closed its trucking division. I believe the work they did might go to subcontractors, I don't know. But 75 more families around here now have no jobs and 75 more family wage jobs just vaporized.
At the clinic Sunday, a long time acquaintance from FCCO clinics, a Roseburg woman, told me her job was in some danger. Her husband was laid off a year ago and still has not found work. She looked worried I think. She and her husband are a few years older than I am. If you lose jobs at such an age, the liklihood of finding anything else is not great these days.
UPDATE: Caught the mom, went out then, and tranferred mom and babies, after feeding them and giving them their first dose of Albon, for coccidia, into a rabbit hutch. I had nothing to put it on, so it's on the floor of the nasty hot garage. I had told them they'd need a table for it, but sometimes when I talk to them, it's almost like talking to a deaf person.
I am a Cat Woman. My self-appointed mission in life is to save the feline world! To accomplish this mission, I get cats fixed. Perhaps my mission might be slightly delusional. This blog is a mishmash of wishful thinking, rants, experiences as I remember them and of course, cat stories and cat photos. I have a nonprofit now, to help keep the cats here cared for and to fix community cats. Happy Cat Club formed in 2015. Currently, we are on a mission to fix 10,000 cats.
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