On the Hunt for Unfixed Cats. Five Cats Being Fixed Today.

Photos of the five cats up being fixed today follow. Last night, I was out on the hunt for unfixed cats. First stop, I called a free kitten ad. The woman said they'd given away all four kittens but yes, she needed help getting her female fixed. Turns out, I'd passed those kittens in the yard of a duplex only half mile from where I live.

Then the world turned even smaller. I called the caretaker up of a Scravel Hill colony, to see if they had any new shows who might need fixed. I got about 18 cats trapped and fixed there last fall and rehomed four kittens. They have had no new arrivals and everybody is fixed and happy. But, she said, her husband's adult son mentioned his girlfriend had a cat who'd had kittens. I said, "Have your husband's son call me. Where does he live?"

"Oh, over in a duplex on...." I finished her sentence for her, because, it was the same cat with kittens I'd passed, and had just called and arranged for her spay! Ha!

An apartment manager or owner had talked to Dr. Reid, her vet, wanting help with a white cat and her kittens, living under a complex she manages or owns, I forget which, on Ermine street. She had been given KATA's number. KATA called me about it and I got in touch with this woman. But then she called back yesterday, an hour before we were supposed to meet over there, to say the tenants told her the mom cat and kittens had actually vanished four days ago.

I went over anyhow, to look around. A mother cat just doesn't vanish with her kittens. But the tenants said she indeed had. She had five kittens, three of them white, one a black tux and the other, he couldn't remember.

My heart stopped. Although this location is a good half mile from where I trapped the blind deaf white female, and across an extremely busy four lane road, could it have been the same mother cat, I wondered. People get messed up on the day they last saw a cat all the time. Maybe she wasn't seen at this complex last week at all, but that would be a long distance for a mother to move that many kittens.

I ended up pulling into a horseshoe shaped apartment complex on Salem Road. I'd been in there before and gotten quite a few cats fixed. I rolled my window down to talk to three young Mexicans leaning casually against a beat up cream colored pickup, drinking beers. They were friendly and came over to my window. "Do any of you speak English?" I asked. One volunteered, "Little bit."

I tried to explain to him, using my few Spanish words, and his vague English, that I was looking for "gatos" who make "Nina's". I began saying single words, trying to get my point across, with gestures, like using two fingers in a clipping motion, while saying "surgery" and "no mas nina's", garble really, but the one guy, he got it, and went and knocked on a door.

Out came a woman I knew, because I got some cats fixed for her a little over a year ago. She told me the Spanish word for balls was either "Wuppet" or "Muppet" something like that and was grinning ear to ear, like the three Mexicans, who were pleased with themselves, that they had been very helpful.

She had two more girls, she said, just five months old, who need fixed. I told her I'd be back for them in the morning.

I then went out and spent time trying to catch the orange tabby, Sam, at the Millersburg colony. He's the only unfixed adult there, but now three kittens have shown up, apparently from the female I first got fixed. They had found two or three kittens and one employee took them home. One had fallen down a wall and was in bad shape and severely dehydrated when found, but he is still alive, nursed by a cat loving employee. But, there were three more in that litter, who now also will need trapped and fixed.

The cats were not interested at all in the trap or food. I watched them for some time, however.

This morning, I did trap Sam, the orange tabby, using the drop trap, so he is up being fixed. And when I picked up the two young girls at the complex on Salem Road another Siamese mix female was outside their door.

"She's a stray now," the woman said, motioning across the complex. "The people who lived in that unit there left her when they moved. We feed her."

I said, "Is she fixed or do you know."

"We don't know," she said. I'd gotten a Siamese mix female fixed for a woman at another unit in that complex, but it was not the apartment where the woman indicated that the cat once had lived. That woman too moved out. She could have given the cat to others at the complex before moving. So, I lured her into a trap, and at the vet clinic, told them to watch for a spay scar.

Four females and one male are up being fixed.

Young Siamese mix female, up being fixed today.
The owned young torti, up being fixed today.
This is the abandoned Siamese mix female now being fed as a stray.
Marian street gray tabby tux female, being fixed today.
Sam, the Millersburg male, being neutered today.