Monday, October 12, 2009

Caught the last cat?

I spent yesterday pruning four limbs off one of the two maples, to reduce leaf fall on the roof, thus avoiding gutter clog, at least some gutter clog. Just four limbs, one of them small, produced a massive pile of branches and leaves, since each limb I cut off, with the plastic sawzall, whose battery does not last long, had many small off branches. I have been cutting them up, ever since, a little bit at a time, as the battery dies and is recharged and dies again. I then take the cut up branches to a woman who heats her place using a wood stove. She needs the wood.
It was easier to cut small holes in the chicken wire topping the cat yard, around each branch, then, drag the branch through into the cat yard, once cut. It wasn't that easy, however, and I had to get creative in some instances, to get the branch to fall where I wanted it to fall, before I pulled it on through. I then patched the cat yard topwire holes.

Is this the last cat? This is the one I drop trapped today at the Lebanon colony. But after spotting the Siamese two houses down, I now have serious doubts. Check out the Siamese forhead markings. These cats are related.
The mystery Siamese, over near the old woman's colony. No eartip!
Happy, the littlest kitten from the 18th street mom cat, now fixed, who had four kittens. I got three fixed, but Happy, was too little. He's here now, trying to get big. Then he'll be fixed and up for adoption. Happy is a sweetheart!


I had the old woman in Lebanon withhold food last night. I went up this morning, with the drop trap, intent on catching the last cat, the cat she says is the mother of the four kittens I already took in to be fixed.

I have taken in six cats from, there the four teens, from the mother's last batch plus two other young cats. The other two, Dirt Eater and another black and white, were roam ins.

The mother's sister, who looks much like her, is not eartipped. The old woman, however, swears she is fixed. The Siamese is eartipped and she calls her "the grandma of all". I set up the drop trap so I could yank the string from inside her place. I watched the trap from from a high window, inside, using a mirror I taped to a mop handle.

Finally, after about every other cat had eaten, the mother cat wandered under the trap. I went to the window and yanked the cord, pulling the stick out that held it up. I did so blind, not able to see the trap. But we caught her. I covered the drop trap then transferred her out into a tomahawk trap.

We celebrated briefly. But as I drove off, two houses down, out front, I see a different Siamese, coming out from beneath one of the many rusted out cars encrusted in berry vines. The house looks haunted and houses a collector. I was told by a different neighbor, once, when the fire department came, to get the person out of there, who had a medical issue, it took them an hour just to clear a path through junk to get to the person. I believe it, seeing the overgrown junk enshrouded ill maintained house from the outside.

It's the type of house neighbor kids, at least in my era, would dare each other to run up and touch something on the door or porch, because it looks haunted and overgrown and scary from the outside.

Seeing that other Siamese, knowing this cat in a trap in my car has huge feet and looks kind of male to me, made me wonder. I wondered if the other Siamese is really their mom. The old woman said the grandma of all, the Siamese, was always with the kittens and she couldn't figure that out, since the grandma of all is long fixed. "Unless," she said, "they didn't really fix her."

That can happen, but it isn't likely. If indeed she saw the Siamese primarily with the kittens, when they were little, because the old woman has bad eyes, maybe it was the Siamese I saw when leaving, who has no eartip, in front of the haunted house, two houses down.

Seems to never end, the cat problems, in such neighborhoods. I shouldn't call them cat problems. They are people problems.

Some of these cats were born under the haunted house and some, the old woman said, are over flow from the foreclosed upon collector, merely two blocks away. She thinks the two black and whites who roamed in originated from the collector.

We'll see what happens tomorrow. I do think this to be a female, in my car, in a trap, despite the wide nose and big feet, because I believe this old woman knows her cats.

I have been trying to arrange to get two former Lacomb kittens fixed for some time. There have been complications in conflicting schedules each time before. I hope tomorrow is the day. The Lacomb household who had two orange females, and together they had seven kittens I took in, also had taken in a dumped off torti, with four orange kittens. They adopted out two of them before they contacted me, unfixed. I want to mop up that situation in totality by getting those two in. They are now well into teenhood. The total fixed when these two are finally done, from that Lacomb situation: three adult females and 11 kittens, 14 cats.

This Lebanon cat in my car, to be fixed tomorrow, is cat number 7 from that situation.

I got a call for assistance with a female and three kittens from College Park Drive. I get pangs of anxiety just to think of driving down that dead end street again. I think of all the horrors I witnessed there, a few years back, when trying to solve the massive cat problem caused by an unbelievable number of irresponsible people grouped together in one area.

Abandonment occurred on a weekly basis there and so did animal abuse, child abuse, spousal abuse, drug use and criminal activity. It was traumatic to get invovled, but I did anyway and got about 90 cats fixed, rehomed dozens. Neither kids nor animals should live in such surroundings as existed there, in those apartments, at that time. I wanted to grab the kids and run away with them, too, to give them better lives and hope.

I don't want to go back. I don't want to drive down that street again. But I will be doing so tomorrow. There are ghosts there, rightfully woeful and angry. But it's one of those things.

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