Mickey's adoptor Sends me New Photo

Mickey, before I netted him, in the old car.
Brambles and Mickey, cuddled in a rabbit hutch in my spare bedroom.
Mickey now. He lives in Canada. Brambles remains here.

Mickey was one of the 90 or so cats I got fixed, feral and tame, on one short street off Knox Butte Drive a few years back. I saw him first in an old car some of the cats slept in. He was skinny and his eye was draining blood. It had ruptured. The cat had blood streaked along the white fur in his side, too. I got my net, and I netted Mickey.

His eye had to be removed. He'd grown up being fed by the old man but not handled by him. He and a buddy of his, Brambles, remained here. Brambles was a feral teen with severe herpes too and the vet said, if I took him back, he would die.

Actually most of the cats died there. Before I came along, the old man said he buried 30 or more every year. People dumped animals all the time there, and would move out of the shabby shacks and duplexes leaving their animals behind. Free roaming viscious dogs attacked the cats routinely, killing or maiming them. In two or three nights, a free roaming long hair golden retriever killed 17 more cats. The old man was like a zombie after those attacks, could barely take it. I got him to call the police, wasn't right, a dog doing this. The cops came but the officer called it a cat problem. I tried to redirect her over and over, tell her "Look, a dog came onto this man's private property and killed cats. Do your job."

Didn't help. So I sat out there nights, awake, in my car, with a piece of rebar. I was going to do the job that needed done on that dog.
But, I finally found the people who owned him, across the road and down a narrow dirt driveway. They were moving and he'd gotten loose. They said "So, what are you saying should happen to that dog, you want him shot?" I said "Hell, yes."

I don't think they shot him. I think they just moved on with him, to kill elsewhere.

The old man got a gun after that. A neighbor on another street who had had cats and other animals killed by viscious dogs advised him to get one, then to three-S the problem: shoot, shovel, shut up. The police are no help. They hold cats at no value. So he got a gun. He'd heard the screams the first night, opened his door and that dog was right on his porch. He'd slammed the door shut because the dog was wild eyed, he said. All the cats killed were shaken to death.

Mickey and Brambles were in my spare bedroom then. Brambles brothers were killed by the dog and so were two of Mickey's siblings.

I don't like going down that street. I did a few months ago, when once again back on the street of nightmares, as I dubbed it, to trap ten cats for an older couple. They had promised to pay for the fixes. They never paid a dime.

The old man said the 30 or so he had still cared for have died off or been killed one by one, leaving him feeding about 12. More viscious dog kills, too. It's nowhere anything alive should live. Most of the people are already dead for all practical purposes. When there is so much suffering going on around them and they act like its not there, that means they're dead.

The old man was the only human alive I met on that street. He paid a price for it too.

I rehomed a lot of cats, thankfully. I had a volunteer briefly, whose car ran well. She drove myself and Mickey all the way to the edge of the country of Canada. There, we met a former clown, current school teacher, who drove down from the country of Canada, crossed our shared border, and took Mickey home with her. Mickey is now a Canadian citizen and very very happy, see latest photo above.

That's him, on the bed, on the far left.

Mickey's video was one of the first I ever attempted to make and post on youtube, using my digital still camera. It's below.