Cats From This Area Poppa's President Still Has

Poppa's president has taken in a lot of cats from this area. She still has a lot of them, despite being paired with a Portland area adoption group.

She's had a lot of success with that group. She was able to place all 11 of the Lebanon Rock Hill kittens she, her daughter and another Poppa volunteer fostered, then showed at a Petsmart through the other adoption group's venue. By contrast, I was able to adopt out only one, Tabitha, and still have Slurpy.

When I took in Hope, the badly injured cat from 5th St. in Albany, I also took in four teenage kittens, alive in fleas and sick from flea anemia. She took in three of those: Romeo, a flamepoint, Blossom, a tabby on white and Turtle, a torti. She still has all three of them. Turtle now has stones in one kidney and the vet thought she was going to die, believing she has a congenital kidney defect. She had gotten down to four pounds, but Keni, with force feeding, got her back up to six pounds and she's still alive.

I placed the fourth kitten, a little Siamese.

She took in two homeless camp kittens and their mother, Trudy, a tame brown tabby tux, left behind by two young campers. The two kittens eventually went to PAWS, a West Linn shelter. She still has Trudy.

Five years ago, when I was working that horrible druggee infested complex in Albany, I told Keni about the mother cat, a long hair torti point Siamese manx, who had survived a fire there, as a kitten, then was shoved out to live on her own. She was then about four years old.

I had taken in then adopted out her latest litter of kittens. When I told Keni about this mother and what she had been through, she said, "Go get her." I had already gotten her spayed. I went and got her. That was in 2005. Keni took her in. She was just adopted this last week. Keni had misgivings about taking her to the Petsmart to put her up for adoption, but she wanted more attention than Keni could give her, with so many cats, and is a striking cat in appearance, being a torti point long hair Siamese manx. Her tail is a fluffy bob of hair. An employee there at Petsmart adopted her.

Keni also has two FIV positive males, Big Ben and Adair, from a colony in Camp Adair, of primarily abandoned tame FIV positives. I imagine every free roaming unfixed male in Adair is FIV positive. Three of the six Adair cats were positive. The other three were just teens, and probably had not yet been fighting so they were saved in time. Then the woman who fed those cats took a male stray in to be fixed who had showed at her residence and he too was FIV positive. You don't want to be an unfixed male in Adair and allowed to free roam, that's for sure. Too many people have done that and the incidence there of FIV among the males is extreme.

The other cat Keni has from this area is also FIV positive. That's Twister, from Clover Ridge road. He was among many I trapped for a couple associated with the new development there. He claimed he'd pay for them to be fixed and that they could return but that was all lies. He wouldn't take them back and didn't pay for them to be fixed and when I confronted him over his lies, he gave $50. I wanted to throw a can of tuna at him and had to restrain myself. I had about 12 cats from there in my garage, with nowhere for them to go, some with bad teeth, and it was hot and I was fed up with the way people behave, the lies and manipulation. This man was practised in the art.

I finally placed all but Twister. Keni took him. He's still doing great three years later, looking good.

Keni still has the 8 Attic Cat kittens. They would have gone to the Petsmart store two weeks ago but they caught colds and couldn't be fixed. They look so big. I saw them on Tuesday.

See, I went up there amidst the chaos Tuesday of taking in 14 cats to be fixed, and then heading back to Stayton to check out the new cat they called a starving kitten who was really a mature neutered declawed male. After taking him to the vet, then loading all 14 cats into my car, I went up to Keni's because she had offered to foster him, too.

But, at the same time, one of her own original seven cats, a cat she's had forever, was dying. Her vet was there when I arrived and Herman, her beloved friend, who had gone downhill the last weeks, went on.

And still, despite her grief, and the tremendous workload she's under, she had a cage ready for Mac, the Stayton trailer park cat, nearly dead from starvation, who nobody there would help.

Why do so few do so much and so many others do nothing? Or worse, create problems?

Keni is a marvel of human emotional and physical endurance. She deserves help, lots of it, homes for the cats she is fostering and a lot of financial help to cover the costs of their care until they do get homes.

I feel guilty when she takes in a cat from this area. But they don't stand a chance in hell of getting a home if they stay with me. She works with an adoption group up there. I have nobody down here to work with, on adoptions. I don't take cats up I am fostering for adoption, because there are limited spaces at the one Petsmart for the other group and they only take in cats their volunteers are fostering. Keni has too many cats like me. If she ever gets most of hers adopted out, then maybe she'll let me bring up some from my place to get a chance. Until then, it's only extreme cases I can ask her help with, like the Stayton male.

Even then, I feel guilty. I know what it's like. She does have some help at times, with socializing the cats. I usually never see another human being and so the cats here don't either, which makes it even harder.

I don't see Keni very often. But this is what I think of her. She's a hero.