Matilda Leaving Tomorrow

I don't know if I mentioned I had an adoption interest in Matilda. They love her looks and Norwegian Forest cat backgrounding. They don't mind she might be shy of them at first either.

They're a retired couple and really nice. They'll be driving over tomorrow.

It's been a blessing to find really great patient mature people for Stinod and now Matilda. Both girls really wanted lots of human attention. Both stayed to themselves mostly in the cat yard and garage room to avoid the trouble makers, the bullies, the attention whores, and the hyper energetic teens inside.

And it's them, like a miracle, for whom I've had the recent adoption contacts.

It is so nice to get adoptors who have attention spans and character.

My own cat, Dex, who is elderly, came down with a cold. Many cats did here and all are now over it except Dex, who suffers from chronic herpes, which can inflame the lungs, scar them and make it difficult to get over a cold.

She has struggled the last week. She's on antibiotics, sub qu fluids and goes into the steam room twice a day. This week, tomorrow or Tuesday, she will be off to the vet. Being elderly alone makes it tough to get over some things. Having had chronic herpes outbreaks for over a decade only makes matters worse. She's a tough old gal.

I met her first at the home of a Corvallis woman with over 120 cats. She had rescued her somewhere in Dallas. She then moved to Fall City when the city of Corvallis told her to give up her cats or leave with them. She left with all of them. A young couple I did not know, living in very rural Philomath organized a rescue of some 60 of her cats, when she again found herself without a home, after eviction in Fall City. They knew her some how from way back.

However, that young couple were bogus rescuers and were not paying their landlord rent, and left Dex behind when they very suddenly decided to vamoos the property they had "squatted" upon.

I had become aware of their characters, was concerned they would leave animals behind, and drove out there to check. They had come back for some of their things. Dex had been closed inside the house for three days without food and water, they said. They had found her hiding beneath the water heater and slipped a rope around her neck in a slip knot and drug her out. That's when I walked in, to that scene--them pulling on that rope, her at the other end of it, choking to death and desperate.

I didn't say anything except "She's coming with me."

I picked her up, put her in a carrier, and left. She's been with me ever since as one of mine. She is to this day terrified of being in a room with a closed door.

I stopped next door, and tried to get the landlords' brother, who happens to be an animal control officer, to get them charged with neglect, abandonment and animal abuse. I wanted to show him the wound on Dex's neck, from those people dragging her with the rope. Instead, he made a noxious comment about my car. I'd just got the Scion. I drove off in disgust.

That couple also left mounds upon mounds of trash behind. They left chickens behind locked in a coop, only one of whom was still alive, when I was told about it, went up and put the survivor, a rooster, into a carrier and took him home. He was a really happy rooster. The Farm Sanctuary took him in. They left their own cat behind too. I wandered those forests up there for two days trying to find him and in the end, concluded a predator killed him.

The couple tried to make it up to me later, left me a pallet of broken bag cat food and litter, which I appreciated. They were young, had had hard lives already themselves, and you make lots of mistakes along the road, I know. I hope they're doing ok, wherever they ended up. Last I heard, they were living somewhere in the Portland area.

These poor cats go through so many horrors.