The Passing of the Trap

Long ago, 12 years ago, actually, I received a gift. A couple, Scott and Pam Chadwick, bought me a live trap. Scott and Pam had run a nonprofit, handing out vouchers to help people get their cats fixed. I called them, wanting help with the river cats, when I lived in Corvallis.

At the time, I was entrenched in the awful mental health system and lived in a low income hotel, converted to apartments, that was hell on earth.

I spent my days and sometimes my nights, living amidst a colony of cats along the Willamette River. They gave me love. They were my family.

They were fed by an old man, a relic of OSU's forestry department, who would do nothing more than throw out food. He would not participate in getting them fixed. So I did. Trapping them, one by one, carrying the cat in the live trap half a mile back to my place, after trapping the cat, then finding a ride to a vet clinic, where they were fixed, using those vouchers, provided by Scott and Pam, combines with donations from little people, like old women and bus drivers.

I had no car.

I got 30 cats fixed in that manner.

Scott and Pam had to leave the valley due to Scott's allergies. This is not a place to live if you have allergies.

Before they left, they bought me a live trap. I still have that trap and boy, what a legacy Scott and Pam gave mid valley cats with that gift to me. They had no idea what they would begin.

And I don't either. But when I run into a young person whom I think might continue the effort, I remember the gift given me, a nobody whom nobody believed in, a person without even a car. And I pass along the trap.

Last night, I passed along my third trap, to a young woman I believe in. I don't know if the gift will pay off or not. You never know. You just have to hope and believe. And that's what I do best.

Mindy, that trap is hope in metal form and it is a tool that can be used to accomplish unheard of change by people nobody would ever believe could accomplish a thing. Use it. Change the world.

I'm down a trap but I can adjust.