It was a difficult round up. One moment I thought I would not have any cats to take, and the next, I had cats everywhere needing fixed.
I was disappointed in my efforts to catch two Albany boys who need fixed because the caretaker of the boys wanted to "do it another time" after I arrived at the agreed upon time with my drop trap. She had not called.
I did not catch the Side by Side colony male as I"d hoped, but the caretaker now seems hell bent on catching him.
I took down an Albany teen female and an Albany teen male. The little tabby boy had showed up on someone's porch when only two months old, crying and starved. So now she feeds him.
The Corvallis woman who e-mailed some time ago, wanting a stray mom and her three teen kittens from her last litter fixed, finally called me Saturday and brought them right over. Mom was very pregnant again. All four were fixed yesterday.
I'd also been asked for spay neuter assistance by a Lebanon couple. I went up, but the trapping did not go well. They have three little yapper dogs who yapped nonstop and if that was not enough, humped my leg anytime they felt that urge. My leg must be very attractive to small dogs.
They have many inside fixed cats and often let their fixed cats out, or they get out by accident. They had one big tame gray tabby male in a carrier, ready. He showed up just a couple weeks ago. I dubbed him Henry, for the records.
I set some traps, but we caught a huge feral Siamese in his Harbor Freight trap. Those traps are dangerous. Cats can nose up under the door. There's a space at the bottom after the door closes. Cats slam against the bottom and can get out, or they get their head under but not their body, thrash, and break their necks or strangle. I had to hold my foot against the bottom of the trap and the bottom of the trap door while the man scrambled for zip ties to secure the trap. I left it to them then to trap during the day.
They caught two more in traps I left set, and the neighbor had three unfixed males. They were supposed to also have two more of their own tame males ready, but when I arrived at 9:00 p.m., they didn't have them ready. In fact, they couldn't find one of the boys and the other was running around the house, hiding if the man tried to grab him. The guy was getting frustrated. He'd yell at his wife, she'd yell back, the dogs were yapping and humping my leg, which they seemed to do more if stressed, as I tried to find and catch the one male, playing cat and mouse with me. I gave up.
He had the three neighbor males, whom they had bred there, in huge carriers. I'd asked them to put them in the smallest carriers possible. Getting those into my car was hard enough. I knew I'd have to transfer them to something else. It was already getting late and I had to be up so early. I left with five more from the two households, the three tame boys, then the two wild ones. I already had two from them at home, the Siamese and tame stray, so in the end, I took down seven from this location. They all turned out to be boys, although one, Frissy, was already neutered.
The couple in the end were so relieved to get so many big males fixed. There are two more wild males to catch, their two tame males, plus a female who had kittens in the barn who will need fixed, along with any surviving kittens.
The day was long but very pleasant. I love that clinic and the people who run it and work there. The vet was familiar to me. He used to volunteer at Eugene FCCO clinics and now apparently is doing contract spay neuter.
I finally took a nap on the recovery bed and then, when the male cats started coming out of surgery, moved upstairs to the rescue cat room, to sprawl out on bedding on the floor with the rescues piled around me and happy to have a human to nap against.
I stopped in at the Elk place on the way home. The cats were done very timely. Everyone went home to their various owners too, so no need for me to caretake any of the cats over night.
I was going to sleep in this morning. Phone rings. It's the Millersburg couple who adopted Bart our of the feral colony they pass on their walk. They'd trapped Captain Awesome, the last remaining cat in the colony. He free roams widely and turned up at their place so I loaned them a trap. They caught him in the night. He's being fixed over at Heartland right now.
Captain Awesome was euthanized, as he tested positive for FIV. Please fix those boy cats. Save the boys!
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