Three Lebanon Boys Fixed Today

 Salem, Lebanon black male, fixed today!

 Lynx, big brown tabby Lebanon male, fixed today.

 

 Boo, DSH black Lebanon male, fixed today.

 Passed this on the way to pick up the boys.

 Snow is still heavy in the mountains.

Today I picked up three Lebanon boys at the usual cat drop off gas station on highway 34 at I5--the Shell.  Gas prices in Oregon are up near $4.20 per gallon and killing us all.  I joked with a gas station attendant that I'm on the drive or eat diet now and have lost about ten pounds.

The lady from Lebanon was half hour late with the two boys she had, making me late to arrive at Heartland.  I was embarrassed.  But further dismayed to find out neither of the women had shown up whom I had scheduled to bring in their own cats.  Each woman was to bring in two females.  The Alsea woman was also going to surrender her cats 11 kittens.  Neither women showed up.  One later told me she got the days mixed up.  I never heard a peep from the Corvallis woman.  I talked to her just yesterday but think she showed up for two free spays or even called to cancel?  Nope.

So it was just the Lebanon boys.

I was exhausted.  I came home then met the Lacomb woman with the two cats she has, both tame and dumped off up there, along a very rural road.  I'm taking them up to the FCCO clinic tomorrow.  She only had one carrier.  She'd put the male in a box, but he got out in the car, so she had him tied in a canvas bag and down on the floor board.  I asked her to put the bag into a carrier I had in my car, then I took my carrier in my car and closed the doors and began to untie the string tying the bag closed. I pulled the buff boy scared and miserable, from the bag and hugged him, then finally put him in the carrier, and gave the folks their bag back.

The woman goes, watch out when you take him from that bag because he'll run.  I held out the bag to her and said "Already done."

Then I tried to sleep a couple hours and finally did doze off.  My cold is roaring back.  I thought I'd got off easy with it.  I caught it last Saturday and have been miserable with congestion.  But after two days it went into remission or hiding or however they kind of half go away, but remind you they are still there in the night, when you wake up coughing with gunk running down the back of your throat.  But it's back full force, clogging up my nose, filling my car with wadded up paper towels scrambled for in a hurry when stuff's dripping down all stringy and clingy from my nose after a sneeze, while driving.

The Heartland surgeries were quickly done.  Off I went to retrieve the boys.  Straight from there I drove to Lebanon with them, to their homes and arms of their owners.  From there, it was off to the Kitten Factory colony.

I've been trapping that colony since yesterday but it seems like months now.  I'm tired out that's why.  And the stress of the colony.  I was told a week ago, when the woman first called me, after KATA referred her to me, that there might be seven females and five litters of kittens, but they had several in the house now.  The colony is fed by one woman.  Her daughter in law helps her out.

They'd tried to get the rest fixed through the FCCO but they'd called the Corvallis FCCO number and those coordinators have an earned reputation of not returning calls, which is what happened to them.  They didn't get called back.  The coordinator had given them her e-mail the first time they took a few in to be fixed there, but she never returned their e-mails after that, about getting more in at the next one.  After several failed attempts, they gave up completely.

I thought the cats would be hard to catch, so I started Wednesday morning, caught a few in traps, then just drop trapped them all and by Wednesday evening, I had all but one wild one contained.  I took 13 of the 25 kittens over to Heartland and tonight, I took four more to KATA.  There were kittens everywhere.  We pulled three out from under a stash of trash and junk in front of a neighbor's house.  There was a fourth, dead and full of squirming big maggots.

Another neighbor said two were screaming from her shed somewhere.  I got down and pulled them out of the cobwebs from under a back shelf.  They were cold and had been left alone awhile.  This was before I had set any traps yesterday morning.  I figure a mother stole them then realized she couldn't nurse them and left them.  Lots of that goes on.

Well, the caretaker caught the last wild one this morning on her own and then got the neighbors unfixed female contained too.  The neighbors handed over the kittens to her already.  Otherwise, they were soon to be given away on Craigslist and they were still so tiny.  Heartland has two of those, and KATA has the other four.

This evening I picked up the tame mom, the four kittens and the final wild kitty, then drove all the way back to Corvallis to hand over the four kittens to KATA, then finally--home, worn out.

I have two females each in two cages, but the rest of the cats are in live traps.  I transferred them all to clean live traps this morning and cleaned the empty traps and now I got to do that again.  It's not easy to trap early and I don't like doing it.

I have 13 cats from the Kitten Factory colony going up to be fixed tomorrow and the two Lacomb abandonees.

But only three Lebanon boys were fixed today, when seven in all were supposed to get fixed.  Four no shows.  Boy how do you like that.  During kitten season, too!  Below are some photos of the Kitten Factory kittens.  13 of these kittens are now at Heartland while another four went to KATA.  Seven remain with the colony caretakers and they will need somewhere to go where they will be fixed and put up for adoption.