More and More Kittens....

I need to sleep 24 hours.  I hope to do that soon.  I took six of the Two Legged Torti colony kittens to a Wilsonville rescue today.  While up there, the students called.  They'd found three more.  I told them I would pick them up when I got back, which I did.  They're tiny, maybe three weeks, the youngest yet.  Stubby Butt's I bet.  She was lactating.  So was Captain.  I suggested we look for Captain's kittens.

Sure enough, we spotted two more in the blackberries.  One ran inside the landlord's shed/garage through a small hole big enough only for a rat, mouse or tiny kitten.  It took quite a lot to move everything to get to where the kitten might be, but we spotted her, using my headlamp light and telescoping auto mirror, always with me in my car.  But the kitten is large mouse size and can scramble and there was so much stuff piled around, we could not scramble quickly enough.  But finally the student caught the little frightened starving girl.

We set a trap inside the hole that kitten used inside the shed/garage, which made me nervous since I don't know when that shed is unlocked to check that trap or if they even will.  Makes me real real nervous.

Then the landlords daughter said they wanted a kitten.  I questioned her, defensive of these little buggers, because the one they wanted was only three weeks old.  Then she said they were giving it to a 15 year old relative and the daughter said "It will be spayed tomorrow."  "Yeah, right," I said, "spay a 3 week old kitten."

She was fucking with me, being sarcastic.  I don't even know what the fate of that poor little kitten is going to be.

So five more were found, one is uncaught and three more are here.  I actually have four here, because the folks who adopted Matilda from me almost two years ago, are adopting the little fuzzy black tux polydactyl boy kitten tomorrow.

I am concerned for the safety of the fifth kitten, but there is nothing I can do.  The male student is gung ho about getting this done. The girl student, his girlfriend, looked tired and fed up with it tonight.  You can imagine how I feel.  If I had lived nearby there would never be kittens all over in the brush, being born like that and most of those other cats would never have been born either.  That's the difference between me and almost everybody else in Linn County.  Linn County is damn lucky I live here, even though I hope my residence here soon ends, because I can't really keep up this pace.  It is killing me, physically, emotionally and financially.  But I can't just not help the vast numbers of unfixed cats here, while I live here, so the only way out is to get out.  Leave!    That's all I can figure out.

I tried to guilt trip a donation out of the landlord, through his teen daughter, listing the costs involved fixing all those cats wandering his property, to Poppa Inc. and to me, for gas and bait, but my appeal fell on ears that didn't care.   They've been wandering the property unfixed for a few years, issue unaddressed.

Three week old gray and white female kitten.

Blue male kitten.

Brown tabby tux female kitten, six weeks old or so.

So Heartland said they'd take the three, when they have room, and in the meantime supply me with food for them.  I took them up on it.  I hate doing adoptions and I don't want to do them.  I don't trust people.  You don't after all I've seen.  So I'm no good at adoptions.  I know that about myself, so off they'll go, when Heartland can take them.  They'll be fixed first there, and so many rescues hand them out, sell them, without fixing them, just like the people on craigslist and breeders.  Same thing.

UPDATE:  Speaking of adoptions, a friend who fosters in the Portland area had an adult cat returned.  The old woman said the cat was lonely and had not bonded with her dog, as she thought the cat would.  So another acquaintance of hers wanted two females.   She took the returned cat plus another foster to him, explaining how they should be underwhelmed in a small room for a couple of weeks.  Instead, he put them in an upstairs bedroom and expected that two cats, new to the home, scared, hiding under a bed, would somehow travel downstairs to locate one obscure litter box.  They didn't, of course, as common sense would dictate, as anyone with any fricking brains would figure out, so he wanted her to come get them, for peeing under his bed.  Fricking idiot.  Nobody has patience anymore.  Nobody listens anymore.  Nobody gives a shit anymore.   This man gets the idiot adopter of the week award!