Ditto Still Resting Here. Get Stood Up on Kitten Adoption

Ditto, the pregnant Lebanon muted calico, fixed Saturday, is still here, resting after surgery.  I returned the rest of the Lebanon cats yesterday, but she wanted to sleep.  So I decided to let her  I needed to sleep also and came home, after returning the other seven cats, and slept the rest of the day away.

I reposted the kitten ad on craigslit too.  Sasha came back yesterday, from a very brief stint out in foster.  Boy kittens!  He had immediately gotten himself in a pickle.  He stepped in a Scentsy candle and got wax all over one front leg.  The fosterer was very very worried and tried to cut some of the hardened wax off and ended up cutting him.  He does now smell very nice!  So he's back here, doing fine but he has wax all over one front leg.

I had what I thought to be a terrific adoption interest.  She made an appointment to come up late morning.  After sleeping the day away yesterday, I didn't get to bed until after midnight, but finally did get to sleep.  When I got up, I cleaned house, got their records in order, took a shower and waited, expectantly, hopefully.  And I waited.  The clock seemed to mock me as the minutes ticked away, past the time she said she would be here.  And on.  I fidgeted.  I became upset that someone would waste my time like that.  Not even call.  I made up excuses for her.  "She's lost," I said to myself.  Then I became darker.  "She must have been in a wreck," I tell myself, trying to justify human rudeness.

Finally I call her.  I ask quickly, "Are you lost?" trying to sound light, helpful, ready and eager to give directions.  But it was not the case.  She was not lost.  She wasn't coming and just had not bothered to call.  Makes me feel stupid, used, like people do not value what I do or my time.

Bitch, I think.

My mood turns dark and gloomy.  I had been so hopeful that this was going to be a great home for the two boys.

I spend the day playing with the kittens, cleaning up, trying still to recover from Saturday's marathon.  I'm still exhausted, can barely make myself move.

I'm still gloomy.  Heartland says they'll post the kittens on their site.  I get no traffic on my adoption site at all.    All of my last adoptions have come because someone first saw them on Heartland's site.  I am invisible.

I have no way to get the kittens seen, no adoption venue but craigslist ads, and craigslist is full of freaks.  I have gotten several  good homes off craigslist ads but the effort is vastly labor intensive because there are so many freaks who respond, who would be terrible cat owners.  One very disturbed woman contacted me using three different e-mails and names, but there were two similarities in every e-mail.  God, that scares me, that such people are out there and want kittens.  However, you mention an adoption fee or an application and they're gone.  And fast.

It's scary to post pets on craigslist.  But what choice do I have?

I don't like doing adoptions at all.  Handing off a living breathing soul to a stranger is like playing god.  Too much responsibility for little old me to bear.  I love these cats and kittens.  Their safety and lives depend on how well I match them up with the right home and screen out the freaks.

People sometimes think an adoption is an adoption and the cat or kitten got their forever home.  That's delusion.  So many adoptions don't work out and the cat gets handed off over and over and ends up on the streets and dead.  Or they just get abandoned.  Or they get thrown to vicious dogs or chased down by hounds in training. Or killed by a neighbors lonely angry dog or disturbed child or some issued up control freak who traps them and delights in dumping a little life out in the mountains.

 It's very terrible to hold the fate of a life in your hands.  Or bathroom.  Or to put that fate out for grabs on a site like craigslist.

Ditto will be leaving tomorrow.  In the meantime, she's getting the spa treatment here, the works, just like I'd want, if I'd ever been loved.