19 Local Cats Fixed Yesterday at S/nipped. 17 More Trapped While There.

I took a big load of cats to S/nipped yesterday.  Figure I better round up as many as I can before THE END, which is coming soon.  No, not the Mayan calandar end of the world.  The end of Poppa Inc. and my ability to do anything.  That date is coming too soon.  What will I do then?  I don't know.  Won't be pretty.  But until then, I can still make a difference.

There are a lot of nonprofit clinics out there now.  Like the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon clinic and several Humane Alliance clinics here in Oregon, that are low cost.  But they still cost money.  So the cats and colonies whose owners don't have the means (physical or financial) to get them fixed, or the brains, they are the cats contributing to overpopulation and always will, unless there are funds out there to get them fixed anyhow, regardless of whether a person can pay out a dime or not.  Solving feline overpopulation takes this sort of funding and people like me.  We can all dig our heads deep into the sand over it.  Truth is, unless there are grants to fund spay neuter and people rounding up those cats that otherwise will never get fixed, overpopulation will grind on unabated.

So I took down nine cats from Albany.  Seven came from one household.  I'd seen his ad on craigslist for them and called him up.  He was overjoyed to get some help.  At first he thought he'd have five.  But then someone who was going to adopt two of the kittens, after Thanksgiving they told him, never showed back  up.  So all seven were fixed.  Three girls.  Four boys.  He got the first cat, he said, when he worked at a dairy and saw a hawk carrying something off, but then dropped it from the sky.  He ran over and found a little kitten.  He took her home, nursed her back to health.  Then she reproduced more kittens!

Jasmine, fixed yesterday at S/nipped in Coos Bay, a wonderful clinic, a blessing to the animals and the community!

Mary, another lucky Albany female fixed and vaccinated yesterday at S/nipped.

Whiskers, big sweet black tux male, now fixed.

From left, Midnight, Stripes, Bandit and Trixie (the only girl), all Albany cats, all fixed yesterday.

Four of the seven Albany cats from one household fixed yesterday.

I had another Albany male lined up.  The woman said she found him starved and freezing and was going to keep him.  But when I arrived to pick him up to be fixed, she wasn't even home.  When she finally answered her phone, she said he'd run away two days before and she didn't know where he was.  I had a number of someone else needing cats fixed.  I never like to go short to a clinic, so I called this other person up and she had two young males needing fixed.  She also has a four week old kitten a friend rescued after she witnessed the occupant of a car in Millersburg hurl her from a window.

This Albany boy was fixed yesterday.

And so was this one!

So nine cats from Albany were fixed.  But I also took along nine Lebanon cats and one from Lacomb.

Five more came from the same little group of rentals where Blueberry and her brothers and sister were born in a junkpile.  The mother cat from one house had just had kittens when I first went to help Blueberry and her siblings.  Then the mother cat and her kittens got coccidia and became very ill, but now are over it and the two remaining kittens and their mother, Nemisis, were fixed yesterday, along with two kittens a neighbor just adopted off craigslist.

Milo got fixed.  So did his brother, Pepper, but I didn't get a photo of him.  Pepper is black with a half length tail.

Nemisis, who is beautiful and a wonderful kitty, was fixed yesterday, along with her two kittens, Zeus and Persiphony.

Zeus and Persephony, two kittens, both fixed yesterday.

Then, fellow cat wrangler Veronica found two more females in her street, that "came with a house" someone bought to remodel, who needed fixed.  So they were.  They are both so gorgoues!

Riri and Durf, sisters, with strange names, were spayed yesterday.  .I don't know which is which at this point.

Then, another area I've been working at "fixing" in Lebanon, had a stray female with kittens, last time I checked back with two girls, living with their grandmother, caring for her, in extreme poverty.  They also know all the animals in the area and try to watch out for them.  The female had kittens on a neighbors porch. She was abandoned, with other cats, by a neighbor, when they moved.  She's a total sweetheart, an abbytabby, eager to please, just breaks your heart the way people treat animals.  Well this neighbor is taking care of her, even though they too are dirt poor.  They had one of her four kittens left so Cinderella, the sweet mom, who starts kneading when you notice her, and her one kitten, Shadow, were fixed yesterday.

Cinderella the great and wonderful kitty, who has been through a lot, at least now fixed.

Shadow, one of Cinderella's kittens.

Last but not least, there was a Lacomb boy fixed.

What a sweet boy and now won't be getting or spreading bad diseases.

Before I made the trip to S/nipped, which means getting up at 3:30 a.m. and leaving for the clinic by 4:30 a.m., S/nipped's director had asked if I wanted to trap a colony while down waiting on the cats to be fixed.  I said "Sure!"  And why not!

So, once there, once the 19 cats were checked in, I loaded up S/nipped's brand new tomahawk traps and even their tomahawk drop trap and headed off down Coos River to a colony there.  The woman has no working car, lives way out, has to ride with someone else to work and is very poor, as so many people are now.  The grant S/nipped has, for fixing ferals, is a life saver for so many people and cats!  The woman was at work, but had given eager permission for someone to be on her property to catch cats.  So that's where I spent the day, hunkered down as showers rolled in and vanished just as quickly.  I read a book I had with me, snapped photos through the windshield, watched cats and yes, it was kind of boring, but I don't mind such boredom at all.

The cats ran around in a large area.  I caught that gray one, but not the black one.

I caught four torti point siamese mix females.  Two were muted torti points.  This one I drop trapped--my first ever use of a tomahawk drop trap.  I like some features and some I don't like.  It worked well though.

This was the second classic torti point siamese I caught.

This was the first classic torti point I caught at the colony.

This was the second muted torti point I caught yesterday at the Coos River colony.

I caught 11 cats quickly, then took them back to S/nipped, returned to the colony, caught six more, but had to get back to pick up the 19 cats I'd brought.  Those 17 I caught at the Coos River colony are being fixed today, as I write this.  I didn't catch all the cats.

This blue point looks to be smiling!

Half hour later, not smiling so much, when I caught the same cat!

I caught a half grown blue point too.

I caught two grays.  This was the second one! 

And this the first!

I caught this big black male.  Nothing but attitude!

Not so much attitude once trapped!

And I caught the black male's rival, the dominant chocolate point.  I watched them chase each other, puff up and face off, growling and snarling.  Today they're getting neutered together and will recover side by side.  Give Peace a Chance! Neuter Everybody!

And I caught two other chocolate points!  This one.

And this one!

I also caught two orange boys.  One small.  One large.

Young orange tabby caught.

Big huge older orange tabby caught.

And I caught three kittens-two all black ones, including this one.

And a torti kitten, along with another black one.

On the way back from the clinic, headed home with the 19 local cats, freshly fixed, I got stalled in a long line of traffic just north of North Bend, for over an hour, waiting for a wreck to be cleared.

Line of cars waiting on the wreck.

I talked to the cats, put Vicks Vapor Rub on my face, so I couldn't smell cat poop and pee so strongly, crossed my legs since I needed to pee, and hoped for the best.  A huge wind and rainstorm had struck also. The trees above the line of cars waiting on the wreck were thrashing back and forth in the wind.  I thought, "Be really lousy luck if now a tree fell on my car."  But no trees fell, and despite extreme downpours and heavy winds, I finally walked in my door and greeted the cats here happily, at nearly midnight.

The miseries, suffering and horrors of feline overpopulation are evident to all those whose heads are not firmly buried in the sand.  You can be part of a solution or you can keep your head buried and eyes averted. The miseries caused by feline overpopulation are mirrored in our own species.  Unfortunately, humans don't see themselves as animals.  Religions that advocate against birth control have caused massive human suffering.

What a grand day it was yesterday!

S/nipped is going for a grant and they need help getting it.  The people workingn this clinic are diehard animal lovers believing they can change things for animals in southern Oregon.  Vote for them once every day.  Challenge ends soon, so spread the word and lets get them votes.Click here to go vote.  Type in S/nipped and vote every single day!