She'd Had Kittens

The tragedy of the complex cats, abandoned to starve, compounds.  The female had been very pregnant as I tried to trap them, hindered terribly by the all night escapades of tenants in the apartment right by where I was trapping.  Tonight I'd like to wring their necks.

The two girls were fixed today.  Sadly, I was told the females' uterus indicated she'd recently had kittens.  However, she was not lactating.  The kittens could have been born dead, due to the starvation state of their mother.  She could have walked away from them, with no milk, due to starvation, and high stress, due to her abandonment and starvation.   Or, they could have survived and she got in the trap shortly after they were born.  They're dead now, if the latter was the case.

Makes me want to cry.  I tried to get the manager to go under there, or let me go under there, to search for possible kittens.  he said he would but he never did.  That whole complex is awful.  I can't think of one good thing about it,   I am tired tonight.  And I want to cry over it all.

Somewhere out there Hoss is starving and alone, if tenants didn't kill him.

Such apathy and lack of compassion, among tenants who fed the cats and the tenants who live there now is unfathomable.

Unspeakable.  Heartless.  Cold.

I had a long day.  After dropping off the two girls at the FCCO, to be fixed, I headed back to the barn, where the other 8 from the complex are being held.  Since I did not know if I could actually get in, I didn't take Slinko up.

Once at the barn, I found few supplies to clean with.  Off I went, and bought paper towels, plastic bags, gloves, Clorox wipes and even 10 bags of wood pellet fuel.  I couldn't find any litter.

I'd taken up some wet cat food and one bag of dry food.

My friend with the barn is overwhelmed and running in the red.  I could not drum up any donations to help cover the costs for caring for the apartment cats.  Not here.   Where I live.

I cleaned then, and made calls.  I called the woman who, with some friends, took in 8 kittens from the cemetery colony I trapped last summer, plus five ringworm and flea ridden kittens from up in Lebanon.  One Lebanon kitten had a horribly bulging swollen eye.  She called me back.  I was so grateful.  And on the fly, on the run, arranged to meet me at the FCCO clinic, when I picked up the two girls, to take on the two boy kittens from the complex.  I was happy.  They'd get a chance and that'd be two less cats for the barn woman to care for.

I transferred them out of the cage they were in at the barn.  They were in the same cage as three other complex cats---Suzy, Booboo and Teen Tux girl.  I did this with the help of the barn woman, who had just arrived, then headed off back to the FCCO clinic, with the boys, to pick up the two adult females and to await the kitten foster lady.

However, the kitten foster lady got stuck in traffic.  Friday traffic jams and wrecks.  I waited over an hour for her to arrive after picking up the girls at 3:45 p.m..  Then she called.  I had only four minutes left on my cell phone.  She said to take them to a downtown Portland vet clinic.  I told her to give me directions quickly, since I had just a couple minutes before my phone would go dead, out of minutes.  She told me to take the Fremont Bridge and the Burnside exit then gave me cross streets near the clinic.

Oh right.  Me, a rural person, now expected to navigate Portland on almost no directions.  Ok.  We rural people can navigate by the stars, you know.  Except it was daylight.  We can see through the daylight to the stars, by squinting really hard!  Ok.

No matter.  I struck out.  I magically stumbled into the Burnside exit.  And took it.  From there, I didn't know where to go, really, except I knew the general direction of where the clinic was located and headed that way.  however with one way streets and rush hour traffic, I couldn't find a way to get there.  So I stopped and asked a guy on the sidewalk.  He was happy to tell me how to get there.  I made it.

Trish arrived soon after.  The kittens were tested (negative) and her fosterer arrived, a bright and progressive young woman intent on one day becoming a vet.  She handled them with ease.  My dumb cell was now dead.  No minutes.  I asked smart phone people to check traffic.  Red lines appeared on the route to I5.  I waited it out and finally left.

North of Gervais, traffic ground to a dead halt.  I exited at the last minute, took the Gervais exit.  I wandered country roads to Kaiser, then missed the left turn back towards the freeway and roamed through Salem until I encountered a familiar street.  Commercial.  I know Commercial. I used to take cats to be fixed to a clinic on Commercial. I headed south on Commercial until finally it merged with I5, which was unoccluded in traffic by then.

I got home.  I still have the girls and I have Slinko and I hope I can find them a place to call home.

I feared for my car much of the trip back.  It behaves ok on short trips.  But if its running too long, the hot rubber smell starts in.  It starts acting like its starving for oxygen, makes noises and I worry I won't make it home.  My car is nearly done for, I'm pretty sure.

But the two complex kittens are going to have real lives.  Makes me feel warm inside.

Mama Tuxes kittens are dead. There's nothing I can do about that now.  I can curse that complex to high heaven but it won't change anything that went on there.

I've got to find a way to get Poppa's president, now running that sanctuary, a truckload of Costco Purple bag dry cat food, cases and cases of wet food and tons of paper towels, to relieve the burden she bears of caring for so many cats, many from the mid valley.  How to do that.  She deserves the help.