An Urge to Run

I want to run away again.  I'm having those dreams.

I feel the burdens of the world on me here.  I feel it alone.

All these requests for help, all burdened onto me, me with no money, or anything really.  I want to run to somewhere sunny and kind where the people don't look like vampires drooling to suck my blood.

I'm tired.   I got sucked in again, and I should have resisted maybe.  Too much on me, my soul, my heart, my wallet.

I feel pale.

I returned the three adult females to the colony after the feeder man requested it.  He was afraid they belonged to neighbors.  Which neighbors would that be, I think to myself, the ones that never clean up their yard and won't answer the door and have empty boxes and trash out front too?  Or the neighbors who let their cats eat at his place, so they don't have to feed them?  Those people?  Just who, I think.

But he's earnest and honest and I return them.

I take the five kittens up to the group taking them in.  Except, they first want them tested for FIV and Feline Leukemia and direct me to a vet clinic up there.  I wait over an hour, almost an hour and a half, for it to be done.  I'm nervous the whole time because I can't remember for sure if I turned my oven off at home.

I think I turned it off but what if I didn't, and the fire trucks are there and all my cats have burned to death and I'm now homeless with my entire family dead.  I think that off and on the entire time.  I try not to think it but I can't help myself.

A vet there has grabbed the smoke black kitten and loves him.  I'm excited thinking she'll adopt him.  Finally she decides she'll adopt him.  That is, until the test results come back.  Four of the five kittens have light positive blue dots for Felk.  The dots appear only in the last seconds of the ten minute snap test and are very light and faded.   The black smoke boy kitten is the only negative.

I think "Oh good, the vet will still take him."  The test results hit me like catching a lead frisbee.

This is the black smoke male kitten, before I took them up, before they were all tested.  He's the negative of the five.  

I have no idea what will happen now, if the group that was going to take them still will take them, if I'll have to pay for all these five tests now, or what.  I load the four positive kittens back in my car and am starting to drive out when there is a knock on the window.  It's the vet.  I think for a second, just a second, she's going to say the tests were a mistake, they were all negative.  But no.  She's shoving the smoke black boy kitten through the window into my arms, saying she won't take him because maybe in two months he'll test positive.

I drive off just dead in my whole brain and body.

I drive on out to the place where they've said they'll take them.  The woman who runs it refuses now.  I say, "they should be euthanized, there's nowhere for them to go" and she squeals in opposition, but won't take them.

Before anyone knew four were possibly positive, people made over them, but the moment they were considered possibly leukemia kittens, people go quiet, don't want to touch them, act like they're lepers and I am a leper too, because they're with me.  They're still cute little kittens who want loved and to play, that's all.

My friend takes them.  For now.  Says she'll hold them in a cage in her garage.  For now.  They'll likely test negative in a month or two, but they won't get handled and will remain feral for life, after two months in a cage in a garage, alone.   Right now there's no other solutions.  Damn those snap tests.  I don't even trust them anymore.

I know very well they'll be negative in two months.  The costs of retesting, its so much crap, like its orchestrated or something.  See how I mistrust?

The two muted calico sisters, abandoned by more Albany assholes, are leaving for California soon.  California.   Yay.  Far far away from this dismal little shit town.  I'm so embarrassed for this town and so many terrible horrible instances of animal abuse and abandonment.  I'm always begging for help with another horror here. In this little town.  There's something really really wrong here.  That's all I can say tonight.