Bye Bye Jake

Jake

Jake took a road trip with me again yesterday.   He seemed excited sitting in my carrier by the car, outside.  He's a good boy.  He acts feral, but I know he really isn't, that once, as a cute kitten at least, somebody loved him.  They did not get him fixed, and likely he roamed off looking for love years ago and became lost, or his people left him or kicked him out, when he was not a cute kitten anymore and maybe spray marked in the house.

This is the way it is with many unfixed free roaming males.

So Jake ended up at a trailer park and one resident, a guy, didn't appreciate him fighting with other males on his porch, so he trapped him, and, according to the volunteer who dropped him off here, called deputies, thinking they'd take care of it, i.e., kill Jake for him.

Instead, KATA was called and the volunteer picked him up and no one was really sure if anyone was feeding in the park, or it would be allowed, and if they would agree to get the rest of the cats fixed.  I hope they do, but in the meantime, with the uncertainity surrounding Jakes freshly neutered persona, Jake went to a nice safe place to live out his days.

Odd Cat Out took him in.  They're usually full but had a rare opening.

I drove Jake up yesterday.  They set him up in a cage so he can get acquainted and the other cats can with him.  He did not look scared, just tentative, and very interested.

I saw some old friends, like Princess, from the Corvallis homeless camps, where I got 52 cats and kittens fixed, and removed most of the cats eventually.

Princess, formerly of the Corvallis homeless camps.

It was hot.  It's going to get hotter.  I spent a few hours, helping the director remove nails from boards and breaking fence boards off 2x4's.  She's getting vinyl flooring in the sanctuary, and the old fence boards will be used as paneling along the bottom parts of the of the old barn.  She's using recycled fence boards, but they have to be pried off and nails removed.  This is tedious hot work but it needed done and had to be done because the property owner needed the piles of fence pieces moved.  I stayed til the job was done and both of us were hot and filthy and exhausted.  I didn't mind.  She's helped me out so often in the past.

Goodbye and good luck, Jakey boy.

One other action yesterday, took me by surprise.  A neighbor came out to talk to me by the mailbox.  This neighbor never talks to me.  She said she had some cans and would I want them.  I said "ok".  It was not a large bag of cans, maybe $3 or $4, and I was about to leave with them, when she said, "there's a cat, really sick and skinny, orange tabby and white, who poops by our fence, and can you trap him".  Then I knew why she'd spoken to me.  I became sulky, knowing the can offering might have been disingenuous, to leverage me into an expensive cat venture.

Initially I took the cans, but stewed and stewed and then took them back and left them in the couple's driveway.  I don't like bribes or tiny gifts with expensive strings attached.  I don't know for sure that's what this was, but it sure felt like it.

 I don't like the fact my neighbors do not like cats, and want me to remove, care for and find homes for any cat free roaming the block.  There's nothing I can do about it, however.  They must think I can do all of it free or that I'm rich or they just don't care and want the cats gone.  I don't know.  But after years, I just try to avoid my neighbors.

The upside of this is, the cat described is possibly the cat I already removed and is long gone and in a new home in Corvallis after being threatened by another neighbor who does not know I got him out to safety and is friends with the neighbors of yesterdays' contact.  Neither do they know the poop they said belonged to the cat might be from a small dog that is walked right by their yard often off leash.   I didn't bring that up and just came home and stewed then tried to get over it, succeeded in the end, and took Jake up to OCO.

Nonetheless, just in case, I set a trap last night and, as suspected, it was empty this a.m.  I'll keep watch, just in case there is another free roamer that looks just like the extremely healthy not sick at all and certainly not skinny cat now gone and safe from this neighborhood.

This is free roaming unfixed male time of year. They often get in trouble, get diseases from fighting one another, can't find food or water and die in all kinds of horrible ways.  If this is a very sick cat roaming through, he likely won't survive the next five days of extreme heat we are getting in the valley.  It's a sad fact of life for unfixed free roaming males.  At least Jake won't suffer this sort of fate now.