Bitter People

I've been trying to get the old lady who feeds cats at that trailer park to cooperate in getting the rest fixed.  She won't.  Today I asked her straight up if she's ever going to let me complete the task.  She said "no."

I said you're only hurting those cats.  She said she feels the other people in the park should do it, that she's done her share.  I said you're the one who feeds the cats.  Letting them breed more will only make matters worse for them and ultimately they'll die.  She said "they probably will" but that the neighbors should help out, not her, that its not her fault.

Who cares who's fault it is, I said, they need fixed, and you're feeding them.  It's not costing you a thing to get them fixed.  But she is so bitter about her neighbors there's no talking to her.  She's so bitter she'd let the cats she claims to love be harmed over it.

 She also thinks she's done all the work to get them fixed.  That's a good one!

I have not detected her doing one thing to help when I've gone out.  In fact, quite the opposite.  She often slept while I trapped.  Her daughter once donated $30 for gas, but put it in the old woman's account to give me, and instead the old woman pocketed $10 of it and gave me $20.  I never told her daughter that.

I guess creating more unwanted cats out there is her revenge on the neighbors.  Or something.  She never did want them fixed.

All those nights, sitting out there, all the cat food I bought her, to appease her, because every time I'd go out she'd make it so hard, bitch so much about everybody and everything, try to stop me, feed the cats anyhow,  my stomach would knot with the stress.  It was her daughter who had asked KATA for help getting them fixed.  And it was handed off to me, when I wanted to feel useful, trapping again.

I have great disappointment over it all.  She would not give up the kittens either.   It's a tragic thing when people are so consumed with who to blame they can't just drop it to solve the problem and be done with it.

I went into cat wrangling, rounding up cats to be fixed, out of a disgust I developed for those who sit around crying as volunteers at shelters or over their computers in constant social media posts over the endless stream of suffering from all the unwanted cats and kittens being born and thrown out and turned over to shelters that would kill them by the thousands.   It was almost as if some people enjoy wallowing in sadness and if they can stew in it, like a religion, even better.

Why not do something about it, rather than cry over it.

Then you meet people like this old lady and its the same thing.  If all the cats were fixed, she could not cling to that bitterness over her neighbors not helping, as she sees it.  It's be a dead topic then.

The attitude still disgusts me.

She has some of my things, like a litter box I loaned her, a cinder block I use to weight the drop trap, a couple of carriers. I'll not get anything I loaned her back. You can't do enough for that old lady.    I'll forfeit my things to avoid exposing myself to that toxic place again.

The cats will be harder to leave behind in my mind.