Downpours

Life has gotten to me lately.   

Severe pain from inflamed neck and facial nerves has had me losing a lot of sleep.  Being alone all the time doesn't help much.  Neither does the constant rain.

I've been trying to trap this one colony of cats left behind by people who moved, then bred.  Now the house they moved from is for sale, although I can't imagine who would buy a house right on the railroad tracks.

I've only caught two of the real group.  And three tame cats.  One was Maurice, but he turned out to be owned.  At least he got fixed.  One less fighting male in that area, which is a very bad area for cats.  So many unfixed, abandoned unfixed and free roaming.  So darn sad can make a person cry and wonder why.

Maurice, now back home after he got into a trap, and got himself fixed as a result.

Astro, a white boy, was taken in by Heartland when I took him to be fixed.

Then there was Astro and Heartland took him in.

Then I trapped a black tux, one of several, and it is so hard to know if a cat is owned or not.  Owned cats often are treated more like after thoughts by their owners, who let them free roam and others bear the responsibility of care or wondering if they are or aren't owned.

Mad Max.  Looks just like my cat Panda.  You can see he's beat up some too.

One of the two colony feeders calls him Mad Max.  That feeder has three more males unfixed a few blocks from the colony, where she lives.  She would not give me her number, but took mine and said she'd call me, so I could come leave her carriers, and then come back to pick up at least two of the males to be fixed Monday.   She never called or did so during the time my phone was dead.  I drove down this morning, with carriers, but no answer at the door.  It would certainly be helpful to the neighborhood to get those three fixed also.

I sat there all day yesterday, in off and on downpours, exhausted from little sleep the night before, due to pain from an inflamed neck and facial nerve.  I wanted badly to help those poor cats, but with all the free roaming owned cats and nobody in that area willing to watch traps or take an active role, it seems as if it will fall apart.

When two women stopped by, in the dark, and walked across the empty yard of the for sale house, under which some of the abandoned cats live, I went to tell them about the trap set to the side of the house.

They said they were making an offer and hope to own the house but that they would block off access to the cats and they'd have to find somewhere else to call home. They did not say it in a vindictive way.

 I was exhausted already and had asked if they lived in the area, that they must know how bad it is for animals here, with abandonment and overpopulation.  They shook their heads they didn't know.  They were from out of state.  "You'll find out" is all I said.

There's a pickup there today.  I do worry for the cats, with them so obvious and the frenetic factor in selling a house that might put those cats left in big trouble, if they might get in the way of a house sale and money changing.

The issue in that area is trains, on both sides, up on Salem avenue, they roar by so often you can't talk to someone outside long before there's another racing through, then the other tracks, not used so much but nonetheless more trains, more noise.  Just sitting there yesterday I was so happy I don't live there because of the constant roar of trains, the vibrations they cause, the horns blown.  It would drive me nuts fast.  This is a slow north bound train.

The ones going the other direction tend to be going very fast although in the clip below you can barely tell because its so dark.  You can just see the train wheels in the car lights waiting.

I caught a big male last night.  He turned out to be already neutered, but is grossly underweight for his size, with lots of loose skin, like he's lost weight.  He's in my bathroom.  I have ads up for him.  I hope I can get him into one of the two shelters in this area.  Safehaven charges to take a cat, so I'll try Heartland first to save on money.

I'd seen him there repeatedly, at night, in the mornings, coming out from under a house.   Pretty darn sad.

Then I caught another big unknown male, brought him home. This one was fat and very friendly.   But then the neighbor who has helped said she thinks its her father in laws.  He was supposed to keep his cat inside while the trapping went on, but he'd let the cat out.   They came and got him.  By then I could not drive I was so tired.

I left a trap in my driveway last night by accident, too tired, forgot it.  I had set it down still set, from over at the location where I'd been trapping.   this morning I went out to feed the birds, nothing in it.  An hour and a half later, I go outside, and something is hissing and growling at me.  I look up and there's some huge tabby tux in the trap and he's soaking because he even overturned it and its pouring outside.  So I got him into the garage and set him up with a heater on him.  He's another big boy in trouble.  He's got a huge bite wound hole in one ear.  Other fight wounds also.

Going to bed now to try to catch up on sleep.  My baby Vision is on her way out.   I curled up with her this morning before dealing with all the other crap of life, like the daily cleaning and mopping.

Last night when I should have been in bed, I checked online.  There had been some huge ta do over a year old female who got pregnant and was having difficulty delivering.  So she'd been taken to the ER vet and the cost was staggering for an emergency spay (kittens all dead).  Over a thousand bucks.  Which was being raised here and there, which to me is shocking because I can barely get a couple bags of cat food donated a month often.  It's nice she could get so much donated for her cat.  But since the woman claimed she was fostering the cat, I asked what group she was fostering for.  This seemed logical, since if she was fostering for a group, they would likely chip in on the cost.  Instead this was viewed as an attack and I was badly shamed online.

The online social media world is not one which I navigate well.   Donations become a popularity contest and I already know I'm not popular.   The shaming for a question I asked innocently enough hit me hard in my exhausted state and I began clicking like a zombie, as I sometimes do, when way beyond tired, just sit there dazed, click, click, clicking.

Don't go online when you're exhausted, I tell myself.  But now I tell myself "stay off social media".   It's a brutal world where things cannot be taken back and what I might think is logic or humor, others won't.

I don't know if I can keep the nonprofit open without being "popular" online.  I like to help cats, mostly in the dark, out of sight, me and the cats.  I don't even like to trap during daylight hours, feel exposed, uncomfortable.  I like the night and happily enough, the other outcasts, like abandoned or wild cats, do also.

Trying to be popular and liked on social media is not something I am comfortable doing.  But that is how you get donations.   It's probably quite telling that a person who did not spay her cat got close to $1000 in donations to help her cat live, with emergency surgery and I struggle to even feed the farm colony cats.  It's not a good sign and I don't think I can change to be some smiling wondrous popular social media cat person. It's just not me.