Tumor Girl

The first time I visited TP2, to trap cats to be fixed, I met Tumor Girl.

I had asked a local cat rescue before going to TP2 if there was anything pertinent I should know about that trailer park, since they live in that town but its about an hour from where I live.   They said they'd been trying to get a cat with a tumor to help.

So when I trapped tumor girl that day I called them up, thinking they'd come get her.  But, they said they had no place to hold her and no appointment set up for her.  So I let her go.

I couldn't let her go in my mind, however.   Last week I sat up there six hours, hoping she would show up and go under the drop trap.  It was not a pleasant six hours.  She did show very late but would not be tricked again to go under the drop trap.

When I went up Saturday to get cats for the clinic Sunday, the residents were to have four ready.  I even talked to the manager before the trip up, who said she had talked to all the people with the cats and they said they had them ready.  But when I arrived, nobody was ready at all, with the cats in question, and she hadn't talked to any of them.  I was not happy and fired off about wasting my time and money, when I am just trying to improve their own trailer park and help the cats and why was everyone so apathetic and nobody would help.

I did get two of the four cats in the end.   But I think that outburst may have triggered the call I got Sunday.  All the cats had been dropped off at the clinic in Portland to be fixed.  I was exhausted, having barely slept the night before, and sitting in a parking lot, hoping to nap some.  Then the phone rang.

Someone at the trailer park was very excited and had tumor girl in their bathroom and expected me to come get her.  I told them I was clear up in Portland, waiting on 13 cats getting fixed, but I would try to find someone to pick her up.   The original group who said they were after her, whose director lives very close to that trailer park, did go pick her up.

I picked her up yesterday morning, from that group, in Sweet Home, still totally exhausted, when returning the now fixed cats to three different trailer parks in Sweet Home.  She was howling piteously and did so until I got to TP1, to pick up a carrier on the way home.  I figured she might just be hungry, and began feeding her.  She was starved!

I flea treated her and caged her in the garage, once home, as the exhaustion overtook me, but I faced a mountain of laundry and cleaning traps, carriers still.  She instantly stole my heart.   Tumor girl, whose real name is Smoothie, is a love bug and so happy to be getting lots of food and love.  You should have seen her discover the soft pile blankee just for her, to curl up in.

Once 24 hours had passed, and her fleas were good and dead, I moved her to the bathroom.  She's going to Heartland Thursday to have that thing hanging off her chin removed.  And her bent over ears cleaned of mites.     Smoothie then is going to her very own indoor only home.  Can you imagine?  The girl who has had to live under trailers and sleep in the berry vines and compete with hungry strays and big boys for scarce food, will have her own home.

Her ears are bent with hematomas from scratching at ear mites.

But let's hope for the best for Smoothie, the tumor girl, who suffered silently and patiently for too long.