Odds and Ends

Helping cats is an up and down experience and not for everyone.

How much do I wish people would practice personal responsibility and fix their cats?   Well I think you probably know the answer to that.

I have been stymied at finishing one Waterloo situation by the colony caretaker herself, who always has many excuses why I can't come up now, to trap any left unfixed or collect a mother's kittens.  They will suffer and grow up wild, if they live through the winter.  With as many cats as she has, you would think she'd be raring to finish the job.  But she acts now as if I'm bothering her and the enemy instead of taking responsibility and getting it finished so no more are born there to suffer and turn wild and live short difficult lives.

Dozens of hours, a great deal of money and worry and work has gone into fixing many there already and placing a dozen relinquished kittens.  And yet she won't finish it out.  It's not like she is bearing any of the cost or labor.  Why not get it done?

On another front, little Gibson, from the Sweet Home colony, the only kitten alive there, has died.  He died suddenly, in foster care, at least loved and warm and fed in his end.  He likely died of worm overload.   He was severely dehydrated with huge belly when I took him up to Animal Rescue and Care Fund.  Even the act of worming a kitten engorged in twisted knots of roundworms can kill them.

R.I.P Gibson

I was finally contacted by that colony caretaker about returning Sashi, the big male Siamese, fixed Friday.  I had become worried he was being dumped on me, as I could get no response from any of the numbers I had for them.  But I did finally get a response and so he is going home shortly.

Finally, after months, I got a borrowed carrier returned.  I have tried to get it back since loaning to a Sweet Home trailer park woman, who had an unfixed female.   The first attempt to get it back, I went clear to Sweet Home to get it, and was told by the woman's mother, I'd have to come back, since she didn't know where it was.

On the second attempt again in Sweet Home, I was told by the woman who borrowed it, that the carrier was in her mother's truck.

In the third attempt to get it back, she was to meet me at the Waterloo store, as I was returning cats to the county park.  I contacted her at 4:00 to meet me at 5:00 p.m. there, but she never showed up.  I waited half an hour.  Later she said she lost track of time.  Really, between 4:00 and and 4:30, when she would have left?

On the fourth attempt, I just asked KATA to go pick it up and they did and I now have it back, months later.   You would think if you help someone out to that extent they would make every effort to get borrowed equipment back to you, and you would not have to travel clear to Sweet Home and try, time and time again, to get your own things back, from someone you helped.    You would think people would have some respect, some decency about it, some fair play.

I spent 12 hours Friday night out sitting in a car on a country road, traps set along a stretch of that road, hoping against hope to come up with a mother and her kitten, allegedly seen dumped out of a cardboard box there a few weeks back by a man on his way to work.  Allegedly it was a Hispanic woman with kids in her car who committed this act of intense cruelty, dumping out a young calico mom and four kittens.  Allegedly he got the license plate and reported it to police.

Since then someone spotted the kittens huddled in the grass by the road.  Someone else grabbed two of them and put them in a carrier, but they shrieked and the mom and other two kittens ran into the brush, never to be seen again, until last Wednesday, when one of the remaining kittens was found dead on the road about 200 feet south of the dump site.  The fate of the mother cat, a young calico, and the other kitten are unknown.  In 12 hours, sitting there, in the dark, I saw no cats at all and nothing touched any of the traps or any of the marker plates of food I put out along the road.

I found wood rat nests galore as dawn came and light returned and I could see.

Dumping cats exhibits utmost cruelty.  they don't know what to do, where to go, where to find shelter or food or water, and often die slowly, one by one.  Was the woman, the alleged dumper, even contacted by police?  Was the incident really even reported? I don't know.

They may have all been saved had those who initially spotted them immediately placed food and water out for them, but this did not happen.  All fault however rests with the person who dumped them.

Loo and River will be tested and chipped, then go to the same woman who took in Niners and Whisper.  I'd had another foster lined up, in Portland, but it fell through, when she took on other kittens.  I'll miss the pair, from the briar patch at Waterloo county park, but happy they will move on and have a chance at a real home.  Testing, chipping will likely cost $25 each, but for them to get out of here, and a chance at homes, its worth it.

Today I pick up two more cats, more of Bootsy's kittens, but from a previous litter and adopted by yet another camp host, to be fixed tomorrow at Heartland.  Today I return the Siamese male.  The rest of today, after that, is for me, to catch up on cleaning, sleep, and shopping.

Happy Sunday.

Fix your pets people!  It's a matter of personal responsibility and kindness.