Monday, April 10, 2017

Unnatural Disaster

I got some more utility shelves.  I had the grand idea they could hold the cages, where I sometimes hold cats, before and after surgery.

They haven't been set up that long.  I have my biggest cage on the bottom shelf, a medium one in the middle, then up top, a cage that needs taken to the dump, fiberglass and useless, really.  It's just hard to get rid of.

This morning I was running late and needed to get five cats to the whs spay neuter clinic.

Magic, Mystic and Mayhem, all black, all from the same Lacomb property manager who brought the two mothers, and in the end, six kittens between them, have been in the big cage, until they can get fixed.

When trying to get two of them out and into live traps, somehow for some reason, the shelving unit's second shelf collapsed.  I'd had my shoulder propped under it already.  Good thing.  It was not a pleasant experience, to try to hold up that five foot long shelf, with cages on it, while also trying to keep the entire unit from collapsing and reach for a hammer to start pounding the brackets back into the steel shelving post holes that hold the heavy gauge wire shelves up. It was a horror indeed.   A disaster ready to happen if the entire shelving unit came apart and fell.  There was screaming.  There was cursing and in the end, I got it fixed so nothing fell.  Then, late, grabbed the cats and headed to the clinic.

I had lots of cats to choose from, for my five reservations today.  I had accidentally trapped a huge brown tabby medium hair male by my car, when I left a set trap there, while loading up before leaving for the county park yesterday morning.

I was up at 6:00 a.m. yesterday, to go trap, and began to load, and went out to put something else in my car and did a double take, seeing him in the trap.  I have no idea who he is.  He's not fixed and very hungry and also tame.  I think he was in my garage a few days.  I'd discovered, Saturday morning, cat prints down my windshield.  I keep my car in the garage!   I thought one of my cats had gotten loose in the garage and did a head count rather than searching the garage.  All mine were present and accounted for, so I dismissed the thought of a cat in the garage.  Well, a cat was in the garage.  This cat!

Isn't he pretty?   
He's been in the bathroom since his untimely trapping, lounging like he owns it, but also a little shy and he will tremble slightly when I pet him before he relaxes and lets himself get really really into it.   He's going to Heartland today, to be on stray hold, and to get neutered and a home, if nobody claims him.

It is possible he jumped in my car somewhere too then out of my car inside my garage.  I just don't know.  But he's safe now and Heartland will take good care of him.

Also, for two months or so, a Siamese has been in and out of my yard, and often sleeping in a shelter out back.  It's entirely odd to see him "come home" and head straight for the shelter, which is full of cozy straw, very weather and cold proof.  Out he'll come later, to jump onto the stray feeder for a snack. Out front he'll head, too, to play in the catnip, then back to "his" little shelter.

Unfortunately, what isn't odd in these parts, is people leaving their cats behind when they move, leaving them on their own, or, just letting their own cat be cared for by someone else.  It's not something I understand.   It's a culture in this county too, which makes it so hard for me.

   I tried to find out if he was owned last month, but finally last night, fed up with all the new cats showing up in my yard, hungry and often unfixed, and because he was pitiful, in the pouring rain, all wet, I lured him into the garage.  He then got towel dried, and later, blow dried, since he was wet, and hugged and made over.  He's a big boy, not young either, but so sweet!  Heartland is taking him too. He'll be on stray hold, then, if no one claims her, be up for adoption.  I'm so grateful to Heartland for this help with him and the big boy.
Turns out its a boy, and has a microchip.  Address on the chip, however, is nowhere near where I live.  Maybe his owners moved.  Heartland will call them.


Remember the Shedd colony?  I trapped 18 there in a few days, got them all fixed.  But I'd seen one without an ear tip.  Actually, the caretakers tell me, there were two.  But low and behold, one of the unfixed ones, being a cat and curious, wandered into the caretaker's house, when the door was ajar and she was on the porch.  So she closed the door!

He went a little nuts.  He slammed into the sliding glass door, but it was closed.  His face met glass!  Stunned, he turned and ran into her bedroom and hid out under her bed.  She called me.  I went down and pulled him out with a fish net and pushed him into a trap.  Curious George, that's his name now, is being fixed today.

Curious George
So besides Simone and McArthur, the cat from the yard and the cat from the garage, and Curious George from Shedd, and Mayhem, Magic and Mystic from Lacomb, I also had big frightened Oden from Halsey, trapped at a stables, and poor Trevor, from Lebanon, who had been found inadvertantly closed into an old trailer on the very same property where Stinky, the long hair gray tabby tux boy, got closed inside a very over stuffed shop a couple weeks back.   Trevor, however, is even luckier than Stinky to have survived his ordeal.  Another curious cat who thought he had found the perfect nap site nearly ended up dead instead.  But now Trevor is getting neutered instead.
Oden from Halsey being fixed tdoay

Lucky Trevor from Lebanon

So it was Mayhem, Magic, Oden, Trevor and Curious George who went up to be fixed.   And it will be Simone and McArthur going to Heartland today.  Mystic's fix will be tomorrow.

And me?   Well, those shelves won't do.  They have to go, and everything will be rearranged.  But not today.  Today is for resting, transporting cats, and taking Aleve.

Today is for smiling.  This morning, I was screaming and cursing and trying to keep a 7 foot tall set of loaded utility shelves from crashing down onto me and the cats.  The unnatural disaster that didn't happen!

Whew!

7 comments:

  1. Wow! I'm so glad you nobody got badly wounded. I hope you aren't terribly sore tomorrow. ~hugs~ Great work, as always! You do so much good. Thank you. I'm sorry it's an uphill battle. Maybe one day mindsets will be changed, if only with the next generation of human beings.

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    Replies
    1. I sure hope things change. Poor kitties, so many everywhere, breeding, unwanted, tossed like trash.

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  2. Thank goodness your superpowers kicked in and you saved yourself and the cats from the unnatural disaster!

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    Replies
    1. Ha, love the way you put that! I'll be ok. Easy rest of the day and tomorrow should be even easier.

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  3. I am so glad that you were able to avert the total disaster. Rest up well. And, as always, thank you.

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    Replies
    1. Those are bad shelves. If one of the brackets falls off, even on one end of one side, it can destabilize all four legs and the whole thing. Not well conceived.

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  4. Anonymous4:11 PM

    Perhaps there is a sign understood by cats, 'Kind lady lives here. Enter to receive kindness'.

    ReplyDelete

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