Day From Hell

Yesterday was not a good day.

I'd been tired out, again from knee pain, just bad enough to keep me from easily sinking into sleep.
So I had resorted to Nyquilizing.  Good old NyQuil.  However, I can only take a tiny sip of that stuff and if I accidentally get more than a tiny sip, I end up with terrible effects.  I wasn't paying much attention when I took a slug from the bottle in the cupboard night before last and took in way too much in the swallow.  I knew I was in for it.

It turns me to a dazed irritable depressed nutcase the day after.  Worse than any hangover.  Usually I can sleep off the effects but not if I take too big a swallow.  I try to stay in, away from people, and offline after such a mistake.  I'm not fit for human company.

Took me all day to arrange for cats also, just four, to be fixed today. It was frustrating to wait for calls that were never returned.  Especially in the state I was in, from over consumption of NyQuil night before.  But I finally got that together.  I ended up with five cats to fill the four spay/neuter reservations I had at Heartland.  I took all five over this morning and thankfully Heartland is able to do all five.

One of Cora's kittens is off being fixed right now, along with four from a KATA referral, on 19th.  There may be more there needing fixed, but we did get four, and I was assisted in trapping by a boy who lives there who is very polite, has excellent grammar and also is obviously quite intelligent.  This always helps.

Cora, a stray mom, who showed up pregnant outside Albany, was fixed on Monday.  She has four kittens now approaching weight grade for spay/neuter but only one, Lolatai, a girl, who looks like her mom, made the grade for today.

Lolatai is the most darling kitten ever, I thought to myself, last night, carrying her around.

In getting four from the 19th street situation, I first took one of the tame girls off, after setting traps and showing the boy how to set them.   But after that, it took a long while to hear back, by text, that another was caught and when I did, it was the neighbors boy cat.   Never fear, the boy let him out and reset the trap.  Lacking newspaper, to reline it, he used notebook paper.

Gata is a tame torbi tux girl being spayed today.

Somewhere around 9:00, he caught the gray tabby they call Calli, allegedly also a girl.  I went and retrieved her.  Now they had just one trap left set, because I had only four reservations and now had two of their cats and a kitten.

Cali looks a little worse for wear, with fight ear tears and one clouded eye, that would make me think male, but the boy swore its a dominant girl.

I went to bed, but woke to the ding of texts a little after 2:00 a.m.   Usually night texts don't awaken me.   The boy was asking if I could possibly come now, but it was ok if I couldn't.  He said there was a cat in the trap and the mama kitty, a calico, he had lured into the house, but she was freaking out and trying to get out.  I texted back that I'd get dressed and be right over.  His mom doesn't speak English, and was working last night somewhere.  She is a cheerful person, I had surmised when I met her earlier, and we tried badly to communicate, each speaking our own language. We got the gist of each other's meanings.  But I dealt with the boy, who speaks English better than I do, for catching the cats.

I can't disappoint kids, especially when they're helping out like this, learning how to trap, why fixing is important, plus I guess I feel they should think adults will get things done, not all be useless world wreckers.  No kidding, all that went through my sloppy brain as I donned clothing and slogged to my car at 2:30 in the morning.

I went into the house to find a cat literally climbing the walls.  But she would pause in her panic, and it was in a pause I was able to get her by the scruff solidly and carry her, in a trance as she was, to the trap I'd brought and successfully get her into it.  I really did not think I would be able to do that, when I saw her and how fearful she was.   He carried the big trap out, with the other cat, a skinny long hair brown tabby, and I carried out the calico in the small trap.  Now I had four from there.  He'd run out of the bait I had left, having again caught the neighbors cat, so caught Smidge, as I dubbed the long hair brown tabby, with an old ham bone.

This is Smidge, the cat who was in the trap baited with a ham bone.

This is Mama K, the girl tearing their house apart, whom I scruffed to contain.

I fell back into bed, once home and did not wake until long after the alarm had begun to buzz.  It buzzed a good 15 minutes before I woke up, twisted in some dream about the buzzing noise.

Thankfully Heartland is fixing all five cats today.  This is a big relief and makes me happy.

And with the NyQuil well worn off now, I hope to have a much better day today.