Another Heart Rending Situation

Helping cats gives me a sense of accomplishment and gives meaning to my otherwise rather bland and lonely life.

However, helping cats, which is really helping people too, is not easy.   Ever.

People rarely donate.   People demand I remove cats or else.   Situations I run into are often terribly sad, not only for the animals but for the people too.

I try to remain stoic over it, but overload occurs and I delve into fits of crying, nightmares and depression.

I just took 8 more cats to be fixed yesterday.  Five of them were tame and living life hard outside Lebanon, as so many animals do around these parts, where people are very very poor and live in dire situations themselves in conditions you would not think fit this century even.

Yeah, I suppose you could preach to me that people get themselves into it from poor choices or whatever.   That is sometimes the case I'm sure.  I'm not one to judge with any authority being an idiot myself on choices and very imperfect and making lots of life mistakes.

However, leaving this particular rural property, after picking up the first five needing fixed, I saw a coyote, broad daylight, not far from the property, and knew why they'd had so many cats vanish. The realization of predation is there in my mind, for outside cats, but then you see the coyote, and know the cats in the back of my car will not have long lives at all and that not only do they face extreme parasites, lack of nutrition, but also predators waiting to tear them up alive.  Makes it very painful to help cats in such a mess.   And when the Siamese mom and a Siamese kitten were here, two nights, before and after surgery, the adult girl ate an entire bowl of dry food, plus several cans of wet, leading me to wonder how much food they actually get at home.  I'm sure the starvation of the female was directly linked to having litter after litter and being full of parasites, the former now taken care of and the latter at least temporarily taken care of.  They're all tame.

Knowing they have had so many disappear and many others die, presumably from heavy fleas, I asked if the woman if they might relinquish especially the white cats since they are spotted easily by predators.  She was not interested at this time.

All the way home, I was distracted over it and finally had to pull over.  I wanted to sob my guts out, vomit, something.  There's been too many bad situations lately.  I am on emotional overload trying to bear it. .

It will pass.  I'll get over it as the next situations loom, but its not easy to see so much suffering and apathy and cruelty and irresponsibility as often as I do.   Not easy.

Baby, a darling Siamese kitten, was fixed yesterday.

Haley was fixed too.   Her kittens, born a few days ago, all died.  She had no milk for them.

Mikey is a very very sweet boy.

Mina is sweet too, a little black boy.

SJ never stopped crying when in the car, and was the most worried, despite being the biggest of the cats and healthier than the others.  

I had only five reservations yesterday, but then someone else gave me theirs since they were too tired to trap.   So with three extra reservations, I went and trapped 3 at an Albany location.  A young couple moved into a house to discover cats with kittens out back. 

Medusa, young black female fixed yesterday

Oscar, black male fixed yesterday

Tortilla, a classic torti, fixed yesterday

At least those five rural cats are fixed and no more will be born to die from them.  That's the only solace with that situation.