Difficult Weekend

The things I get caught up doing.

Last weekend, I ended up in a rural location, with temperatures in the 20's, trying to catch cats at a house that had been sold, the sale closing this week.  Someone in Corvallis who occasionally traps cats had been contacted about the situation, did not want to do it, and told the realtors to contact me instead.

I didn't want to do it either.  The realtor said there were maybe five cats and said she'd donate $50 per cat to the nonprofit.   The trapping required back and forth trips out there, each trip one way takes 20 minutes.  In the end, I caught three cats and all are tame.  One however had a bloody stub tail void of skin.  I knew that would need amputated.  All three cats are tame, although I didn't know that until after I trapped them.

I had seven reservations for fixing cats Monday and figured these cats would all need fixed.  The home owner had died in a horrible car wreck in 2015.  Her adult daughter moved in but was a drug addict and shot herself there last March. Her drug addicted friends took over the house then and had to be evicted over and over.  Now its been sold and the new owners didn't want the cats left by all these unfortunate souls who lived there before.

Back and forth I went to check traps.  At night since the buyers were there working on it during the day.  Sunday I took the black with the injured tail and the black tux to Meow Village along with a $200 donation from Happy Cat Club.  I knew the black would need amputation surgery on her tail.  She got that Monday, thanks to Meow Village. I couldn't take them a cat requiring surgery without a donation to help cover it.   I still have the gray female here.  I took her along to be fixed yesterday but she turned out to be already fixed.  She's also very tame and needs a house cat home.  The real estate agent has not sent the promised donation yet.  But I'm sure she will. Right?  I hope.

Tail injuries are quite common in cats.  They get run over, dogs grab them by the tail, or fans in engines cut off the tail when the cat is trying to warm up, etc, the broken piece break offs, skin pulls off the rest and then it never heals.  Trap mesh knocked off scabs so it bled.

The two cats under the deck before I trapped them.

This is the gray girl.  I call her Suzie.  She needs a nice indoor home after all the crap she's been through. She turned out to already be spayed and to be very tame, like the other two.

Besides the back and forth there, to check traps, I experienced frustration caused by the first woman they contacted, who was not helping in any way, but kept communicating with the realtors, inserting herself.  I told her three times to step away from it.  She'd tell me things like the realtors themselves were going to go one morning and take all the tame cats.   That didn't happen.  I do not know why she had to feel involved when she wasn't.  She had told them she couldn't help.

 And at the same time she's wanting me to trap cats in Corvallis someone asked her to trap.  And I'm exhausted and she doesn't give a rip. If you are not going to trap, quit advertising that you do, lady. 

It was so cold going out there to check traps in the night, below freezing, and besides dealing with that situation and finally taking the two Meow Village would take, to Salem, I also collected Ash, to be fixed, from Sodaville. 

He'd been gone for months and they figured him long dead, when he suddenly showed back up.  They said he was in a carrier.  So I went and got him.  They put him in my car in their carrier and I turned back to give the rest of their cats food.  They are now all fixed and were swarming me for wet food.   When I turned back to my car, Ash was at that time breaking apart their carrier in my car.  He was now loose in it.

I slipped into the car, pulled the huge boy off my dash and stuffed him into a live trap.    Ash was fixed yesterday.

Ash, now fixed.

Then there was Champ, roaming a Lewisburg trailer park.  He had a bad reputation and has been hated there for fighting with people's cats.   He badly needed neutered so a cat lover living there trapped Champ. Champ turned out to be a sweet sweet boy, nice and tame.    I believe he will be headed to Heartland today. That's what the lady said who picked him up last night. But he was fixed yesterday and I nearly broke my back carrying him in the trap, he's so big.  It's a good ending for Champ, as people at the trailer park wanted him dead.   The lady who caught him hoped to save his life.

Champ

Then there were the three girls from rural Scio.  This turned out to be a difficult assist.  The woman who is not the owner, but a relative of the owner, met me with them, in an insecure cardboard box, all three cats in that one box, in Albany Sunday, when I was already bone dead tired from all the trapping and rounding up other cats.  The cats exited the cardboard box, in the car, so I handed her traps through the door and she got them into my live traps one by one.  I thought she'd learned her lesson about secure transport.  Turns out---nope.

Momma Cat, fixed yesterday

Shadow

Spot, another female, fixed yesterday.

Since they live so far out and had no carriers I said I would bring the cats to their place if I could find it, out in the hills south and east of  Scio somewhere, after they were fixed.  But yesterday, after picking the cats up at the clinic in Salem, I missed a turn to hit highway 22 to Stayton, and then I could not find them.  It was dark, the roads are narrow with few places to pull off, even if you know the roads out there, which I didn't, and my phone is barely working anymore.  It won't hold a charge long.

So I went to Scio, the nearest small town to where they live.  There is little cell coverage in that area but I finally got a text through asking her to come meet me at the store in Scio.

This time she brought a dog kennel AND the cardboard box in the back seat of her car, for the cats.  The kennel had nothing on the bottom, just wire, and the mesh was four or five inch.  I shook my head, said "they'll go right through that and get out and they just had surgery and shouldn't lay on bare wire."   She rolled her eyes and said they had to and took one of the traps and let the cat into the cage and immediately she dropped through the big huge holes in the wire mesh bottom and went under a seat and the woman was not happy.

I said I'd have to follow her to her place, because this would not work, to hold the cats, which also made her upset and she took off in her car.  Her boyfriend was in the car but just sat like a sack of flour with his head bent over and eyes on his phone.  I was supposed to follow her but there was no way I could do that.  She took off, it was dark and many cars came before I could turn too, to follow her, so I lost sight of the back of her car.

 I drove a long way before she starts texting me but I can't read texts while driving, and its dark and the road is narrow and I can't find anywhere to pull off.  I finally do pull off, and she calls and she's mad and tells me I followed the wrong car and implies how stupid I am and I say I'm just going home she can get her cats the next day and she's yelling over that too.  I finally go back because she's back in Scio and she puts the cats in the cage because she's now torn up the box from the day before to line the bottom of the cage with.

I want to scream at her for not being prepared and now acting like I'm to blame.  I pull over in a church parking lot and sob my eyes out.  Exhaustion!   After getting it out of my system, I felt better and thought, 'the cats are fixed, it's all o.k.".  For all I know she was worn out too.

So Ash was fixed and Champ was fixed and Suzie was determined to already be fixed.  The three Scio girls were fixed.  And lastly, a Brownsville girl kitten, MandM, was spayed.  Diana down in Brownsville has been persistent in getting the cats around one house down there fixed.  There's been about 9 I think she's gotten in from that one place, with one left to go.

M&M

None of it this weekend was easy because trapping at night, at a place where no home owner, renter or neighbor can or will check traps, will be an endeavor.  Now I need to find Suzie a home and get the promised donation from the real estate people to put an end to that saga with those cats and get Ash back home today.

I'm quitting for awhile.  Kind of had it.  The dryer.  The phone.  The assholes.  The drug addicts.  The lazy people trying to shove off everything on me.  Yeah, I like hard work and to get things done but I need some time off and I'm taking it.  I'm going to kick back, spend time with my cats.   Copper is leaving this coming Sunday.  Wren and Cheetah went to a great home already.  Then its just Pisces, Twilight and adult Suzie to find placements for.  I'm optimistic I can do that.  Might take a bit.

I put the dryer back together but now the drum is scraping on the other bracket.  I'm not dealing with that anymore and will try to find a craigslist dryer.  And my darn phone won't hold a charge long either anymore.  I barely use the phone.   But its a complicated issue to solve since its on my brother's plan and I can't just go find a used phone and switch over to it, because my brother has to be involved and he's a busy man and very tough to reach.  I might just switch back to prepaid net10, but I don't know if I could keep the same number.  I hope so.  I have an old Net10 phone in a drawer.  Dumb phone not smart phone but I don't care as long as it takes calls and I can call out on it.

Today in Alabama my guess is the Republicans will elect a probable pedophile, someone who used to use his position to intimidate young underage girls into sex acts with him, to the US Senate, making a mockery of any Republican claim to some higher morality.   What a joke.  That's my prediction on the special election outcome.  I shouldn't be so cynical.  Maybe Alabama folk have more sense than that.

Its become a test in my mind, the Roy Moore affair, and those defending him with all kinds of pure baloney, including our President, on whether the American people still have a sense of right and wrong.   If they elect Roy Moore today in Alabama, I will have my answer.