Trip to the Big City with Cats

Yesterday morning early I drove to Portland.

With cats, of course.

I took along Twilight and Pisces, the Harvest Drive girls.  The other 11 I took all were KATA kittens, who needed fixed before they could be adopted out.  We have a slight shortage of affordable spay neuter availability in the area where I live.  To put it mildly.

Hence, the need for a trip to the big city.

Which is never fun, now that Portland is so congested on almost any roadway it is not a pleasant experience to go there.  But sometimes one must brave the traffic jams to get a baker's dozen kittens fixed.

Driving to a parking lot, to nap and wait, later in the day, I saw all these amenities for bikes, on the roads, including green boxes, green slashes and I have no idea what they mean.   And all day long, I saw only two bikes.  I see more bikes here where I live, than up there, and yet they spend so much on bikes and seem to not keep up the roads for cars.   I can't figure it out.

Anyhow, was a smooth trip otherwise, just tiring, very much so.  But now all the bathroom kittens except Copper are fixed.  Winnie is gone to Heartland and tested positive there for FIV (Feline Aids).  FIV is generally a disease of big fighting males. It is caught and spread when they bite one another and the bite wound gets closed over.  But females can get it too, when they fight or get bitten by an infected male in the act of sex and then they can pass it to their kittens.  Often the kittens throw off the virus however and Winnie may accomplish that.  Heartland will adopt her out.  FIV is hard to spread cat to cat and even infected cats often live normal lifespans.

Winnie was found quite a distance from the others and I'm not sure if she was really one of them.   Copper tested negative for FIV/Felk and is still recovering from conjunctivitis.  He cannot be fixed for some time, or the stress on his immune system from anesthesia and a neuter, would likely allow the virus that gave him the cold to begin with, to make a come back.

But Wren and Cheetah were fixed Monday at WHS and by some coincidence, the same vet was working at the FCCO yesterday, and fixed their mates, Twilight and Pisces.

A friend up in Canada has sent me lots of help for the cats including toys and cat food.  She recently sent Squeeze Up treats.  Pisces loves these treats, so this morning, with her a bit under the weather from her spay yesterday, I brought her one.

Wren and Cheetah are leaving today, going to a local cat woman, who will work at taming them further.  Copper is leaving Sunday.