The Five Fixed Yesterday

Yesterday I took five cats to be fixed.

I took Hank from Albany. 

Hank, a big male, from Albany, neutered yesterday

Hank is likely a lost boy.  His feeder says he was quite fat when he first showed up a year ago, but lost weight in the following year.  He was likely once owned then left behind when someone moved leaving him on his own and begging for food from a stranger.   Getting him fixed, vaccinated and parasite free sure can't hurt his future, as a start.

Three girls from Silverton also were fixed yesterday.   They were a mother cat and her two older teen daughters. 

Mars

Galaxy

Venus

All three were lactating, not just Venus, the older female, who is mom also to the two teens girls, Mars and Galaxy.  Finding out all three were lactating, prompted a flurry of texts and calls between myself and the Salem trapper who had frantically searched for the six known young kittens under the house. We had thought originally all six of those kittens belonged to Venus.

We both decided the teen girls needed to return, in case there were other kittens out there.  But the tenant did not want them back.  By Monday morning, however, all six known kittens were caught.   The tenant living at the house then went and searched further in the back of the property behind her place, in case there were others, but found no other kittens.  She did not want the adults back, being under fire from a landlord over them.

It is thought the six kittens were a mixed group all three girls cared for.  But the tenant is watching and searching for others, just in case.  All three girls were terribly thin and undernourished.

All three of the Silverton girls went to my barn cat placement friend after surgery yesterday.  They were lucky she had space.  I only involve myself in removal situations when she does have space.  She also took the Lebanon mom, Persistence, and her three kittens.  Persistence was the fifth cat fixed yesterday.

Persistence, from Lebanon, also fixed yesterday

This is a difficult time of year.  All the females are in heat, pregnant or with kittens.   It's a time when I generally do not take on removal because I don't want to leave kittens out there in the brush or under a house somewhere.  This is the time of year people find young kittens and take them away without thinking about a mom that is caring for them and who will be frantically searching if they are taken.   That female will go back into heat and have more kittens too.  I am not a fan of the rescue practice that takes kittens and leaves mom.

  In a perfect world kittens and mothers would remain together, rescued together, saved and kept safe together.  But we don't live in a perfect world.  Not even close.