8 More Albany, Lebanon and Sweet Home Cats Fixed

8 more fixed.  Good thing for the area.,

Anyhow, two of the kittens fixed today were from Sweet Home, actually Foster, but that's just a couple miles past
Sweet Home.

Those were the two tame Siamese trailer park girls.   The people who had them did not want them back.  The first two from that litter were fixed last week.  There's one more still up there.  Mom of those kittens just had another litter too, I was told. But she had just one kitten this time, thank goodness.   Another mom cat, same trailer park in Foster, had six kittens.  Two more will have kittens today or tomorrow.  Bad area, I'll say.

Thankfully the spay neuter clinic offered to take the two delightful girls in to Willamette Humane Society and find them homes.  They figure sweet as they are they'll be in homes probably before the end of the week.   I was happy and grateful.

Giggles and Daisy

Daisy

Giggles

Sunday I took the four Lebanon boy kittens, only six weeks old, to Heartland.  Grateful to them also.

Four Lebanon boy kittens, now at Heartland Humane in Corvallis

Neither of these shelters are in Linn County, but we don't have much here at all.  We have one volunteer run nonprofit that almost never takes in a cat or kitten once its in my hands even though I am not an adoption "group".  "Group"--ha, I'm one person.  I don't know why they don't.  It does make me feel quite the leper. 

And then the bigger shelter with all the funding, who charge for each cat or kitten they take in and to my knowledge, don't work with local rescues to solve cat problems or take in rescued cats.  Unless you pay the fee.  Once they offered to help with all those Mountain Shadows cats.  But they have to be super friendly, pass this test, they said, that a complete stranger pulls them suddenly to their face.  The cat can't bite or scratch or try to get away in fear when they do that.  Heck, I would do all three if someone did that to me.

So I gave up on getting cats in there from Mountain Shadows.

I have to scrounge, sometimes clear to Portland, to find places for cats.  I'm getting too old to do it all alone all the time.

So the Foster trailer park girls got taken in by whs and the four Lebanon boys got taken in by Heartland.  Whew!

The other six who got fixed included four from the dumpster area of the big parking lot. Renee, and her older teen son Markus.  Frankie, a big black male and named after the food he prefers, from Frankies' restaurant, in the dumpster, and lastly Ziggy, Scooty's sister.

 I caught all four in two nights and stupidly went back, all confident, once again, after sleeping half of Saturday.   Five more hours out there Saturday night and I didn't catch a single cat.  But I saw at least ten more cats who need to be caught, some of them pitiful little kittens.

The restaurant near the dumpster was open late was part of it.  I went to check a trap once, came around the side of the dumpster and was face to face with this gorgeous guy.  OMG.  I was fumbling for words, also trying to explain myself.  I find I have to do that often.  I smell like tuna and hang out around dumpsters and woods and back lots and pull outs.  I'd think I was suspicious.

It's not that easy to explain exactly why I am where I am in the middle of the night.  Tired out, poorly dressed, maybe pieces of cat food falling from my clothing.  I realize this.   I should just hand people a card with an explanation printed on it, then vanish.  It is strange to me that most people immediately understand and don't question my explanation at all.  Hmmm.

So back to this gorgeous guy.   I fumbled out what I was doing and quickly asked if he knew the cats I spoke about.  Thank goodness he did and he is an animal lover and coincidence of all coincidence his wife or girlfriend, I never caught which, is the intake coordinator at WHS.  He put out his hand, to shake mine, in introduction.   I hesitated.  "Um, my hand smells like tuna," I blurted.  But he shook it anyway.  He's a bartender there, the spay neuter folks at the clinic told me today when I recounted the encounter to them, when I dropped off cats to be fixed.

Well here are photos of the four.  Frankie and Renee moved on right away to my barn cat placement friend.  At least there will be more room in the dumpsters now for the others to eat.  Kidding!

Ziggy

This is a bad photo of Markus, who is a little boy, and he's really sweet, mostly tame, just suddenly decided he would like cuddled so I cuddled him.  That was before his neuter.  I don't know how he feels about me now.

And that's Renee, his mom on the left.  I finally separated them as he drove her nuts wanting to nurse.  She's not lactating.

And this is Frankie who probably took a good share of the yummiest leftovers in the dumpsters from the look of him.  I did really want to look in those dumpster bags from the restaurant because the cats really loved that stuff and ignored cat food and I thought whoa, I got to see what this is.  You start thinking that way about 4:00 a.m. in a parking lot.

Ziggy and Markus are in the  bathroom recuperating.  Ziggy, at least, will go join her sister in a day maybe two.  I wonder if they'll hate each other by now. 

Maybe I should show each the photo of them huddled along the curb together first.

So anyhow, that comes to six cats fixed.  The other two, both girls, one from Lebanon, Tessa, mom of those four boy kittens now at Heartland.

Tessa

Lastly there was a mom cat from behind the mall, Chica, judged about 7 years old.  Can you imagine how many litters that poor girl's had to pump out if she is that old?  Yikes.  Anyhow, at least she's fixed now.  The lady who trapped her already picked her up.

Chica, also spayed today

By 5:00 a.m. in a lonely parking lot, my butt was like glued to the seat, stiff, sore, joints creaking like a rocking chair and my attitude had gone somewhere south.  Not only had I not caught a single cat which makes me feel inept, as cars with employees for the supermarket began to pull in, but I was worn out and then I get bitter and mean to myself and I kept warning myself, being that tired, now when you get home don't get on facebook because that's bad.

But of course I get on facebook when I get home, like an idiot and start deleting old posts, which I do anyway, because I am paranoid of leaving them up.  Then I get this big idea to change the world.  Unfriend people!  Then message them with my phone number and an invite to coffee!  Say I'm changing the world so people interact again, not online but in person.

I was lonely, what can I say.

Nobody has taken me up on the invites.

Except my car has to go in the shop again, bearing seems bad already again, that was just replaced and the brakes are really bad now so they have to get done, on the rear.  So I ask a lady if she can give me a ride home from dropping off the car and if she does I'll buy her breakfast.  Bingo!  Score!  Human contact in a couple of days at least.

That's my last few days.  That's it.  Nothing much really except for some long lonely hours in a parking lot.  Probably too many.


I think if I go back and try for more of those cats, I'll go before the restaurant closes and order some food then use it as bait in the traps.  I'd probably catch them all.   Bing. Bing. Bing.   See you can't set traps really anywhere around there.  It's a vast sea of parking spaces, rows upon rows of them, separated by landscaping and then sprinklers come on, for maybe a minute, here and there, then off, then on again.  The cats drink from the sprinklers!   But you can't set a trap because it will get soaked.

I think if I go again and I intend not to, they've bettered me, they know my car even.  But if I do go again, maybe I can find someone with a pickup they're not using to park the night there and I'll set a trap under it.  My car is way too low to the ground for anything to go under it.

I had a little pickup once.  They're really mostly useless.  You can't put your stuff in the back.  It will be stolen, or rained on.  You can't haul more than a couple people and you can't haul cats either, so what good are they?  Even if you get a canopy its still too cold or too hot in it.  So my little bread box car is far more useful than any pickup ever was.  I can haul 26 cats in the back, all climate controlled too.   Unfortunately this does tend to stink up the car badly over time.  You can't have everything.

Signing off really this time.  I need sleep.