Sunday, September 23, 2018

Sunday Sunday

It's Sunday. 

I woke to old Lucy farting in my face.

She's really really old.

And I didn't need that kind of awakening.

Yesterday, traffic on the freeway was bad.   Football games.  In Eugene (U of O---Ducks) and I think there was a home game in Corvallis too, although I don't keep up much. (that would be the Oregon State Beavers).   I dislike football.  And home games snarl our already congested freeway to impassable.

I'd gotten two spay neuter reservations given me, for Friday, up in Salem, from someone who wasn't going to use them.  Happened Thursday night, that someone posted about the reservations being open, about the same time I got a call from the trailer park.  Some guy had grabbed two kittens.

Off I go to get them, like a programmed marching toy solider.

The kittens were incredibly tiny, and in a massive Little Giant trap.  This brand of trap is the worst you could possibly buy.  It was too long for me to reach in and get them out into something smaller and kinder.  So I took them in his trap.  But before leaving the trailer park, I drove down to the now empty trailer of the old lady who fed the cats.


The poor cats were hanging out on the porch of their now deceased caretaker's trailer.   And they were hungry.   I poured out a bunch of food for them, all I had in the car.  Then I set a trap over across the street where the kittens hang out and caught one of them.

I texted the lady offering up the two reservations, and said I'd take them, and then transferred the kitten into a carrier that was in the car and set the trap again.  This time I caught that big tabby boy, the one without an ear tip, at the  back of the pack in the photo.  The tabby below him and just a bit to the right is fixed.  See that ear tip?

The black on the far left is fixed too and so is the black with its head down, eating.  The ear tips really help me know who is fixed and who isn't.  I got a lot of cats fixed there three years ago.

I set a second trap and caught a black female who sleeps under a deck across the street.

Now I had five more cats from the trailer park.   Yikes, I thought, what am I doing?

Chase, the tabby boy, and Dahlia, the black female, were fixed Friday.

Dahlia

Chase

Two itty bitties
I took the huge trap into my bathroom to get the two tiny kittens out, once home.  They screamed and came at me, hissing spitting striking and I thought "Man alive, you two".  They're only about four or five weeks old.   Funny thing though, that little girl, with all the white, about ten minutes later, nestled in a fuzzy blanket, sucking KMR from a syringe, her tune had changed.  She was happy, relieved, purring, even arching her back in delight and had decided I was her new mommy.

Guy said the little ragamuffins had been going trailer to trailer, crying.   They were dehydrated and starved.

I turned the older kitten loose in the bathroom with them.  The littles wanted to snuggle with him.  

Yesterday, just after the worst of game day traffic on the freeway, I drove Chase, Dahlia and the two tiny kittens, to Salem, to meet up with my barn cat placement friend.  She'd gotten a couple barn cat placements, so had room again, for six.  I took her two, Chase and Dahlia, but she's connected to a shelter.  Or two.  And took the two bottle babes also.  

Friday night, I'd taken Rocky, the tame boy from the park, down to a friend in Brownsville, to wait for placement.  He's on the wait list at a local shelter.  When they have room, when the kitten crises eases up, they'll take him in to find him a home.  

I'd returned to the trailer park Saturday morning.  My friend could take six to place as barn cats.  I figured I'd just catch four more already fixed kitties to take her with Chase and Dahlia.   But it rained yesterday morning.  I didn't get there until after 8:00 a.m. and shortly after I arrived, so did some family members of the deceased old woman, to empty junk from the trailer.

So the cats, mostly already fixed cats, faithfully waiting on her back porch for food, still not realizing she will never be back for them, vanished as the old woman's elderly brother began banging around the shed.

I still caught three more cats.  I caught another older kitten and the two tabbies left that are not fixed.  None of these could go yet to my friend, not until they are fixed.  But she said she'd take them Monday, after surgery, and for now I could bring up the two who got fixed Friday, Chase and Dahlia, along with the two tiny kittens.

Anyhow, so I did that yesterday.   I have seven reservations Monday at the clinic, but I'd run into the infamous RV lady at the park.  I'd heard about her from some Eugene people who went and got a couple mothers with litters from her and said she said she'd lost cats in at least two county parks.  I don't know how many she has in the RV for sure but when I saw an old RV parked in a day use area and a cat in the window, I knocked on the door.

She said yes, she wanted to get the rest fixed.  I gave her my card and impressed upon her how much I hate to waste spay neuter reservations and that I could get seven fixed for her this coming Monday but she'd need to call me Saturday to confirm that and tell me where she was.   She never called yesterday.  I had a feeling she wouldn't and that's why I didn't mind so much catching three more unfixed cats at the trailer park with a fourth already here, in the bathroom.

So those four trailer park cats get fixed tomorrow, and then move on to my barn cat friend.  And three more from Sweet Home will get fixed, brought down by a lady trying to keep numbers under control at trailer parks up there.

I seriously hate sending these poor trailer park cats off for barn cat placement.  That trailer park is their home.  Relocating feral cats is extremely difficult to accomplish successfully and I would guess most often it does not work out for the cats.  They have to go in groups of friends or family members, be confined for some time, up to a month, in comfortable conditions, be "brainwashed" so to speak, by their new "owners", that this is going to be a safe and better place, and that almost never happens.  Either the group placing them has no real understanding of what they're doing or doesn't be sure the cats will be treated according to protocol, or the new owners who want barn cats say they'll follow the protocol but then don't.

Wild cats bond to each other and to their environment.  When you relocate them, you're taking away the environment they know so well.  So you better at least send them with family and friends, to try to make it work out.   You can't just turn them loose, that's same as dumping cats in the country.  They'll try to get home and probably die along the way.

I may not take anymore out of that park except the two older kittens still there.  I think the adults might now all be fixed.  Just feed them, you people, be nice.  They'll killing all the mice you don't want either.  We want such a sterile environment free of other species for our junk pile pack rat trailers and chemical perfect yards.  We don't want slugs, so instead of leaving the possums be, that eat slugs, we trap and kill the possums then poison the slugs. And then we ponder and debate and wonder why the whole earth is full of poisons.  Instead of letting the cats kill the mice, we kill the cats then put poison out for the mice, that the birds eat, then they die of that, etc etc.  Anyhow, don't get me started.

A few cats don't hurt anything, but you can't be a stupid fuck and there sure are lots of those around here, and feed them without fixing them.   What?  Do you think they magically won't breed? Just for you, they won't breed, if you don't get your lazy ass off the couch and get them fixed?

I sure enjoyed those kittens, even though they were here a very short time.  I took this while waiting with them in my car for my friend to get there.



Nice sunset last night too.






6 comments:

  1. If only more people followed the 'be nice' rule.
    As always thank you.
    Brilliant sunset too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most people seem to follow the leader and "let's get on the complain train bandwagon".

      Delete
  2. Anonymous6:49 PM

    Stunning golden sunset photos, and I don't want to know what made it golden as it is often not very things in the air. A kitten would have to be very ill to not play like a kitten, perhaps like young children in refugee camps and war situations. If they are well enough, they will play, even if just with a stick.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kittens, under dire circumstance, are so resilient mentally. You are right. Beautiful sunsets are the stuff of pollution, particles in the air. Not sure what this time, most of our smoke is gone now.

      Delete
  3. Thank you for all you do. ~hugs~ And I appreciate your suggestions for medicating Tilly. Apparently the UTI test is just routine, a secondary check following a look at her kidney functionality. While I wish she'd said that over the phone, it's not anyone else's fault I have such an overactive imagination. ~rolls eyes~ She's not acting sick, so the vet tech this morning has me pretty optimistic after all that freaking out I did. When she *did* suffer a UTI years ago, I took her in after she started playing in water bowls, which isn't happening.

    Silly me.

    I'm sad it's so hard to relocate feral cats. Your explanation is appreciated. I'll remember that and pass the information along if the topic ever comes up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope you have a great travel time!

      Delete

Round Up

Today is cat round up for tomorrow's five spots.  Two more came up from the vet student in Harrisburg late this morning.  Over 60 fixed ...