Bad September?

Well, things haven't been the best lately.  I figure I got some good weeks coming after all this.

Here's the good news though.  My nonprofit got the bill from Willamette Humane's spay neuter clinic for Linn County cats fixed in August but taken in by others.  It costs people from Linn County $43 per cat there, which is a wonderful price, but one many in Linn cannot or won't pay, when they have multiple cats they feed.  Anyhow, 27 cats were fixed in August.  I only started the program, after getting a donation from a local farmer that allowed me to put $7000 in the budget for this program.  It will go fast at this rate, but I'm thrilled that so far, since end of June, and with limited appointments available, a total of 42 cats have been fixed as a result.  That's really tremendous.  So my focus is shifting from doing it all myself to raising funds to keep that going.  The only way to really make a difference is to get people to get it done themselves since I"m old and my car isn't in the greatest shape. So that's the good news.

I tried to get some cats in an Albany neighborhood I've trapped before.  I don't like the neighborhood due to having a bad experience there years ago.  Anyhow, someone contacted about strays there, needing help. So I go over, ever the eager beaver to help out and help solve overpopulation.

Well, the cats were fed by a lady who moved, leaving a mess.   The new property owners allegedly (was told this third hand) had trapped a bunch of them and done away with them.  I don't know that's true.

I tried talking to neighbors, to no avail.  Nobody wanted to help or have them trapped on their property.  Also too many free roaming owned cats, many unfixed, some not, in the area.  So had to give that one up, in the end, after being screamed at by one woman, and trying without success to find some other place to trap.  I already posted about this before.   So I'll just say, that one I had to let go.

I go all the way to Sweet HOme to get a couple cats for two appointments that come with vouchers that someone else isn't going to use.   These folks have 15 or so unfixed cats.  I take them in yesterday, a girl and a boy, and by noon the vet has called and said the black female crashed under anesthesia.   She's dead.

Guilt overwhelms me. Taking a feral to a private vet clinic to be fixed is a risk.  They don't have the high volume experience.  They're often estimating weight and not as fast at spays so sometimes they get overdosed on anesthesia.  I don't know what happened with this little girl, if she had a heart condition, which is likely, or what.  She's dead now.  Bummed me out badly.  The clinic had no kind words about her death, when I picked up the male who did survive his neuter.  I won't go back there. I got no good vibes or kind words there.  I'd worry if I went back.

These things happen, I know, but I always feel bad for the kitty, who one day was playing with her beloved family members and the next day is dead.   While there is grief over the death of a tame cat, when a wild cat dies at a clinic there is generally no sympathy expressed for the cat or the person who brought the cat in, as if that cats life didn't matter really anyhow, simply because a human couldn't pick her up and get what they want from her. 

 Having lived a life as basically an unloved human, I have great empathy for animals whose lives are judged the same.  If you've got no home or family, what use are you.  You don't matter.  Live, die, suffer, nobody cares.  I guess its a personal issue I have.   Their lives matter to me.  So I grieve her death.

Even using a voucher, it was $66 for one neuter there plus rabies. 

I have to return him this morning, and tell the people the little girl is dead.   Will they still let me get the others fixed?  Well if they do, they do and if they don't, they don't.

I haven't had many anesthesia deaths in cats, over the years and thousands of cats taken to be fixed.  Only a couple.  Both those cats had enlarged hearts.  It's the most common reason for anesthesia deaths.  I forget the name of it, but its a relatively common condition in cats.   I had the one crash after surgery due to bleeding but she survived, when I took her back the next day and they stopped the bleeding and sent her for a transfusion.   I had a terrible problem with a cat fixed at a private clinic, who experienced anesthesia overdose, went blind as a result and was in a waking sort of coma for a week.  They offered no after care there, for her, no apology either, no instruction on what to do.  She died suddenly a week later when her lungs filled with water as her heart failed. It was horrible.  I do have better luck at high volume spay neuter clinics.   They have so much experience.

RIP little black girl

George survived at least

Then it was a call from someone whose cat was fixed 12 days ago.   I get these folks cats fixed because at one time, the daughter had a zillion unfixed cats.  I don't want it to blow up again there.  Anyhow she said he wasn't right after surgery and she was crying, so I told her to meet me at the clinic, already overwhelmed in guilt over the black girl's death at the other clinic.

Fever of unknown origin, the vet said, of Grayson's post surgery illness.  His surgery site was fine.  Could have been vaccine reaction maybe.

 I usually do not pay for people's cats to see the vet. That'd be really crazy.  People can be very manipulative and leechy around these parts, and want everything free, so I have to be very careful.  But yesterday was a  bad day and I didn't want another possible death related to surgery.

Anyhow I only paid for fluids and antibiotics, as the vet said he had a fever of unknown origin and suggested they get him tested for leukemia.  I didn't pay for that, just the fluids and antibiotics.  He should be fine if he doesn't have some underlying thing.

Many people get and lose cats like cheap plastic kids toys.

Anyhow, hoping for better days.  I'm due.  Fall is here now, rain the next few days, thunder storms last night.   I wasted the summer and didn't get out and have some fun.  Darn it.  I did try.  Car problems, leaks in my raft, food poisoning, Kona and her kittens needing help, Charlie, the old orange boy, still in my bathroom, can't go to a home til October, lack of parking space at the lake, etc etc--all these things kept me tied down or incapacitated.  That's life.