Long Week

It was a long week.  My body wants to go over and flop on my bed for 24 hours.

Not only do I have the ringworm kids in the bathroom still, although one leaves tomorrow, but I try hard to use reservations I can get.

I got five for yesterday.  The downside---they were up in McMinnville which is over an hour's drive one way.

And I had six reservations in Salem today.

I had the two big boys, Pepe, the all black, and Mr. Sunshine, the buff tux big boy, already trapped from the Sweet Home colony.  I still needed to trap 9 other cats to fill my reservations.

I had also trapped Cupcake, the other big male but he was fixed Wednesday at a private clinic and somehow was left ear tipped instead of right ear tipped.  Oh well.  Now he's special.  So I still had 9 reservations to fill with cats.  Off I went, unfixed cat hunting.  Not difficult around here.  Doesn't take a lot of skill to find unfixed cats in these parts, that's for sure.

Cupcake, with his left instead of right ear tip

Mr. Sunshine was neutered yesterday

Pepe went to be neutered yesterday but did not come back

I had gone back to the RV park, intent on giving them a trap to catch a boy there.  Instead, the man said he was so tired, and was telling me about riding his bike to get healthy but how exhausted it made him.   A van drove up then, as he was talking.  They live at the park too, and said they found a kitten inside their van.  Well there are kittens everywhere in the park, still, but I took her, a sweet little fuzzy Lynx Point girl.  She's likely Sammy Sunbeams sister, but well socialized, probably by another resident.  I couldn't just leave her on her own.

At that moment, the man comes back with a torti kitten in each hand and stuffs them into my only trap.  Ok, I guess.  Wouldn't be catching any adults here, but now I've got three kittens.

Off I went with three kittens now.  Fortunately, the next day, KATA took the Lynx Point fuzzy girl.   And fortunately also, last night, Karen came down and took the torti sisters, plus two others caught at a Lebanon apartment complex.

The Lebanon apartment complex mom and kittens did need caught and I thought the kittens were three months old and they would take three of the 9 reservations.  I'd left the complex feeder two traps, setting them both back by the canal, after the mom and the two kittens, the latest arrivals there.   I'd already in past years caught three females and their kittens and gotten the girls fixed and found placements for the kittens.  Those girls are still there and looking good.  Here's one of them.

But this girl was new, and came there with two kittens in tow seeking help.  

The apartment lady gave up in the evening Wednesday and took the traps to her back porch, and went out later to find both kittens in one of the traps.  How'd that happen, she thought, since it hadn't even been baited.   So I told her to use the empty trap next to the one with the kittens in it, to catch mom, using the kittens as bait.  This didn't work all night long.  Next morning, I told her to add hot tuna in the back, that mom might be unable to resist the smell.   Well that worked and mom was caught.  But the kittens were really too small to be fixed, under 8 weeks of age.  Well I had the mom though.

So then I went to a new location in Sweet Home I'd been called about.  Plenty of cats there.  Quickly had two.   I intended to take Pepe and Mr. Sunshine, to be fixed Thursday, then add in the two from the new location and one of the two torti kittens.  I'd get the second kitten done on Friday.  Then I'd return them.  But I began taking flack online about returning the torti sisters to life outside when they're only two months old. 

My excuse was easy.  I can't hold them here.  I have ringworm kittens in the bathroom.  I don't know anyone to take them who is skilled enough to tame them.

Thursday I was driving clear to McMinnville with five cats to be fixed.   Two big stinky males, one of the two RV park torti kittens, Taffy, and then a Siamese mom and one of her Siamese teens from the other location in Sweet HOme, where there are lots of unfixed cats.   I'd left her traps to catch more.

Misty Blue was fixed up in McMinnville Thursday.

Misty's teen girl Minion was also spayed.

Torti Sister Taffy and Toffee.  Taffy was spayed yesterday.

After getting back from McMinnville, leaving off the five cats, I drove to Lebanon and picked up the mom and two kittens trapped there.  July, the mom, is up being fixed today.  The two kittens also went with Karen last night.  I did not get a very good photo of them.

July's two kittens

July

I then drove to Sweet Home, to pick up five more cats at the new colony.  I was exhausted by then.  Karen by then had said she'd come down Thursday night for the torti kittens and the Lebanon apartment kittens.  That meant I could fill the six spaces today with adults, instead of getting the second torti kitten fixed.

I got a call from the McMinnville clinic.  Pepe had pillow paws.   No wonder he was always limping so badly and not wanting to move.  I had thought it was from fight wounds.  Pepe is no longer in pain.  He was euthanized.  There's nothing you can do for that terrible condition where the paw pads fill with fluid and rupture and hurt like hell and get infected.  But I was sad.

Once home from Sweet Home, I put the two apartment complex kittens in a cage really fast, unloaded the six adults, and then had to take off again, to go to McMinnville and pick up the four there.

Once I got home finally, I was drop dead exhausted.  I took a short nap and waited for Karen to arrive to take the four kittens.  I was extremely grateful for her help with the kittens.  Off they went and off to bed I went.

Up at it again this morning.  I took up the six adults, to the clinc to be fixed, and have already been to Sweet Home to return the three fixed yesterday--Mr. Sunshine to the one colony, along with deceased Pepe, for them to bury, then Minion and Misty Blue, to the other.  I let them out of the traps and off they ran, to recuperate on their own, in their own space.

I just have to pick up the six cats later today at the clinic, overnight them, return them all tomorrow and I'm done for the next two weeks because I don't have more appointments.  I hope the weather gets nice finally, so I can enjoy some sun on my weeks off.

I should mention corona virus cases are soaring in the US.  There's no stopping it now.  Too many ignorant selfish people and lying politicians and corruption.  We are experiencing virus case growth in our state too, but nothing like in California, Texas and Florida.  All I can say is don't go to those states.  And if you don't live in the US, don't come here.   I have a bad feeling things are going to get a lot worse.