Junk Shop Marathon

 It's turned quite cold here in Oregon.

Well, relatively speaking.  We've had a few freezing nights.  I do celebrate those as they can dampen both kitten breeding and flea reproduction.

I was determined to end the reproduction going on at that Lebanon junk shop.  I can take more in on Friday, to Portland, to be fixed.

I got an early start and began trapping there, using my drop trap, yesterday morning.   I arrived just after 9.

As usual, for the first couple hours there was quite a lot of interference.  The former owners son even asked if I could help him move an organ from his dad's house.  He had someone who wanted it.  He was in and around the drop trap, or him and his friends were, sometimes within 15 feet of it, for some time.  I caught nothing til he finally took off.  OMG was I happy when he finally left.

I knew then I might have some success.

Already, 19 cats have been fixed from this place.   Yesterday I caught five more, but it took me NINE hours.  And it was freezing in the car most of the time.  I'd let it idle and warm up.  Joe, the black boy fixed a few weeks back, is skin and bones and has a URI and he got in the car with me, wanting the heat of either me, or, when the car was idling, the heater vents.  I finally got the guy to relinquish him.  I told him he would die out there if he didn't get vet help, which is true.  He went to a local rescue.  I took him there on the way home, with the five cats in traps in the back.

I thought there were only about five left out there needing fixed.  But I counted five others after catching these five.  The five I caught were to be fixed Friday, with anybody else I might catch today.  Instead a Portland friend said she could get the five in today to be fixed, instead of them having to be in traps til they are fixed Friday.  So, I came home, changed my shoes, grabbed some dollars, for gas and to get something to eat since I hadn't eaten all day, and drove to Keizer to meet up with her and hand off the five cats I had caught.  She'll take them to the clinic today and pick them up and I'll get them Friday.

I'd netted a cat in a utility room in Lacomb on Tuesday evening, and put her from the net to one of my large tomahawk traps, so she could take the cat to her own vet to be fixed.   My other large tomahawk I had on loan to an Albany woman who wants to catch a girl stray and get her fixed at her own vet.  So the only large tomahawk I had left to take up to the Junk Shop was my skunked trap.  The Lacomb lady had caught a skunk in it, and it still stinks to high heaven, despite being sprayed with all kinds of things to try to kill the smell.   I want to get some WD40 and try that next.  Course it has to be a nice day, so I can spray it down outside, due to the flammable substance issue, lol.

I handed off the five cats, one in the skunked trap, to Karen and apologized profusely.  I could have transferred the little calico in it to another trap, once home, but just didn't have the time.  Or energy by then.   

After she left the parking lot in Keizer I got two tacos to eat.  And drove home, calling the day good.

I didn't have time to get photos of all the cats I caught.  They were three girls, a calico, a torbi and a buff tux, and two boys--a light gray tabby and a buff tux.

I caught the gray tabby, on the left.  The gray boy on the right is already fixed.

And I caught this buff tux boy

This is the girl orange tux I caught, although I took this photo a few weeks back.