Today's Five Cats

 Yesterday, I drove up to Sweet Home, late afternoon, to begin the cat pick up for today.

I picked up Ben at the River Road colony.  Two weeks ago I got two more cats fixed there, two black ones.  And today the black and white girl she calls Ben, the last unfixed cat there, is getting done.  

This is Ben, a girl, getting spayed today.

I started up there at this particular River Road location when the lady called because one of the torti's she had, had taken two weeks to have her dead kittens.  Poor girl.  Got her done first. Then another girl, who may have vanished by now.  She claims she comes around now and then still.  Then it was the pair of black siblings a couple weeks ago and finally the last cat, Ben.  So that situation is done.

Just as I got there, pulled in off the road, again facing the closed gate, I get a message from the Albany lady with five unfixed cats that she isn't feeling well and she wants to cancel. I was going to take in the first three today to be fixed, of those five.  I threw something of a fit in my mind. 

How does one wait til the last minute to cancel, wasting valuable appointments, and my time. Not that this doesn't happen frequently.  But I called a lady whose one cat was scheduled for next Friday and who had recently called about a neighbor with a male too.  I told her about the cancellation and asked if she had three that might go, among her neighbors who have barn cats.  

Then I went on over to the apartments in Sweet Home, to pick up a second girl teen there, to be fixed.  I saw a big scruffy looking bob tail black tux male and asked about him, if he was fixed.  The lady I was getting the teen from didn't know.   She's about to become manager there and says first letter out to tenants will be all cats must be fixed.  Right on, I said.

Molly from Sweet Home

By this time the Albany lady said she had three cats, at least, needing fixed, and could I just stop by her place on the way home.  She gave me her address.  I was going to find it using my maps app on my phone but it wasn't accurate for this address, so I found it when I saw two carriers sitting by the shop, and a Jesus sign on the back of the car by the house.  I knew that was her.

Inside the two carriers were four cats, all boys.  She asked if I could take them all and I apologized and said "only three" and the fourth could go next week.  She said to follow her, in her car, to return the one who couldn't be done.  So I did.   

We went down a half mile on the road she lives on and turned left onto another road, and then she turned down a driveway.  On the right was a big white farmhouse and on the left a familiar barn.  

Years and years ago I caught a bunch of cats in that barn.  They were gorgeous cats, almost looked Maine Coon.  The woman had just been diagnosed with cancer at that time.  Must have been 12 or more years ago.  I remember when I returned the cats, to the barn, after they were fixed and the man looked sad and I asked if he was ok and he said his wife just got word about having cancer.  He looked like he might cry and I had then wanted to cry with him, for other reasons.  

Now its their daughter living there with her kids. Her husband died in a freak farm machine accident.  I'd seen that in the paper and thought at first it was her father who'd been killed that way. I asked about her mom.  Her dad is dead now, died of another type of cancer, but her mom's alive and living in town but the cancer has come back, is in her bones.  And I thought of Autumn, my friend, who died last summer, suddenly, of chemo she was taking for her breast cancer that came back, five years later, in her bones. This young woman has had a lot of loss for one person, I thought. 

They'd caught the wild female in the barn but then they tried to put her into a carrier from the trap and she got away.  I told them to set the trap immediately again, like nothing happened really, only bungee it open so it couldn't spring and we'd get her in next week.   We let go the orange and white boy of the four boys in the carriers.  The young boys are all tame and we can get him done next week and I came home with the three boys from Albany and the two girls from Sweet Home.  And they're all up being fixed today, in Salem.

BC

Pharoah

Poopsy