Boys in the Bathroom

Oliver and Boomer

 I've got two boys in the bathroom and one in a cage in the garage right now.

They've been here almost a week now.   At first the two orange polydactyls were in a cage together, but it was too tough for two big boys to share a cage in the garage, which is not secure.  They would crowd the front of the cage when I'd try to clean the litter box wanting petted and out of that cage.  I don't blame them.

So those two went into the bathroom.   Its still not that easy, because they try to get out the door into the house when I go in, so I have to hold a net at the door to keep that from happening.   They're unfixed and already create issues here, with my cats, smelling like adult unfixed males.

They're really not much more than kittens, being 8 or 9 months old.  Keitha's Kitties is dealing with a 20 plus cat household with the woman and her adult kids living there facing eviction after the homeowner died of covid and allegedly the property sold by another relative.  These three boys are from that house. The story seems ever changing, so I don't really know, not being part of the rescue of 20 tame cats all unfixed from ONE house.

What are people thinking not fixing that many cats?   

Anyhow, I have not delved into the world of foster, don't worry.  I have plenty of cats to care for myself.  They're leaving Tuesday morning.  They're all three nice boys, just badly need fixed and into homes of their own.  The limbo thing for them is traumatic, but, like I said, they're good boys.  Rambunctious, fun loving, and loving.   

They're a diversion from the sadness I've reeled within, after the sudden loss of Starry, my beloved wonderful girl.  I have bouts of sudden onset crying and feel a terrible guilt which is common to me whenever I have a friend euthanized.   I do not like to make such a decision, even when a vet says it needs done.  Feels like playing god.   Feels too heavy and horrible to say myself and who am I "today you die".

A family member when I expressed my sadness via text over my Starry's death, seemed to not understand, and I told him I knew he wasn't an animal person.  He tried to say he was, citing pets his parents had but said they didn't have personality, as I had described Starry having.   I thought, how does that matter at all, in whether a life is worthy or not.  I realize to many it does matter, that a life's worth is often judged only by what it gives the person judging it.  This realization only depressed me further.   All the wild ones here, that show no outward affection to me, would be, by many, judged worthless.   But doesn't life have value that has no attachment to us personally?  Like the people living on the next block whom I don't know at all, are they worth nothing as living beings simply because I get nothing from them?     

My wonderful friend in Salem has a son who just had a lengthy operation to remove a brain tumor.  Now he can't move his limbs, after the operation.   I hope that is temporary.  She is so brave in facing this horror her beloved son is experiencing, and is unable to even visit him now after his surgery due to corona virus restrictions.   She helps not only homeless cats but homeless people.  I don't really know if her son is expected to recover his speech and use of limbs.   

I can hear the visiting boys playing wildly in the bathroom with one of those plastic pyramids with balls that go round and round the layers.  Sure their world was torn apart.  They lost their primary person to corona virus, then their home and still they want to be hugged and held and play.   I will try to be like those boys in the bathroom.