Vet Visit

 Exhaustion had taken its toll on me by Friday morning.   I had to get up very early to change all 11 adult cats into clean traps.  This means moving a cat to a clean trap then cleaning the trap the cat was in, to move another into it.   On and on, until all eleven cats are in clean freshly papered lined in pee pad traps.

This really doesn't take me long, since I have the system down pat by now.

But I'd gotten a late start, relative to the time the colony caretakers' daughter and husband arrived to load them up to take up to the FCCO.  After the cats were all loaded into their Yaris, which is a later version of the car I have, it was time to get Zippy and Silly, the two kittens from the colony, into a carrier, which was quick and easy.  Off they went also to the FCCO and later, I was told, yes, they were accepted into the FCCO's Kitten Caboose program.

After being fixed, the FCCO will move the kittens on to one of their participating shelters, for adoption.  

I was going to take a nap before the appointment for the other three kittens from the colony at a local vet clinic.   They were very ill.  One in particular, whose breathing sounded like a rake being drawn across concrete.

I knew the bill might be huge.  I'd had a tough time finding a vet clinic who could see them.  The vet and the assistant were incredibly kind.  I described to them where the kittens came from, the struggles there to catch the cats, the poor conditions with nutria everywhere, the poor quality of food (including vegetables), they are fed.  The vet was horrified.   I told her I usually don't take in kittens without a rescue committment first but that I couldn't just leave them out there in that shape.

The one kitten, so weak she made no attempt to struggle (these are feral kittens experiencing first human touch), did not make it.  Vet said she was too far gone and would not get better and she did not come home with me.  Tears were streaming down my face at the office and I struggled to not outright sob.  The vet stuck her head back into the office while I waited with a hand out holding a box of tissue.  They gave me a break on the price, when I checked out, with antibiotics and antiparasitic probiotics for the surviving two.

The other two, Mischief and Delilah, are close to four months old but are the weight of two month olds.

I've had them on heating discs and the antibiotics and they are eating everything in sight.  I'd told the vet about the other two I took from there, (Silly and Zippy) how, in the 8 days I had them, it was freakish how fast they gained weight and grew.  In just over a week's time.  She said that's what good nutrition will do for a kitten.  I'll tell you  I think Delilah has gained half a pound already!   She eagerly awaits treats I bring to them in the bathroom to see what new delight I might have.

But I'll tell you what, when they start to play, that's when they'll get well instantly.  I've found that with kittens over and over, the health benefits of play!

I recuperate cats after surgery on the cat shelves.  They have heat there.  

Fixing breakfast Saturday morning for the 11 cats fixed Friday, before returning them to their colony.

On Saturday, I got up late and then loaded up the cats, who had been brought back to my place to recover, after their surgeries in Portland (7 girls, 4 boys), and took them home to their colony.  I was happy the weather wasn't so bad Saturday.   I came home and was going in and out of the garage with laundry from cage covers, and groceries.  I was barefoot (my preferred state) and I caught my little toe on the edge of the lawnmower wheel, mid stride.   Meaning my weight was still in forward motion as it caught and bent my little toe out sideways.  Yow!   

Yesterday my foot was bruised looking but today just red.

Hard to walk later, with my foot in a shoe, when I went to fill my one prescription.  The pharmacy line was very long and I stood in that line waiting for an hour.  On a very painful foot.   I thought of it as a test of some kind, for otherwise I would have given up and left, but then would have to have gone through the line some other day.   There are lines for about everything now.  And empty shelves that once were plentifully stocked.

I've heard nothing from my friend up in Silverton who suffered the house fire.  Ten cats were found alive in the end.   It's like also losing another friend, whom I may not see again for a very long time now.  I don't even know where she and her husband are living.

The Lebanon friend I have, who feeds the park cats and whom I have gone to the lake with now and then, may be moving.  She has lived in her mom's house.  Her mom died a couple years ago, maybe three.  She left the house to my friend and her brother.  Her brother is giving his half share to his son ,who has been preapproved for a loan to buy out my friends half so he can live there.  But what about my friend?   How in the world will she find a place to live for $150k?   She has about ten cats too.    There's nowhere to buy in these parts, where prices have skyrocketed due to massive influx of out of staters, for $150 to $200k.   Even mobile homes now cost over $100k then you have to pay site rent and utilities for wherever they are situated.   She lives on SS.

One of the property listings my friends nephew sent her, in trying to encourage her move, went for $200k and is the homeless camp site in Cascadia, where, in the end, they screamed at me over the cats and kittens I'd taken, with permission, from outside one homeless campers old camp trailer, to be fixed, but keeping the kittens (Orphan Paw Project took all 13), as they had no future there.  Obvious now that the property is up for sale.  They claimed I was taking kittens to sell and make a lot of money.  Ha!   They told me to never come back.   Anyhow, the site is being sold now for $199k, without a livable dwelling on site and filled with trash, human waste, probably needles and still full of homeless campers who would somehow need to be ousted.  It was startling to me she would even consider such a purchase, without the funds to clean up the site and then move a mobile onto the property.  It is unclear if it has a usable well or septic.

I have only five spay neuter spots, all near the end of February.  Once January is over, when I have been helping those who got spay neuter spots at the FCCO, I really have nothiing else, except the tiny few spots end of February at the Salem clinic, where, to be quite honest, I doubt things will ever be the same, as far as getting spay neuter spots there, since the OHSS takeover.    It's quite sad.  It's now a much harder struggle to get any cats fixed anywhere.