The FCCO clinic yesterday was a training clinic. The FCCO, in conjunction with United Spay Alliance, is training vets who are interested in helping their communities, with how to's on high volume spay neuter, anesthesia, spay techniques, etc. Unfortunately no Linn County vets had signed up yesterday, (I asked), always hopeful. We still have no affordable options in Linn County. We can get a spay or neuter plus rabies shot for ferals in Corvallis for $100 but that isn't a doable cost for feral colonies, only onesies and twosies now and then.
Thursday and Friday the couple began trying to catch cats, out at the Seven Mile colony, this time in a different barn. They had FCCO reservations for them yesterday. A few weeks ago, I took 14 cats from the tractor/chicken barn, out in the field, up to FCCO to be fixed.. This second colony reside in the loft of the goat barn. I'd only taken one cat thus far from the goat barn to be fixed--a classic torti adult.
Those tractor barn cats are fed by the wife of the 80 plus year old couple.
The goat barn cats are the domain of the husband. And its a difficult barn. The goats occupy the ground level. The cats live in the loft and aren't routinely seen. In fact they had no idea how many might be living in that barn loft. They are fed down in the narrow space available just inside the door.
Somehow he fit my drop trap inside that narrow space and had been feeding under it. Thursday night, he caught two under the drop trap. I finally saw how he'd rigged it, so he'd even have room to drop the trap, by pulling a cord. He'd run the cord forward, from the drop trap stand, that holds the trap up, so the cats can go under it and eat, to a caribeener hooked near the stairs, then back over the trap and through a hole he'd drilled in the metal wall of the barn. OUtside, I saw a ladder leaned against the side of the barn. He'd stood on the ladder, peeking at the trap through the hole and yanked the cord from the ladder.
Anyhow, I removed the drop trap after he caught two under it, and set traps outside and inside the barn, and by Thursday night, five in all were caught. Friday, they were busy, so I went back and forth setting and checking traps and by Friday night, we had nine cats ready to go. She checked the traps left set up til 11:00 p.m. and I told her I'd check them on the way to Portland yesterday with whomever was caught. There was indeed another cat in a trap yesterday morning. I picked up the tenth cat and headed off to Portland with the ten.
They do not know if there are more cats calling that barn home. I had left them my second drop trap too, for her to try for the two still not fixed from the tractor barn.
After checking in the cats in at the FCCO, I spent the day at the rest area sleeping in the back of my car. I didn't have to wait too long. The cats were ready for pickup at 3:00. After I picked them up, I drove home through some heavy rain, at times.
I'd just pulled into my driveway when I got a text from the couple that they had caught one of the two still not fixed in the tractor barn, but could not get it transferred out into a live trap. I drove on out and got the cat into a live trap. Once home, exhausted from the day, I got the ten who had been fixed food and water then set up the new unfixed one in the garage and went to bed. The unfixed cat will be fixed Monday at the private clinic.
Today, I'll return the ten now fixed cats and do a lot of cleaning and laundry. But nothing else.
The ten cats included two gorgeous long hair Seal Points, two long hair grays, a torbi teen, a long hair orange tabby teen and four kittens--three of them tortis and the fourth--black.
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| When I returned the cats, he said he thinks they're all fixed now in the goat barn. One left to catch in the tractor barn. 26 by tomorrow fixed at this location. One to go apparently. |
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