Can y’all bear another cat post?
Callie, Tommy Two-Toes, Smudge, and Papi watching every move I make.
Here’s the game plan: Cathy, the wonderful woman from Cat Haven, is going to bring the traps out here next Sunday night, and I get to play stake-out, waiting for the feral chirrens (all six of ‘em) to be lured into the traps. If possible, I’ll be hand-catching the two babies and putting them into a top-loading carrier. But the two teenagers (Callie & Ginger Baker) and the two adults (Papi, the daddy cat, and the Tabby {as yet-to-be-determined, possible mother}) are definitely going to have to go into the traps.
At which point, I’ll be wrapping them up, putting them into the bed of the pickup & tarping over the cages in case of rain, and then taking them to whichever vet agrees to work with the Cat Haven budget and spay & neuter all six of them in one shot.
Chalmatienne Landlady, thus far, seems to be ‘behaving’ and going with the program, and might even adopt a couple of them to take out to where she lives. After I bought the moth balls to put in her flowerbeds, she has calmed down a lot about “having” to “get rid” of the cats. Cathy is so good at schmoozing these people, she even sent her FLOWERS! That, my chirrens, is how you get shit done, if you can swing it.
When the cats are returned & recovered, they will continue to live here at L’Hotel du Fucktards, to help control the rodent population, and I will make the best accomodations possible for them, as I have thus far, in regards to what the management company wants/demands, etc. Ideally, I would like to find homes for the teenagers and babies, because they are not beyond domestication yet. The adults will always be feral, but I will continue to take care of them as much as possible.
The best part is, through Cat Haven, we will be able to keep them from producing even MORE feral cats who might or might not be able to survive in this town. This apartment complex is at the corner of a state highway and a federal highway, and eighteen-wheelers and rushing yuppies in SUVs fly through here by the hundreds every day. It’s not the small town that it was when my ‘parents’ moved up here in ’87. When I first started feeding the baby cats, there were four in their litter. I have no idea what happened to Tommy & Smudge’s siblings, but it’s pretty likely that they are part of U.S. 61 by now.
So here’s where Y’ALL come in: I need y’all to get out there and talk Cat Haven up as much as humanly possible. Send as many people as you can to their link. Y’all have never let me down yet, and while I don’t expect anybody to have bottomless pockets, I know that y’all will pass a good word whenever you can, because you will believe in Cat Haven the way that I do.
Thank y’all — I don’t know how I got so lucky, to meet & get to know so damned many good people, so many kind and open-hearted and caring people, who have bent over backwards to help people y’all didn’t even know, to help Lee, and to help animals whenever you can. Y’all are who I want to be if I ever grow up. And y’all make me damned proud to know every single one of y’all.
(And if I use the word “y’all” one more time, I’m either going to turn into an Atlanta rapper or have my southern membership card revoked, I swear.)
January 13th, 2007 at 5:30 am
This started out sounding good. You aren’t going to reabandon them, are you?
January 13th, 2007 at 5:46 am
“REabandon them”?!?!??!
That would imply that I had abandoned these cats in the first fucking place.
And if you had read the whole article, you would see where I said that I would continue to care for these cats after we have them neutered & spayed.
Not that I don’t welcome new people to the Mark of the Beast, but when you come at me feet-first, I can live without you.
Obviously, you haven’t read any of my previous posts about how I’ve been caring for these cats for MONTHS, feeding them out of my own $600-a-month disability pocket (after rent, utilities & phone, that doesn’t leave a whole helluva lot, but they haven’t missed a meal yet), or how I’ve been busting my ass to find a way to keep the management company at this apartment complex from KILLING THEM.
If you’re just here to throw rocks, Mister Texas Retiree, stay home. I don’t need this shit. I do what I can, when I can, with what I have. And as anybody here will tell you, I do a helluva lot more than most people with REAL incomes even THINK about doing.
I have a strong suspicion, though, considering that I deleted a spam comment as soon as I put this post up, that you’re one and the same as the same spammer, and you have nothing better to do than waste my time and bandwidth, so move on, little vulture, move on.
January 13th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Google just ate another comment. I’m so sick of it.
The babies will be tamed. The teens will too. With time a patient cat person could tame the adults as well. Cats learn where the bread is buttered. That’s how I got my second cat, Beta.
January 14th, 2007 at 4:55 am
I’m sorry, Anne. I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to resort to HaloScan, if I can pull it off while my computer is crutching along with no recordable media.
I don’t have the facilities, and Cat Haven doesn’t either, to do adoptions. If we can’t find homes around here for them, then they’re going to have to stay here at Fucktard Hotel. I’d like to think that we could get one or two of them into the adoption program at PetSmart, but there are HUNDREDS of cats competing for those spaces, and it is not an enviable life, in those tiny little cages for no telling how long until somebody notices them.
We do what we can with what we’ve got. I’m sure as hell not going to drive down to the Baton Rouge pound and dump them off like just so much garbage.
If more people actually made the effort to learn the positive effects of feral cats on any kind of community, rural, suburban or city — they’d realize that it’s not the worst life that a cat could have, to be neutered, innoculated, and fed by reliable caretakers.
January 15th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Another cat story? Delighted! Since the only “animals” here at Casa Biscuitbarrel are teenage boys, I dote on cat stories.
In fact, I plan to spend my declining years (if any), wandering down alleys ululating, “Kitty kitty kitty?”
Go, Annti, go!
January 16th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Don’t worry about BirdAdvocate, Annti, you can see from reading his blog that he has a definite agenda. Not so much pro-bird as anti-cat, I’d say.
I’ll bet rampant development and clearing of forested areas has a way bigger impact on bird life than feral cats, but I don’t see “BirdAdvocate” gassing about that.
January 17th, 2007 at 2:41 am
KC, I’m glad that you did the recon instead of me — whatcha wanna bet that he’s also a dyed-in-the-wool republicunt who considers himself an “environmentalist” ’cause he likes to look at the birdies?
January 17th, 2007 at 4:24 am
Oh annti! we know you’re a bird advocate from yer avatar!
We are inner city, but our lot abuts a “p-patch” neighborhood garden. Read: year round food source! rock on Ratticus!
And the I-90 tunnel project dispersed a great many Rattus rattus onto our neighborhood.
They walk the tightrope of our ‘lectric power wire. Brazen shits.
We love the our killer cat squad that keeps the vermin away from us. Until they drag a live one in at 2 am to “play” with it a while… and let it loose in the house. good times. good times.
January 17th, 2007 at 6:41 am
Ahhhh, Tammy m’love — remind me someday (when I’m not about to fall into a coma) to tell you about the Kitty-Cat Rodeos involving live-capture chipmunks who REALLY don’t appreciate one’s efforts to capture/rescue them from the kitties… Hard-biting little bastards, right down to the fucking BONE!
And to think, after the F.U. wouldn’t let me keep any of the little buggers as pets (for those tortuous 18 months of incarceration/daily eviction that I spent with those motherfuckers) — I went out and bought HAMSTERS!!!! Psychotic DWARF hamsters!!!!!! And then, of course, one of them turned utterly homicidal.
I miss my cats, dammit. Yes, I still see ‘em every day, but we haven’t lived together in almost 2 years.