And then there were...more

Tonight, just after work, my phone rang. For those of you who don't know, I can hear ya'll before the message actually beeps. So if you call and say "I got the damned machine again..." I can heeeeeaaar you!

At any rate, tonight the phone rings, and as my recorded voice chatters on about how I don't return phone calls about cats (I leave my email address on the message), I can hear "Mew! mew. MEW! MEW! MEW!"

It was Valarie from around the corner. Now not only is she getting cats dumped on her, people are bringing her kittens they find dumped elsewhere in the neighborhood. The kitten I could hear mewing was obviously still in bottle-feeding age, so I picked up the phone and told her to bring him on down.

I walked out to check the section of road where she had been told he was found. Valarie picked me up, and we drove to where she had been told the person had picked him up. Nothin. Nada. So we walked a bit farther, and I noticed a driveway with a cat. And another cat. And....another cat. I walked up the drive and saw...kittens. Many kittens.

So we got to meet another neighbor who has had scads of cats dumped on her, and they all have had kittens. One of the littermates of this little guy, who had wandered away from the clan down to the road, had fly eggs on him, and another had goopy eyes, so I told her I would take these three, bring her back some food, and that we needed to talk about getting the cats fixed ASAP. Right now there are at least ten kittens, and three are at an adoptable age.

This is only about a half mile from my house! How many more kittens are out there, only a stone's throw away?



These are fly eggs. By tomorrow they would have been maggots, and this would have been a dead kitty in a few day's time. You get these off by giving the kitten a bath under the faucet and combing them out with a flea comb. It's disgusting, but it works. Thank goodness for Dawn dish soap. All three got baths, a blow-dry, a drop of Advantage flea treatment (they were crawling, and the Dawn didn't nearly kill them all) and 1/3 a bottle of KMR diluted with water. And then my husband and I drove into town for a cheap dinner out, because Friday is supposed to be out "non-kitten night out."

More kittens. I do believe this is the most we've ever had in this short a time, especially if you add the ones we left behind at the neighbor's house.

Mark came home early today, and I was still dressed in my comfy computer work clothes, which can be a little...scary. Today's outfit was a lavender t-shirt and teal capri length sweats. When I went out to look for the kittens, I asked Mark to tell the kitten-finder, if she called, that I had gone out to look to see if there were any other kittens, and for her to meet me on the road.

Mark casts an eye at my outfit and says "Shall I tell her to look for the woman dressed like..."

"...yes, a cat lady," I finished for him.

I did change out of the teal capris and put on white shorts for dinner out.