Yesterday, as I was preparing to mow my lawn (leisurely, from the seat of my new lawn tractor, yeehaw!) an S-10 (good taste in trucks) pulled over at the side of the road and a woman leaned out. She's a friend of Donna and Tim--without whom Wildrun would be up the creek without a paddle when I travel--and lives up the hill past Valarie and Craig (another vital Wildrun neighbor). People dump cats on her property (surprise) and she gets them all fixed.
Big heavy sigh of relief on my part--no kitties for me to take and get fixed!
However, a recently dropped mom had kittens, and two kittens had abscesses. She was in a quandry about what to do with them. I told her to bring them on down if she PROMISED she was getting the mom cat fixed.
Why would I take more kittens?
A) She's a neighbor, and Donna and Tim mentioned me to her and
B) She's a CARPENTER. A "built houses" sort of carpenter. And she said she'd be happy to help us out.
And anyone who has been here knows one thing we could seriously use is a carpenter. There's a ceiling downstairs that needs to be done, trim around all the windows, a new door for the downstairs, etc. etc. etc. Even ADVICE in this area would be a huge help. She already was giving advise on putting a plastic barrier up on the ceiling before covering it. And she emptied her wallet out to help with the kitten's vet bill. You can just tell when people you meet are "just get this problem out of my life and have a nice day" people, or when they are "help me with this problem, and I'll help you too" people.
However, the kittens don't have abscesses, they have cuterebra larvae, and unfortunately it appears the grubs may have died, which means they won't fall out on their own. I've got the kittens on antibiotics and will drag them into the vet with me Tuesday morning when I take the other kittens in to go into the vet's off-site adoption cage.
They are kind of puny but are eating fine on their own. I'm supplementing with KMR as well.
I've received quite a few emails from people asking me to take cats and kittens. I have an auto-response on my email saying I cannot. I now need to get in touch with Alden to see if he's interested in revamping my web site. I need to entirely redo it and get info sheets in .pdf in there, so I can send people there. There are enough resources around here now that people CAN get their own cats spay/neutered (this neighbor proves it) but they do need some help. I can send them to alleycat.org or neighborhoodcats.org, but it would help to have some local resource pages to save people some time.
On the continued up side, I am receiving more inquiries about adoptions. Thank goodness!
1 comment:
I volunteer with a rescue group here in Virginia and we are also seeing an uptick in inquiries..but we are also seeing more desperate inquires to take cats as well. I wish more people would TNR...that would help the total numbers since a lot of the requests to intake are "I found this cat and now she has had kittens"
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