Eleven. That's how many four-month-old kittens are in the cat tower in the dining room. The two young mothers to whom the clowder belong are staring balefully at me from a smaller dog crate. None of them are particularly feral, but they were dumped at a woman's house as she was in the process of moving, and she asked if I would fix them for her. I don't mind. She's looking high and low for new homes for the kittens, which is responsible of her. And if they are already spayed/neutered with shots, they have a much better chance of finding those homes, and no chance at all of expanding their gene pool. It's a win-win-win situation.
Usually, these expeditions involve days of traps baited with wet cat food or, if I need to pull out big guns, rotisserie chicken. It often happens in inclement weather, as Murphy is a close friend of mine. My husband helps, and together, we take phone calls from people in our community, go trap cats (or occasionally a 'possum, raccoon, or, in one unfortunate instance, a skunk), take them to the shelter in the next county who has a vet on site, and get them spayed or neutered and vaccinated with a rabies and a distemper, plus whatever other medical care they may need. Then they come back here and convalesce until they are ready to go back to whence they came. And then off to trap again, and the cycle continues. A halfway house for feral cats, if you will.
I like what I do. And in appreciation, I do get phone calls, thank you notes, traps or money for traps, cat food, or what-have-you. Do cats what I like what I do? Not immediately, if at all, and it probably doesn't occur to them to be thankful later when they aren't having litter #2043. I'm okay with that, too. I've heard time and time again: be the change you want to see. I have rearranged that. I am the change I don't want to see. I don't want to see starving, flea ridden, over-impregnated ferals who are giving birth to babies with heads and legs on backwards, who have to be euthanized upon arrival. I don't want to see cats who were too much of an inconvenience, and thrown out of moving vehicles, or dumped on the side of the road to die in the traffic. I don't want to find kids were who "having some fun" by setting the neighborhood stray cat on fire for Hallowe'en. So, I TNR (trap/neuter/release) and I will continue until my county is no longer overrun - and then I will begin again, because nature abhors a vacuum.
In the meantime, the thirteen who are gracing my dining room are going to have their dinner, generously donated by PetCo and my Treasurer's wife, while we await a callback from CASPCA for their impending surgeries.
