Late summer, the perfect time for spinning in circles while chasing one's own tail. The air is dripping with humidity. The mosquitoes and ticks are biting with voracious fury. Carcasses of dead rodents hide in the grass, lying in wait for unwary feet. Fortunately, clusters of buzzing flies often revealed their hiding places. Unfortunately, the feral cats were reproducing faster than rabbits. The four ladies, Mama, Minnie, Vick and Blue, had presented me with seventeen kittens. Vick's hostility to Possum Lily suggested Lily had a litter tucked away somewhere, too. If even half of those kittens were female, I was in deep doo doo. Mama was the worst offender, cranking out litters so fast it made me dizzy. It wouldn't be easy to stop her. I had about as much chance of catching her as of winning the lottery. It was the same with Lily and the chances of nabbing Blue weren't much better. And to be honest, I was a wimp. I hated getting scratched and bit. But at least I could grab Minnie and even Vick if I had to. So I decided to start with them.
I found an organization about a half hour away that would spay or neuter one cat at a time for less money than area vets charged. Minnie would be the hardest because I was so attached to her. But she would be the easiest to catch and confine. So I started with her. The night before her surgery, drinking and eating had to stop at midnight. Then next morning I had to wrestle the terrified cat into a trap. I had purchased the trap the previous day because because the clinic people insisted the cat be delivered in a trap. I drove poor yowling Minnie to the clinic. When I saw the half mile line of people waiting with pet carriers, I had an urge to flee. Instead, I grabbed the trap containing poor Minnie and joined them. All the people with carriers gawped and giggled at the big cage. When Minnie and I finally got to the head of the line, they took Minnie while I filled out papers. Then I was told to pick her up that afternoon. I left Minnie there and wept all the way home.
To pick Minnie up, I had to wait in line again. When they handed the trap to me, I looked under the blanket to speak to Minnie. The vet slapped my hand and called me an ignorant idiot. She said by looking at the cat, I would upset her. I was too stunned to smack the vet back. I just took Minnie home.
And the fun was just beginning. I let a drugged and wobbly Minnie loose in the house. Her kittens were locked on the porch and she spent the next two week trying to get to them. This wasn't surprising. The vet had also called me an idiot because according to her, the kittens should have been taken away from her ages ago.
I did not like that rude jerk of a veterinarian. But since I feared Vick was pregnant and no other options were immediately available, I made her an appointment at the same clinic. The night before her surgery, I grabbed Vick off the porch and hauled her inside the house. Vick was not happy but we both survived.
Two weeks before, when I had brought Minnie to the clinic, everybody waiting there had transported their cats in carriers. Not wishing to be a spectacle again, the next morning I spent an hour wrestling a snarling growling Vick into a carrier. We took the half hour drive, and Vick and I waited in line for forty five minutes. When I got to the head of the line, they told me they wouldn't take Vick because she wasn't in a trap. Stunned, I sat down on the grass and cried. Someone else came out and told me to take her home, put her in a trap and bring her back within an hour. Because I was desperate, I did it. I brought Vick home, got her out of the carrier, somehow got her into the trap and brought her back to the clinic.
I picked Vick up that afternoon. At that time I found out that they had operated on Vick while she was in the trap. That meant they had done this to Minnie also. This practice seemed barbaric and unsanitary. I was sickened by the thought that I had unknowingly allowed it to happen. The thought of it still makes me sick.
Fortunately, they both recovered. Compared to Minnie, confining Vick for two weeks was easy. But the whole hideous clinic experience had been traumatic for Vick, Minnie and me as well. The clinic people had cropped the girls' ears, something else I wish hadn't happened. Vick's ear wasn't healing well and the wound kept opening. I had to keep catching her and putting ointment on it until it finally did heal. But, every time I looked at those cropped ears, I felt like a monster.
Soon Minnie was back to her old self and appeared to be enjoying life. She spent her days hunting and raising hell in the yard with her kittens and the other cats. She spent nights in the house. A couple months after the surgery, she went off one morning to hunt. Something must have gone very wrong on that trip. She never came back.
The experiences with the clinic were not pleasant. I thought about backing off until Mama dropped by with a new litter. I realized then that the feline population explosion would continue until every female on my property was spayed. So I checked around for other spaying and neutering options. Somebody gave me the phone number for a program that sold certificates for the operations at reduced rates. Only a few vets worked with the program but it was worth checking out. I called the number and talked to a nice lady that laughed at my predicament and called me an idiot for letting it get so out of control. I couldn't exactly argue with that. She explained how the program worked and sent me the paperwork. When I received the paperwork, I sold some personal possessions to raise the money for seven certificates and purchased some more carriers. Since Minnie's five and Vick's remaining two were almost the age to start reproducing and would be easy to capture, they were my next victims. Two of the seven were males, but I was determined to keep Minnie's beautiful white son, Leo. Since un-neutered tomcats were always fighting, I figured it was best to take care of Vick's son, Ninja, too.
One cat at a time would have taken forever and probably would have resulted in many more litters of kittens. I found a wonderful vet located about forty five minutes away. She said she would take care of the seven kittens in one day. But the seven had to have physicals and shots a few days before the surgery.
On physical day, it was easy to collect Minnie's kittens. I'd been making them come in at night since their mother disappeared. Vick's two were easy to lure up onto the porch. I locked them in for the night. The hard part came in the morning. It wasn't a picnic wrestling seven irate cats into carriers. But eventually, my husband and I got the vehicle loaded up with the seven howling half grown cats and off we went.
Several miles from the animal hospital, a horrible smell filled the vehicle. Somebody must have had an accident. We stopped at a store for cleaning supplies but then I couldn't figure out which carrier the smell was coming from. Then I realized it would be risky opening the carriers. One of the cats might get loose and lost. So we rolled down the windows and continued on.
We got to the animal hospital and brought the patients in. Maybe it was the smell that caused the staff to usher us right into a private room. We began opening carriers and discovered Vick's blue boy, Ninja had disgraced himself. We were given cleaning supplies and tidied Ninja and his carrier up. The vet and staff were wonderful, treating the seven felines gently and with respect. After their physicals and shots, we bundled up the howling group and began the noisy drive home.
The days before the group surgery, I was plagued by guilt for what I was about to put the innocent creatures through. Sometimes all I had to do was look at one of the kittens to burst into tears.
The dreaded morning came and got off to a horrible teary start. When I stepped out the door, I discovered one of Blue's beautiful black kittens dead.
It was a weepy wreck and her husband that brought the seven howling unhappy cats to the animal hospital and turned them over. Before I left, I asked to see them once more. Each cat was in a large cage and they were howling. When Leo, the white male saw me, he stood on his hind legs and began banging his head on the bars. This freaked me out. I was going to take him back but the veterinary assistants told me he would calm down after I left and ushered me out. It was a good thing I had brought a chauffeur because I cried all the way home.
The next day we returned to the animal hospital to pick the cats up. The hospital staff brought me back into the kennel area to help gather up my creatures. As soon as I walked into the room, all seven cats began lunging at the cage doors and howling. One of the vet's assistants kept saying, "This is so weird!"
He wasn't kidding. The whole situation was weird. I felt like I had landed in the Twilight Zone.
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