Saturday, July 18, 2009

Sad Day at the Animal Shelter

We had to take mama and baby kittens to the county shelter this morning. The little black cat that has been begging for food fifteen times a day had moved her kittens from the yard across the street to our woodpile alongside the house. Thursday morning I opened the front door to find this waiting for me:


Mama had either brought this kitten over or it had followed her. At first the kitten hissed at me but after it saw me petting mama and found the food, it let me touch it's back and eventually pet it. Soon it was rolling on its back and letting me pet its belly. One of its eyes looked infected and its whole little body was crawling with fleas. During the day it and mama stayed on the porch and whenever it got scared it hid under the ice plant by the house. Once I found it wandering around by itself, and here comes mama from around the corner of the garage, with another kitten following her. As soon as they got around the corner, the other kitten ran back the way it had come, so I followed to investigate and found the other three on the side of the house, hiding behind the woodpile and other assorted junk that's out there.


Later in the day, I snuck around the corner of the garage and saw this:


The other three were getting their lunch while the first little kitten hid in the ice plant. The one kitten stayed on the front porch with mama all day, letting me play with it, but still running off to hide every time it got startled by strange noises or the kids riding their bikes on the sidewalk.


Little goopy eye.


So, since there is absolutely no way that we could afford to take any of these sick flea ridden animals to the vet, plus we have no room for five more cats, we rounded them all up last night, hissing and spitting, got them in the cat cage, got mama in there this morning, and took all of them to the shelter. Where unfortunately, they probably will need to be put down because the shelter is overrun with cats and kittens and not enough people want to adopt strays.

While we were there a batch of seven kittens were brought in, another box of newborns that were abandoned by their mama, and another cage with one half grown feral cat in it. Plus our five that we brought, all in the space of 5 minutes. Poor Keith was standing there wiping his eyes, it just tears him up to see all of these strays.

So, people, get your animals spayed and neutered, please! One cat like the black one from our porch will have a litter, have another one a few months later, then another one, and each of her four or five kittens will reproduce, overrunning a neighborhood with feral cats in the blink of an eye.

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