Female problems...and a guilty conscience

So I have been feeding five cats and my brood cat was pregnant again because I did not get her fixed before I went on my three week trip late April and she must have come into heat when I was gone.

You cannot give cats away in this small town and the farmers don't want any more barn cats. I decided to keep the brood cat and the cute orange and white kitten and try to find homes for the colorful calico kitten with the black eye patch - my favorite, but you give away your best and hope for a karmic return some day - the gray fox kitten and the calico uncle, which I think is a male and acts male but should be a female because all calico are suppoedly female.

So I posted free cats on Craigs list - getting a response from someone named Jenna who claimed to be from la Junta and wanted to hook up with me but I should first send her message through this service so she would know I am over 18 lol her lol not me lol...but I look at the fine print and see that if I do not respond to two (presumably female) contacts within two days I will be billed $39.95 a month for this service which is to prove I am over 18 lol, her lol not my lol.. Needess say I let her message go unanswered.

My neighbor across the street has five kittens and has lots of friends but now may not have any takers I was told by another neighbor who has cats of his own..

So I also posted a sign on the grocery store window, getting zero response, but I was asking $10 a cat because I wanted to make sure who gets a cat can buy cat food.. No calls.

So I went in Monday to place an ad in the local weekly and the daily in La Junta and my former co-worker Loreta said she had been asking around and after determining my ads would cost $16 she phoned her daughter at the court house to ask if Toby was still looking for barn cats and she was. I agreed to trap three cats for her to pick up today.

Meanwhile my woodworking neighbor across the street with the surplus cats had loaned me his cat trap, a neat wooden cage with a door that drops down and traps the cats inside when you pull out the stock that is holding up the door.

I had been feeding the kittens inside of it weeks ago and they would go right in.

This moring I go out to the shed and put feed inside the trap and the two kittens - the calico and the steel gray fox went right in - and I had them. I called Toby and she said she had forgotten the pet carrier - which I was going to use for the third adult uncle cat - but I said I could put him in a box. She said they would be picked up about 4. I checked the cats,kept theim in the shade and then went to La Junta to Safeway to buy a large bag of Purina complete cat chow I was going to donate to the new cat owners. And at Wal mart bought I a shower head to replace my busted one and a few food items though I try not to shop at Walmart as much as possible because they treat their employees like southern slaves.

I got home moved the cat trap to the side of the house and noted the cats after struggling earlier had settled down. And I wend inside to make a late lunch. After lunch I stepped out onto the porch and saw the gray fox skitter away from the water bowl. Damn. they got out becaue i had not secured a lower latch and they had jiggled the nut holding the door a little loose and squeezed out.

About 3:15 I went back out and set up the trap and the cats were skittish...but they were hungry again and the older uncle cat and the gray fox slipped inside the trap so I pulled the door shut. Two of three ain't bad. I figured I could trap the calico again tomorrow because she had gone into the trap again when i put some food and catnip in it.

Then Toby's husband came by after 4 and I told him the situation and I put the feed in the back of his pickup and he put the trap in the back and said he would drop if off in the morning. I thanked him again..and he said they have trouble keeping cats for some reason and they always leave after a month or two, then he got in and drove off.

And now I feel bad, wondering if I am sending them to their doom but I cannot afford to feed five cats - especially since the brood cat showed up on my doorstep late this morning meowing her head off to me and lookng slimmer and that means she had her new brood overnight. Her loud mews were to tell me she had had kittens and I told her I knew she had had them but I do not know if she knows I know she knows.

Come two months and the brood cat will be fixed and I will pray the current brood if the tomcats do not kill them off will find a home. I do not know how many there are for they are well hidden, as the last batch was, and they will not surface for several weeks. And then the orange and white, will find himself with siblins. I hope he looks after them the way his uncle did.

Meanhwile, the aging dog just sleeps most of the day, eats every time I do, plus her two meals, and wags her tail and never barks, not even at strangers, and still jumps up onto the wingback chair by the front door when I am gone to wait my return. I should throw that chair out to make more room in my small cottage but that is her chair to use and ruin I figure. And jumping in and out of that chair frquently during the day has kept her nimble at age 13.

But she was fixed when I got her, a failed show dog who was no longer wanted and was going to be put down, and the dog was free but the fixing cost $600 because she had a lot of other problems, and she still does, but I figure if I can';t afford a doctor I can't afford a vet and so the two of us get by withour prescription meds and we somehow move gamely and keep our weight off and get by the best we can.

And I am still glad I started feeding the skinny cats from next door. With all those cats around, i no longer have mice coming into the house.


In a year or two though the farmers and ranchers around here may have a surplus problem too, a surplus of grasshoppers. This year their population is building up from all the rain we've had. I figure another year or two of population explosion and the grasshoppers may morph into a plaguue of locusts and head off across the farmlands and dry pastures that rise above this shallow river valley.

We will wait and see.