Feed A Cat For Christmas! KARON and WALT S!

As many of you know, it takes $40+ per day for me to feed over 100 cats in the Beechwood section of Rochester.  And I do this EVERY DAY (at 3:15 am., pronto, no matter what the weather).  UGH.  A few years ago we started the Feed a Cat For Christmas campaign to help pay for the food.  Because this year was so stressful for me - broken leg/ankle, hip surgery - and with my ankle still not healed completely, AND with all the kittens and cats we have had in our rescue this year (100+), I have not been able to concentrate on fundraising.  Thank God for friends.  

In the meantime, Karon and Walt S. reminded me of the FACFC campaign by making the first donation.  Their donation is in memory of their kitty Sam.  Thank you Karon and Walt, for thinking of me and the kitties out there that need us.  

AAYDA aka BEAN

If you will recall, Aayda was found in a dumpster in mid-November by a homeless couple in Rochester.  I was never able to reach the homeless couple after that initial frantic phone call, to thank them, and tell them of Aayda's progress.  But Aayda survived, and thrived.  If only she could talk and tell us what she endured.  In the absence of a cat being able to talk, we have storyteller Joel Schmid who has a gift in telling us what he thinks a cat is thinking.  He has written two books from the point of view of the cats I feed daily and is now sharing with us Aayda's story. 

Here is Part 1.

A Guardian Angel – Aayda’s story

   Animal cruelty abounds around the world. Unfortunately – Rochester is no exception. Lucky for this little girl someone down on their luck found her and rescued her. Not all evil deeds are successful at completing their course of misery and despair…

  

  Little Aayda was so happy – she had just settled down for a nice nap with her mother and her 4 tiny brothers and sisters behind the row of impossibly tall metal trashcans next to the ramshackle human's house on Hudson ave. It was a comfortably warm day in November – which was a blessing after the big snowstorm last week. Luckily her mom was a street smart cat and had chosen a nice warm pile of musty and fragrant leaves to burrow into to form her nursery. At the back of the leaf pile and up against the weather-beaten wooden clapboard siding was a saggy old box left over from a microwave that her mother had been able to just squeeze into when she had felt the pangs of labor beginning. That had been almost three weeks ago, and the wind had since piled the leaves up against and over the box to form an effective layer of insulation for the new family inside. Mama’s kittens were now almost 3 weeks old, and some of them had just managed to open their eyes for the first time. Aayda was among these first trailblazers, and she cried out in her diminutive voice at the joy of her first blurry images of her mother’s dark brown tiger-striped fur. She used her newfound sense of sight to shuffle her way up the pile formed by her siblings at her mother’s nipples and find one for herself. Now after filling her belly with her mother’s warm and rich milk, she was drifting off into contented sleep – the plaintive mews from her litter mates forming a gentle lullaby as she closed her eyes and nodded off.

Aayda woke with a cruel start sometime later to the crash and clatter of the human's trash cans getting kicked aside next to her family's warm and secure shelter. A small group of human children were outside playing in the late November sunshine and had just discovered the big pile of leaves that had drifted up alongside their friend’s house. Aaydas’ mother had snapped awake at the same time, and Aayda could feel her sides moving quickly with panicky breath as she got ready to fight or flee. Her mother knew what humans were normally like - especially the young ones – and if they were this close already to her family's sanctuary it was likely already too late to fight. Still – she would do her best – fleeing only if it was the last resort to save herself. She would feel the loss of her new kittens – but she had learned the hard way any human encounter she could run away from was a lucky one for her. Today the humans were not even going to give her a choice. As she was opening her mouth to reveal her sharp teeth and drew in a breath to voice her most intimidating growl her family’s shelter was kicked high into the air as one of the humans hard booted feet launched it cruelly away from the side of the house. (The young man had no idea yet something was sheltering inside – he had seen the box and just felt it would be fun to give it a kick) She felt herself and her new kittens tumbling end over end as the box flew in a short arc and landed with a wet thump on the semi-frozen ground out into the human’s small back yard. Her kittens all began mewing at once with their sharp, panicked cries, while she scrambled out to face the humans.

Aayda’s mother emerged from the still tumbling box and hissed as loudly as she could while she rapidly analyzed her chances against the humans. She saw immediately that this was a battle she could not hope to win. There were three of them – human young that were all legs and hugely tall, eyes full of mischievous and cruel intent. One of them was pointing at her while another was running after her family's battered home, and she was forced to take the only option left to her. She spun on her muscular legs and sprinted for the big hole left in the broken and rotted wooden fence at the back end of the human’s yard. She heard the human children behind her screaming something in human-speak as she bolted through the gaping hole in the fence, but thankfully she was not able to hear the mewing of her surely doomed kittens from within the old box. As she ran parallel to the siding of another house located behind the one with the pile of leaves she vowed to return as soon as she could to see if any of her brood had survived - but she did not hold out much hope. She slowed down as she neared a corner and took a quick look back the way she had come. For now, she must find a place to hide and wait for the cruel humans to tire of their games and leave her former home alone.

To be continued…