The Rain in Spain...

UGG.  Miserable out there this morning.  It was wet wet wet.  By the time I got done with my rounds, my clothes were soaking - but the one thing I protect is my hair!  God forbid the straightened hair I had done at the hairdresser last week gets wet!  The three TNR's yesterday were all female - two were pregnant, and the third one was just six months old.  I had to let them back out on the streets yesterday, and it is always very traumatic for me to do.  I hate that part.  I really do.  I didn't see any of them this morning, I hope they forgive me soon. 

Little Paddy has now been renamed Pepper, and he went for a check up last night, so I will call Lillian this morning to see how that went, but he is being loved more and more by his new Mom, so I am happy about that.  I still wish he had someone to play with besides her, like a furry brother or sister, but right now, he is good.

On Saturday I will be making a quick visit to see Pumpkin and Magic - Magic's new name is Charley.  Pumpkin had a temporary new name last week - Humpkin - he was getting a little too friendly with a stuffed bear.  :)  I have pictures sent by their new mom Jessica - they are such gorgeous cats.  I still have their Mom Vanessa, who is quite a beauty queen herself.

This morning I went to my mother's and took pictures of the babies.  Look at these sweeties!!!  :)  Penny is a very good mother, never leaving them except to eat and do her business.  She hops right back in to the warm little nest she's made.

I have Friday off from work, and most likely will take a break from writing on this blog - I sometimes find myself running out of topics, and pictures, and positive stuff for the few of you who actually read this, so enjoy a break from my 'stuff'.  :)

"To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body."

--Mahatma Gandhi

Strangers in the Night

OK, TONS happening this morning.

First off, Laura and I were able to trap three kitties today, two females, and the third was a kitten and we couldn't tell what sex it was.  It was new to me.  It funny how I never really see the strays and ferals that will come out after I leave, I'll bet there are more than I know of...  I had never seen this kitten before on Hayward.  I also trapped the calico that was happily eating out of my defective trap Sunday morning.  Laura got the pregnant muted calico on Baldwin.  A BEAUTIFUL colored cat.  I had never seen its colors before because it was always dark when I fed at that spot each day, but I could see from its silouette that it had quite the belly on it.  All in all, a great catch.  The bad part of this is there was no very pregnant kitty around on Hayward, nor has there been one since I saw her on Sunday.  Thats sad.  I wonder if she's had them somewhere.  I also need to work on getting the pregnant kitten on Seventh now.

On another note, a couple of months ago my mother had told me about a cat hanging around her house in Webster, in a beautiful neighborhood where you just don't find stray cats.  Maybe a moose or two, but not a cat.  This cat was a beautiful orange, and she would let it in on the cold winter nights and let it back out because her two kitties Mikey and Gracie weren't particularly fond of this orange cat.  Mikey and Gracie came from Third Street, and my mother was kind enough to adopt them.  Anyway, the past two weeks my mother has been asking for me to come check out the orange kitty, who she had been letting in more and more, because she thought she might be 'getting bigger'.  Well, I went over on Sunday and felt her belly, and I was pretty sure she was pregnant.  I was set to have her spayed and Another Chance Pet Rescue stepped in and offered to have her birthed and kittens adopted out through them, as my mother has no idea what she is doing when it comes to pregnant cats!  :)  The trade off was set to take place Saturday, and all would be well and my mother would get the cat back after it had her babies and was spayed.  Well, Mom calls me this morning while I am setting traps and tells me that at 2 am., PENNY (we've named the mom) screeched under the bed, and out a kitten comes!  I went over there and saw the kitten myself.  A beautiful red kitten, just like its mom.  I also noticed something that didn't look quite right.  Poor baby had a stillborn next to the live one.  It looked like it hadn't formed completely, poor thing.  I get to work and Mom calls me at 8 this morning to tell me she looked under the bed and another one was there!  This time a beautiful little black with red colors throughout was there!  Mom and two (hopefully thats all!) babies are doing well, and I will get pictures tonight.  Unbelieveable. 

Thats my story for today.  Tomorrow, updates on Cheddar, Paddy/Pepper, Pumpkin and Magic!  :)

Hood Kitties



Kitties waiting on Pennsylvania




Pennsylvania Kitty




Second St. Kitties




Old Tuffy




Lucy on Garson




Sixth St. Kitties

 ahhhh!  so much to tell!  First off, I have not seen pregnant kitty since I tried to trap there Sunday morning.  Today is Tuesday.  I pray she is just coming by a bit later.  Laura has offered to help me tomorrow, where I have two spots booked at Habitat for Cats clinic.  I had seen the calico hanging around and figured she was easily going into the trap, so she would be easy to get.  Nobody the past two mornings.  I pray they are there tomorrow.  But in the meantime, I did not feed a whole bunch at two other locations where I SUSPECT are other pregnant cats - one on Baldwin, a pretty muted calico, and on Seventh, the gorgeous fluffy kitten.  I will try to set a trap at either location, and hope for the best if the Hayward girl doesn't work out.  Rain is forecast, so I also pray that it doesn't put a damper on things.  I need prayers!  The slots at Habitat do not come easily!  Its always my fear I don't get one or two for what they have me booked for.  There are so many other kitties that need those spots!

Second, I brought some antibiotics to slip into the wet food for the beautiful red buff fluffball with the wound on his hip that you saw in the window on yesterday's post.  There he was in the window up above, and down he scurried when I arrived there this morning.  I placed the food in the bowl, with the medicine, but he is more interested in me than the food.  He always follows me to my car, and it BREAKS MY HEART to have to leave him there.  Seriously, I am really considering, but I would have to have him neutered, and where do I keep him?  Any suggestions and/or donations would be extremely helpful - these cats are killing my pocket.  I would also have to have his wound treated.  Its a very clean wound, and looks like its just skin missing in an even patch.  He is a very pretty boy, and it saddens me.  Something to think about, as if I don't have enough already.

I had sort of an amusing encounter this morning.  I noticed a male and female, both white, with the male pushing a shopping cart, on the same corner that I got out to feed the kitty at - you can tell they were both homeless.  Both very dirty looking, but they didnt' look harmful.  I got out with bag of food and water in hand and said 'goodmorning' and the male said 'feeding the cats again!', and I laughed, I must have encountered him in the past...  We started up a conversation that lasted at least five minutes before I said I had to go, we got to talking about the cats, and the girl - tall blond and could be very pretty asked if I knew Lisa - the girl from Parsells who a year ago was torturing cats in her house and I reported and cops went there and saved the cat, etc. (read last summer's posts) - and I said 'oh yea Crazy Lisa!' and we laughed, and she was telling me that she recently had her thumb bitten off by a pit bull that she was bothering in her yard.  Bitten right off.  That is crazy.  She also mentioned that she had been feeding at a boarded up house on Fourth Street, and told me where it was.  I drove over there, and they were headed that way, and as I scoped the place out, and was headed to my last spot, I stopped and asked her if she wanted some food to feed the kitty, and she gladly accepted, so I have her a half bag of food, some bowls, a can of wet, and a jug of water.  She was very grateful, I could tell.

So there you have it.  Another exciting morning in the hood.  :)

"The question is not, can they reason?

Nor, can they talk? But can they suffer?"

Blind Eyed Kitty

Last Friday I was offered someone's spot at a clinic that spays and neuters on Sunday mornings if I could trap the pregnant kitty on Hayward.  So off I go, trap and tuna in hand, and lay the trap on the grass and before I could even get into my car to wait, out of the bushes comes pregnant kitty, and also a calico, and another kitty.  Momma goes sniffing, and the cali goes right into the trap.  I am thinking, 'no no no, thats for pregnant kitty', and kicking myself for not bringing and setting two traps.  Then I start to wonder 'why isn't the trap going off?'.  So I get out of the car, and go to the trap, where the cali turns around and runs out, I bring the trap to inspect it on the sidewalk, turn it over so I can see under the newspaper I lay down in it, and there is no trip plate!  I brought a defective trap with me.  I was SO disappointed.  I was SO upset about it.  I can't tell you how much I beat myself up over stupid things, and it really isn't so stupid when lives depend on it, its heartbreaking.  So I hope and pray that the momma doesn't have her babies, and if I can get the help on Wednesday, will try again for her, as I have another appointment with Habitat for Cats clinic as a backup to today.  So so disappointed.

I will then need to quickly concentrate on the kitten that is pregnant on Seventh.  She is such a pretty kitten, that little kitten face, yet her belly is growing day by day.

Today, I took a bunch of pictures with my crappy camera, and here is what I saw.



Kitty on Short Blind in one Eye


At one of my spots this morning, a cat sits in the window of a boarded up house, one that I have secured the door to stay open with a bottle since last winter because cats were stuck in there after the door had been reboarded by the city crews.  So the pretty orange buff cat runs down when I pull up, and I find out its a very friendly, very fluffy and beautiful young cat, that won't let me leave without tripping over it.  I noticed it also has a wound on its back hind quarter.  I will keep an eye on that, but I would love to rescue this little one next.  Anyone want a kitty? 

Wound on Orange Kitty

Have a great day.

Queens

Why, and how is it, in the neighborhoods I go into each morning, that am I the only one that is trying to help these cats?  I've been seeing what I think is a very very pregnant cat on Hayward.  Don't people look out their window, don't people see pregnant cats all around them?  Are they calling for help?  I know cats are brought in to Rochester Animal Services on Verona Street, mothers and their kittens, because that is where Another Change Pet Rescue gets a lot of theirs, but how it seems to be me who sees these cats walking around with their bulging bellies, where are those cats being trapped at, not in my hood!  How can people turn a blind eye and ignore this problem when its happening right in their front yards?  At my last spot this morning, I got close enough, and it was light enough, for me to see a kitten - she was thinking she was secure enough because we had a fence in between us - who looks like she is pregnant.  She has a kitten face, and a kitten upper half, but she is also so fluffy - a very beautiful cat for sure, that its hard to tell if she is pregnant or not.  But I suspect she is.  She is one of the litter that was born last fall and I never got them done.  She is the only kitten left that I see there.  I believe mom might still be there, but I don't know.  I know the others there are neutered.  Obviously, there is a boy around that is not.  But the ones that faithfully wait for me are all eartipped.  Shame on me, but then again, I can't do it all my self.

Here are some facts:

Gestation is the period from conception to birth. From the first day of a successful mating, it averages 65 days. Kittens born from day 63 to day 69 fall within the normal range. Siamese cats may carry their kittens 71 days. However, if the kittens are born before day 60, they usually will be too immature to survive.


The larger issue should be addressed first, that of an enormous cat overpopulation problem, primarily caused by cat owners' failure to spay or neuter their cats. Often the resulting pregnant female cats are thrown out on the street, where they and their surviving kittens continue to mate, and the offspring from those matings continue to mate. The horrifying reality is that a pregnant female cat and her descendants can account for the births of several hundred kittens in just a few years.

Pros

1.Spaying a rescued pregnant cat will help contain the overpopulation problem. There are simply too few homes for the huge number of homeless cats.

2.Spaying a pregnant rescued cat will help prevent the deaths of living cats and kittens. Even though a pregnant female cat might be adopted by the finder, with good homes waiting for her kittens, each of those kittens will indirectly be responsible for the death of a shelter cat or kitten that might have been adopted into one of those homes.

A case in point is a rescuer who also fosters cats, with space limits to her ability to house them. She recently had to make a choice between spaying/aborting a pregnant cat that had been dumped on her doorstep, or sending a litter of kittens she had been fostering to the local shelter, where they would have immediately been killed. So for the "greater good" she had the new cat spayed, even though it cost a lot of emotional pain.

3.Very young cats and very old cats rarely enjoy the kind of physical condition that would warrant allowing them to give birth. Birthing and nursing a litter of kittens would easily take their last ounce of strength, and could kill them. This truth is even more evident in the case of pregnant strays, who may have already borne dozens of litters of kittens. (A female cat is capable of bearing at least three litters of kittens each year.) The kindest and most compassionate action anyone could take with one of these cats is to spay/abort her.

4.The only time a pregnant stray cat should be allowed to give birth is in the case of being near-term. There is a Roe vs Wade aspect to this argument, which brings up a whole different issues of viability - "when does it occur during pregnancy?"

Cons

1.The taking of life, whether it be human or animal, already born or a fetus, is immoral. There are no "excuses" that make it all right.

2.Shelters and rescue organizations are institutions, and their primary concern is the movement of cats out, to make room for those coming in. In that sort of atmosphere, moral considerations may take second place. However, an individual who is willing to keep both the mother cat and the kittens or find good, permanent homes for them, should not be made to feel guilty for allowing the birth.

3.Where is the evidence that the people from the "good homes" might have instead adopted cats from shelters? Perhaps they weren't even looking for a cat until they heard a friend, neighbor, or co-worker had adoptable kittens.

Where It Stands

There will never be a complete resolution to this issue until cat owners become responsible caregivers, by spaying and neutering their cats. As more and more kittens are born each year, more and more stray cats will appear, and the feline overpopulation problem will increase exponentially. That is why this issue is just a small part of a greater issue: Spay and Neuter.

Have a nice weekend.

May Days

If you recall the story of Miss B, the woman who lived on Grand Ave who loved cats, was my only ally then when I fed them at the corner of Grand and Stout for close to a year, and she was evicted at one point, and wound up at a women's shelter for close to six months - I took in a few of her cats, had them fixed, and to this day still have Buster and Midnight.  Well, we've remained friends, she did get herself an apartment, and I help her out occasionally with rides to the doctor, or take her shopping, and recently she needed to get her newly acquired little pup Precious in for a grooming because he was very matted, etc., and I offered to help her with the dog, because I know her finances are very poor, she never has much extra from her monthly stipend - so we got Precious in for a grooming this week, and here is what the poor little thing looked like after. 


Precious

 I went for a visit yesterday to see little Paddy.  He is just the cutest little thing around.  He is the most mellow kitten, he just lays there, rolls over on his back and lets out a huge purr when you rub his belly.  Lillian is becoming more and more smitten with him.  She has all sorts of little toys for him, and soft little blankets set on her comfy chairs for him in her very beautiful house.  She was much more relaxed and calm while I was there - we had a lot of laughs as I smooched him on the mouth, and then on the belly, while she exclaimed that SHE would NOT be doing that so he shouldn't get used to it.  :)  But it was obvious that she is falling for him.  I was happy when I left there.  I told her I would be back next week for a visit.

Out on my rounds things are fairly quiet.  Its much lighter now so the last half of my route I can see better.  No one has upset my shelters. and the kitties are still waiting hungrily for me each day.  I can see signs of raccoon pillaging at some of the spots, you always know because the water bowls have filth and dirt in them.  I believe there is a very pregnant cat on Hayward (again, its still dark enough that its hard to see her), and she waits under a porch until I get back in my car before she goes for the food.   The one I thought might be on Seventh - its hard to tell because she or he is so fluffy.  I must get some trapping done there.   As I turned the corner from my last stop on Seventh this morning, I spotted a black cat on the side of the road, eating garbage.  I thought I recognized the cat as one that I had fed last fall at the spot behind the house I saw him at just then - he looked so sick and pathetic back then, but looked worse now.  I immediately pulled over and got out with a two bowls, and tried to coax him with food and water - he wandered slowly away, but I found a grassy spot on the side of this house and placed the bowls down, hoping he would either come back and eat a decent meal, or find the other shelter just a few feet away and partake in that feast.  Either way, I felt for this poor soul. 

LEO!

Leo, the neighborhood stray that I've been feeding on my porch, and taking into my bathroom every single night because he is now in LOVE with me, I am getting an appointment to have him tested so that I can get him adopted out through Petco.  Another Chance Pet Rescue has a ton of kittens but they aren't ready for show so I must take advantage of their empty cages right now with my adoptable babies! 

Harold... The End!

(Smiley Face) Now this is a true story of patience and perseverance...  Here is an update on Harold, the kitty that a family adopted from me, that I had just rescued the previous morning from the streets of Rochester, Central Park to be exact.  An adult cat was not what they had come for, but they opened their hearts to this boy that would have a harder time being adopted, due to his age, which is only two or three years old, everyone wants the kittens!  Harold had not been on his best behavior for them and there were many doubts and many desires to return him, but they persevered.  Please read my past posts about this.  Here is the latest of what his new mom says:

Harold's First Doctor's Appointment

"Here is a picture of the best, most handsome boy ever at the vet's office! He got the full treatment... all his shots, flea treatment, deworming, an antibiotic (he has scratched his neck so badly that it bleeds sometimes), etc. He was SO GOOD... the vet and the tech both just raved about him. He even got into the carrier at home with no trouble!!! He's a rockstar! Things are going great at home, too... he sleeps on our bed for short periods of time at night, is getting along better with Chloe (any aggression is totally on her part... it's usually only if he butts into the food dish or playtime), completely ignores the basement crawlspace now that we have it back open again, and so on. He's awesome and we just love him!"

Here are some pics of some of the kitties I took yesterday...



6th St., where I just TNR'd three females



Cedric on Central



2nd Street

The garage above is in pitiful shape.  My sister asked me the other day, if someone gave you $15,000, what would you do?  I hesitated, and said, well, my driveway needs doing, my central air needs replacing, I would get new kitchen cabinets - but after seeing this picture just now, I would replace this garage.  It belongs to a man that has allowed me to shelter and feed cats behind his house now for several years, a good man.  I wish I had the resources to help him.  This would be a small gesture to somehow repay him for his kindness to me, and to the animals.  I wish I were gifted in this respect, to be able to rebuild, or at least fix up, a garage like this.  His house isn't much better. 

At my last stop today, on 7th, where there were kittens living in the shelter throughout the winter, I believe one is pregnant, and maybe her mom again. Its so discouraging to see this.  And such a pretty kitten it is too.  I pulled up this morning and saw FIVE cats here, where normally I see three.   I need to figure this out, AGAIN. 

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is

more than enough."