What did I do today? Today I told the local kill shelter I'd pay it $150 if three of it's goddamned cat carriers came back damaged. Carriers I was told I'd be lent as part of participating in their free spay and neuter program. For feral cats.
While signing the form, a man and his children come in. The woman across from me places her call on hold, looks over my head, and asks how she can help him. He says:
"Our dog is here. He's a mutt. We punished him for getting out by lettin' him stay here a little longer. It's been about a week, and I need to pick him up now."
A little while later I'm half an hour North, helping my fiance fix a gate and a portion of fencing while picking up some spare cat carriers from the same woman who helped us get our dog's leg surgery when we first found her. We talk about the $455 bill I have to deal with for taking the stray dog into the E.R. a week or so ago. Maybe two weeks. Not sure.
She had been hit by a car and just fucking left her. She could barely move. She was being eaten by ants.
What kind of person can leave a dog like that on the side of the road. About ten years old. Two necrotic mammary masses. Missing and cracked teeth. Shattered pelvis and right femur - pieces of her pelvis in her leg. In shock, terrified. Just a fucking pair of eyes on the side of the road by our house, on the way home from my fiance's birthday party.
We talk, we talk about how we have her ashes now, and how we want to use her story to convince our neighbors to fence their dogs or bring them inside. I collect the carriers. I drive to the next destination - the woman who's asked for my help before, and has come to me now. She lives outside of the county line, so she can't offer a certain woman the free spay and neuter program we have where I live. The woman with the cats is doped out of her mind. It's a miracle she's alive at all. On welfare and drugs, talking about how she almost died by choking because she fell asleep while eating.
We bring all these carriers because I've told my county program that there is a colony of feral cats by my house I need to get fixed. It's a useless lie. We can't catch all of her cats, because even though she does feed them (the food that's given to her for free out of donations), they truly are feral. One, whose paws are deformed so that she can walk only on her "elbows," flips out so badly from being put in the carrier that her face is bloodied. More and more cats zipping out of the house we aren't allowed into, under the house, under the neighbor houses, into and out of the storm drains. Easily forty, maybe fifty cats. Six kittens (the rest of many more litters, having died in the yard, have been removed already) are bloated with worms and none of the mothers will feed them.
The woman says things like
"I was so hoping God wouldn't force that poor creature to give birth to more" (she says of the deformed cat, who looks the size of a 6 month old kitten but has already had and nursed at least two litters)
"I already put them on two rounds of Revolution"
"Revolution is expensive, I can't afford to put them on anything"
"They're at least three months old, for sure! They're weaned, they just keep trying to nurse."
Unfortunately, we couldn't catch the male we desperately wanted to neuter - he had a broken pelvis from the man in the house throwing him against a wall, but escaped beneath the house before we could get him safely in a carrier.
I just...I fucking hate people right now.
- Mouse
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