Foster Camp Update!

Let's see, I think I made a brief reference in an earlier post to the new Foster Campers.  I think it's time for an update.

The campers I had been fostering for the rescue for which I had been volunteering (lots of past tense, there), went to my friend Sarah's house so that I could put Good Boy in the foster room while I worked on smoothing his integration into the Permacats.

Once THAT was accomplished, I realized it was time to look for a new rescue to devote my volunteering efforts toward.  While the rescue I had been volunteering for certainly accomplishes lots of good things, their colossal failure of the Good Boy situation left a bad taste in my mouth.  The founder of the rescue never apologized for what happened to Good Boy, instead throwing one of the other volunteers, a good friend of hers, under the bus, blame-wise, and when I called her out on THAT, she resorted to bullying tactics to try to keep me in line.  Oh, hi, have you ever MET me?!  The one thing that will NEVER work on me is bullying. :) 

So I went to another local rescue and filled out the volunteer foster paperwork, and within a day they called me, which is how I got Toby Thomas, a scared-to-death feral kitten who needed LOTS of forced handling to tame.  He was 12 weeks old when I got him, which is old to try to tame a feral, but with time and work he came around.

But Toby was lonely, and still not fond of human contact.  What to do? Why, go to the rescue and bring home a kitten to show him the ropes, of course!  Which is where Nani came into the picture:

And then I started trapping for TNR in a neighborhood, and I noticed a tiny little kitten running around in the street. I asked the people I was trapping for to try and catch him, because I thought he was young enough to successfully socialize, and he was so terribly thin I was worried about him.  On Wednesday night, I had to go out to trap, and we managed to get the kitten into a carrier. I took him home, kept him separated from the other cats because due to his poor condition I was worried about feline leukemia, and took him to the vet the next morning.

He tested negative for leukemia (yaaaay!), but was crawling with fleas and ear mites and loaded with worms.  Several medications and a bath later, he's here at Foster Camp to gain some weight and get used to human attention.   And I've named him Two Miles, after the location where he was trapped.

So there you have it! Foster Campers, Summer 2019 Session:  Toby Thomas, Nani, and Two Miles.  :)

Where does the money go

 First off, thank you to Ginny!  For sending me a gift card to commemorate the arrival of Good Boy, which I promptly spent on this:

I mean, COME ON!! How cute is THAT?!





Since my sister left me money, the vast majority of it has been reinvested.  But I've been able to spend some of it in a "why not?" kind of way, like,

I sponsored a matching fundraiser for a local animal rescue, which raised almost three grand!

When an acquaintance of mine's mom passed away very unexpectedly, leaving my acquaintance to ponder the realities of, among other things, going from a three cat household to a six cat household, I placed a massive Chewy order and had it delivered to her, so at least she didn't have to worry about buying cat food and litter for a while.

I saw a facebook post in which a local wildlife rehabilitation outfit had trapped a small feral kitten for TNR, only to discover that the kitten had a prolapsed rectum and would need three hundred dollars' worth of surgery to correct the problem. The comments on that post were pretty dismaying, along the lines of "why bother? It's just a feral," and "do you KNOW how many spays and neuters three hundred dollars will pay for?", neither of which, as far as I was concerned, addressed the problem at hand, which was a little kitten with a correctable problem, so I contacted the outfit and paid the bill.  Take THAT, haters.  Haha.

I finally, FINALLY got t-shirts printed up for the little TNR group I run, and I'll be handing them out to the volunteers, i.e., my friends that I've sucked into helping, the next time we trap, which is coming up in a couple of weeks.

 

And finally, most of you know that I love summer.  I REALLY love summer.  And I love hot weather, as evidenced by the fact that yesterday it was approximately a thousand degrees here with one billion percent humidity, and I went and paddled a local river for three hours.

 

But!  What I DON'T love about summer is the nights when the temp doesn't leave the seventies and it's still one billion percent humidity, and all the fans in the world won't stop me from lying in my bed sweating.

 

So this morning I contacted my furnace guy, who also does plumbing and AC, to see about getting central air installed.  BECAUSE I CAN.  

 

And THAT's where the money goes.  :)  

Good Boy Chronicles: Extraction!

Okay, again:  Good Boy is FINE.  And also, this is the last part of a multi-part story, so if you want to start from the beginning, scroll down until you hit the "Good Boy Chronicles:  Disappeared" post, and read up from there.  Now settle in for a long read.

Here we go!

When I left off, Good Boy had been located.  He was alive and under the floor of the adopter's house.  Now we just had to get him out.

The firefighter knelt down by the hole under the sink, because he thought that one would be easiest to enlarge, and stuck his hand in the hole, feeling around to see how much material would have to be removed to allow access.  "He's headbutting my hand!," he called.  "His head is right here!"  

We all crowded around the hole, with the vet tech aiming a flashlight.  There ... he ... was ... just the top of his head, visible between the piping and the floorboards.

"There's not enough room," the firefighter said.  "He's right here, but he can't get out of this hole unless we get some of this flooring up."

The firefighter and the contractor started taking turns pulling on the floorboards and unscrewing the metal clamps that held the sink piping in place.  They didn't want to use power tools in order to avoid scaring Good Boy further back into the space, so just a prybar and manual tools were used.

 

Every time one of them would stick a hand in, Good Boy would rub it with his head. 

After several minutes, the hole was big enough to pull Good Boy through.  Except now he was scared, and every time the firefighter would try to pull him out, he would brace against the underflooring so that he couldn't be moved.

"Let me try," said the vet tech.  "I deal with stubborn cats every day.  I'll scruff him and pull him out."

She knelt into the cupboard, stuck her hand in, and scruffed Good Boy.  And then started to slowly pull.  Slowly ... slowly ... and all of a sudden, she leaned back out of the cupboard and onto the kitchen floor with Good Boy in her arms!

 

 Good Boy was out of the hole!  Covered in sheetrock and dirt, but alive!  And purring!  And making biscuits in the vet tech's arms!  She quickly looked him over and then popped him in a carrier and she, her boyfriend, and GB were off to the vet.  I told her I'd finish up in the house and then come there.

The adopter kept saying, "I'm going to get him back, right?"  Ummm ... sure.  SURE(LY NOT).  This woman farted around for almost TWO WEEKS, making no substantive effort to find Good Boy, while the rescue and I scrambled desperately to try and find him.  While the rescue volunteers canvassed the neighborhood and printed up flyers, she did nothing.  She claimed she didn't have five dollars to have flyers printed up on her own ... How on earth was she planning on paying vet bills?  Buying him food?  This loving cat had been so traumatized by her family that he lived in the FLOOR rather than come out.  She had falsified her application (by putting down that she had three children when in fact she had five (and another on the way), for one thing. I'm not really at liberty to discuss all the details, but trust me, that application stunk like a three-day-old fish.)  She had breached the adoption contract, and voided the agreement. 

The contractor repaired the hole in the wall and the hole under sink, all the while saying things like, "Gee, Good Boy will never get back in there now!"  Heh.  The contractor and I left together, I told him to email me a bill, and I headed for the vet.  I stopped on the way and texted the woman who runs the rescue to let her know that we had Good Boy, and she needed to immediately contact the adopter and tell her that since the application had been falsified, the cat would not be returned.  I told her to tell the adopter that I would mail the $500 reward to her (as soon as I knew that she had been informed that the cat would not be returned).  I figured that if the adopter was planning to make a fuss, accepting the reward money would negate any possible claim she would have.

I got to the vet's office and they took me to where the vet was examining him.   There he was, on the table, purring and kneading and rolling on to his back for belly rubs.  He was dehydrated and somewhat thinner and filthy dirty, but otherwise fine!  The vet thinks he may have been eating rodents that wandered into the crawlspace (shudder), and he had either found a dripping pipe in the wall or was able to sneak out at night to drink out of a leaking faucet.  (Remember, even though I had advised the adopter to leave out food and water in the house just in case, she did not do it.) The vet gave him some some sub-q fluids, and kept him overnight for observation.  Tired and dirty but happy, I headed home.

As soon as I got home, the rescue texted me and let me know that the adopter had been informed.  And right after THAT, the ADOPTER texted me.  She wanted to come pick up the reward money.  NOW.

Jesus Christ.

I let her know that we could meet someplace (I didn't want her and the skeevy people hanging around her place to come to my house) (Aside: Two days later, someone was STABBED IN THE STREET in front of her house. I'm not even kidding).  She said the local WalMart.  I said fine.  (You don't get much more public of a place than the entrance to WalMart.) She said it had to be RIGHT NOW.

Just like I figured it would when I offered to give her the reward, it had all come down to money.

 

She didn't ask about Good Boy or how he was.  She wanted to know how fast she could get the money.  I advised that I did not have that much cash on hand, but I would write her a check.

I texted the rescue and let them know what was going down.  "Get a release!," they said.  "You have to have them sign off on the cat in order to get the reward."  I typed something up real quick, made a copy, and messaged my friend Sarah to let her know what was going on.  "I'm on my way," she said.  The adopter texted me; it would be her husband meeting me, not her.  Inside the entrance, by the pharmacy.

I got to WalMart at the same time as Sarah.  We walked inside, and there was the husband.  Standing there with a cart full of crap he had picked out while waiting.  Now keep in mind, this is the same family who claimed they did not have five dollars on Monday to print up some flyers and had no way of getting money until Friday.  And there he was, on Wednesday night, with a cartful.  They had money, all right.  They just weren't about to spend it on Good Boy.

I handed the husband a clipboard with the releases.  "Just sign the releases, please, and I'll give you the check," I said.  He looked surprised, but signed both copies.  I took back the clipboard, kept one release, and gave him the other.  Then I pulled the reward check out of my pocket and handed it over.  And he went back into the store (never once asking how the cat was), and Sarah and I walked out and headed directly to the nearest bar for a beverage, now that the extortion, er, REWARD money was paid.  As we walked out of the store, Sarah pulled her phone out of her t-shirt pocket.  "I recorded the whole thing!," she said.  "Just in case."

Spies like us, man.  We get the job done.  We had a signed release and a recording of the whole thing.  

And the following night, Good Boy went to his new home.  His true FOREVER home this time.

My home.

Sarah took my foster kittens to stay at her house so that I could put Good Boy in the foster room.  I plan on working on building up his confidence, and then working with him and Tinks to get him integrated into the family.  I think that now that Good Boy is actually INSIDE the house, and soon will SMELL like the house, and Tinks will be able to see that Good Boy is welcome to BE in the house, things will go more smoothly.  And if not, we'll just keep working on it.  And working on it.

Because THIS is Good Boy's home now.

 

 

Good Boy Chronicles, in which a contractor and the fire department get involved

Okay, first off, again:  Good Boy is FINE.  And also, this is Part 2 of a multi-part story, so if you want to start from the beginning, scroll down to the entry titled "Good Boy:  Disappeared" and read that first.

Ready?

So!  When I left off, it was apparent  that SOMETHING, very possibly Good Boy, was in the floor of his adopter's house, was possibly unable to get out, and had potentially been trapped for ten days at this point.

 

OH NO

I called the rescue.  I told them I needed a contractor (in order to rip up floors or walls if necessary) and someone with a thermal imaging system to meet me at the adopter's house as soon as possible.  Within an hour, the rescue had the people and the equipment rounded up, and we made arrangements to meet at the house at 3.  The thermal imaging system was being loaned by the one of the rescue's vet tech volunteer's boyfriend, who volunteers for a local fire company.  (Most professional fire companies will no longer assist in animal rescues, claiming their liability insurance does not allow it.  Volunteer fire companies, however, tend to be more flexible, especially if the offer of a hefty donation is made.)  The vet tech was coming along, too, to rush Good Boy to the vet as soon as he was extracted.

Waiting for 3:00 to come, I felt sick.  As far as I knew, Good Boy had been without food or water for ten days.  A cat can go without food for a long, long time, but water?  No way.  Kidney damage would begin to occur after just a few days.  Even if he was still alive, which would seem to be indicated by the food disappearing, would he be able to be saved?  Would his kidneys still be functioning? 

At 3, I met everybody across the street from the house.  I briefly explained the situation, including that while the adopter THOUGHT she was getting the cat back, she was, in fact, absolutely NOT getting the cat back.

(An aside:  Once I knew the cat was most likely trapped in the house, I had to get access to the house in order to rescue the cat.  I was afraid that if I told the adopter that she was not getting the animal back, she would deny me access, and all would be lost.  So I made up a cover story that once the cat was found, it would have to be taken to the rescue's veterinarian and checked over, and once it was given a clean bill of health, it would be returned to her.)

At this point it was me, the contractor, the vet tech, and the vet tech's firefighter boyfriend with the thermal camera.  We went in.  

The firefighter started by aiming the camera at the ceiling of the first floor.  He moved slowly through the house, concentrating on the area underneath the sink on the second level.  Nothing.  We went upstairs to the second floor kitchen, where the adopter showed us a second hole she had found, in the wall behind a microwave stand.  The firefighter started imaging underneath the sink.  Nothing.  Then he moved over to the wall where the second hole was.

"I've got something!"  he said.  "There's something alive and moving in there!"  

Could it be?

And then the moving image disappeared.  The firefighter did some more scanning and discovered that there was an area several feet long and a few inches tall, in between the flooring and the subflooring of the kitchen.  Wall partitioning meant that whatever was in there could move for those several feet, but no further.

We all stepped back to discuss which hole we were going to enlarge first, to gain more access to the area.  As we talked, all of a sudden the contractor said, "I hear something."  "I hear it too," said the firefighter.  "It sounded like a meow!"

I felt like I was going to faint.  I rushed over to the hole in the wall, put my head next to the hole, and starting softly calling.  "Good Boy!  Good Boy!  Hey, buddy, remember me?"  The firefighter put the camera above and behind me, to see if he could pick up an image.

 

 

And then we all heard it.  Meowing.  Again. and again.  Every time I called to him we would hear it. Meowing!

To Be Continued ...

Good Boy Chronicles, Next Part

I stopped in at the rescue this afternoon to pick up some vaccines for my fosters and visit with Good Boy, only to find out that Good Boy was being adopted tonight!

The rescue screens potential adopters carefully, so I have no doubt he will have a good home.  It's just so amazing that this cat, who was once feral and homeless, will now have a happy, loved life.  Instead of taking refuge in sheds and garages, he will have a home!

I gave him some loving and told him good-bye and went out the door.  And I received confirmation a few minutes ago that he is now home with his new family.

Oh, stop it.  I'm not crying; YOU'RE crying.  :) 

Postcards from Foster Camp

First off, I stepped outside the other day and saw that the daylilies were popping out of the ground, so here comes Spring!  THANK GOD.

The Spring session of Foster Camp brought a mamacat and two four-week-old kittens.   A small bunch, but adorable.

"'Scuse me, can I borrow some toona?":

 

"WHAT?!  She makes a good pillow!":

"KIDS these days.":

What else?  I am still trying to get my sister's affairs in order (did you know you have to file a 1040 AFTER YOU DIE?!  Is true.), trapping for TNR continues apace (I'm trapping tomorrow, St. Patrick's Day - Erin Go Trap haha),  and work is going well.   What's up with you?

Good Boy Update

Good Boy is doing well at the center!  He has been moved into one of the community rooms, so he's no longer in a cage by himself.  He is slowwwwwwwly interacting with other cats and spends a lot of time in one of the cat condos, but he is more than happy to come out for some loving from the volunteers.

And speaking of loving, Good Boy's got a girlfriennnnnddddd ...

I'm calling this "The Contessa and the Longshoreman" haha.  He's really working that "drunk-after-a-bar-fight" look, and when you pair that with his squished-in Himalayan nose, well ... I'm just glad he's found someone to love him.  :)

(No, I don't think they are seriously bonded, it's just a case of Good Boy learning to interact with other cats and they with him, but if they are bonded, they will certainly be placed together.)

 He's been vet checked and is in great shape considering he's been homeless for the last few years.  He is extremely welcoming of human attention.  The rescue will continue working with him, and if at any point he starts to overly stress, the barn home is still an option, although at this point it looks like he'll be able to stay at the rescue until he finds his family.

I'll keep posting updates.  The saga of Good Boy continues ...

Weekend To-Do List

Today:
Grocery shop
Dollar store
Take the multitudes of cans in the garage to the redemption center
Buy more live traps (thank you, Ginny!)
Ollies -garden crocs $3.99
Thrift store 50% off everything (yahoo!)
Post office - stamps
Final spot check of Foster Room and replace litterboxes

(Enjoy that Foster Room while you can, Soda, because company's coming tomorrow!)

Sunday:
Laptop, camera, traps and carrier in car
Oil change
Take trapping buddies out to brunch
Then put them to work - First to Mary M's to drop off traps for her to use as feeding stations
Then to Ed G's to review gamecam footage of HIS feeding stations
Stop at center to pick up new foster, who is preggers
Home

Whew.

Trappin' time!

It happens every Spring - I start getting calls about helping people trap for TNR.  And this year is no exception - there are currently three people who've called me for help and are in the process of setting up neuter appts. at the local clinics.  On Saturday, I took traps out to a place where we trapped last fall so that the property owner could use the non-activated traps as feeding stations so that the feral cat could become accustomed to eating in the traps ahead of the actual trapping dates.

There was just one problem - I need more traps!  I've got a couple of dozen at this point, but when you're trapping in several places, and sometimes leaving the traps for weeks at a time so the cats get used to them, you run out of traps in a hurry.

Which is why I was so happy to have this come in the mail today:

THANK YOU, Ginny, for the Tractor Supply gift card, and thank you for helping to control the feral cat population!  I appreciate it very much!

To Catch a Cat

There's a feral cat who's been appearing around my place for a few years now, off and on.   He'd show up on my gamecam, and occasionally I'd catch him sneaking in through the cat door in the morning to eat some of permacats' food.  He's really a pretty cat, black with green eyes.

But he fought with my cats and sprayed all over everything, and you KNOW he was busy making lots of little ferals with whichever females were available.  So whenever I'd trap for other people and I thought there might be an extra neuter appointment available, I'd set a trap for the feral, but he wouldn't go in.  I don't know if he'd been trapped before or had maybe seen another cat get trapped at some point, but he wasn't falling for it.

Things took on an added urgency last week, when one of my gamecam pics seemed to show that he could be wearing an embedded collar. The picture was taken at night, by my lesser-res gamecam, so it was hard to tell, but I decided that it was time to bring this boy IN.  The rescue I volunteer for helped me get a neuter appointment for yesterday, and I started leaving the trap in the garage every night, with the safety on so he would go in and eat withOUT being trapped.

At first he was all, oh HELL no lady I ain't that dumb:

So I moved the food to the open end of the trap, and every night I would move it back a little further into the trap.

Slowly he turned, inch by inch, step by step:

And then it was Monday night, with the neuter appointment for first thing Tuesday morning.  I baited the trap,  unlatched the safety, and waited.

The moment before:

And SUCCESS!:

I was sitting in the living room and I HEARD that trap go off, and I felt liked I'd just hit a home run in the World Series.  I GOT HIM!

I hurried out, took a couple of victory photos because I'm only human:

then quickly covered the trap and put it in a dark corner of the garage until I could take him to the neuter appointment Tuesday morning.  He came through surgery just fine, and while he was out I had his ear notched so that if anyone ever traps him again, they will know he's been neutered.  Turns out he wasn't wearing a collar after all, and was apparently healthy. I had him vaccinated, and they even trimmed his nails while he was under. 

Last night he came back from the vet's, and within a couple of hours of being released, he was back for some chow.

This cat is feral, and will likely always BE a feral, but when I dropped him off at the vet's for surgery they needed a name for their records, and so he is now Good Boy.  Because I believe in naming something what you hope it will be, not what it is. :)

Art Project

Me:  "Okay, Campers, we need to make a poster, and we need to make it look pretty. Let's get to work!"

"Let's make it say, "Thank you, Kris" and ... a Christmas tree?  You want to add a Christmas tree?  Umm ... okay ..."

"and reindeer?  You want reindeer?  Sure, go ahead:"

"Santa and his sleigh?  Oh, why not ..."

"Wait a minute ... NO GLITTER.  I draw the line at glitter.  Jeez:"

"And now you say that YOU make the best decoration of all?  Well, I guess I can't argue with that, Campers."

Thank you, Kris,  for your jaw-droppingly-amazing donation to Every Dog's Dream.  It is truly appreciated by everyone at the rescue, and by all the dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, and who-knows-what'll-come-through-the-door-next.  :)  I hope you and your loved ones have the best holiday ever.  Thank you!

Still here!

Yes, I'm still alive and kicking.  I feel like I'm FINALLY starting to settle in to the new job, at least a little bit.   Whew!

Last night I trapped, so this morning I had to head out bright and early.  Look what was in my front yard when I woke up!

There were actually TWO bucks out there, moseying through, which is really unusual.  I see does a LOT, but bucks, not so much.

Then it was off to the barn to see what we'd trapped.

We trapped a total of eight cats.  Once I got them to the vet's, it turned out that one of them was ear-tipped, meaning it had already been altered.  I ran that one back to the barn to be released.  Sadly, it turned out that one of the other trapped cats had old injuries that were so severe it had to be humanely euthanized.  The other six cats were spayed and neutered and will spend the night at the vet's and then be returned tomorrow.

After my second trip to the barn, I went in to the rescue to do medications because they were short-handed today.  Then, I had to go grab foster Lucky Nicky from home and run HIM to the vet's for a second FIV test.  Negative!  Yay!

I got him back home, did vaccinations on four of the fosters, mowed the lawn, moved traps back into the shed, did some laundry, and now? I just ordered a pizza, because I am WHUPPED.

Talk to you soon!

First Week

Well.  The first week at the new job.  Between orientation, training, and starting at the office, it's quite overwhelming.  The amount of information I need to absorb is monumental, but I remember once upon a time when I didn't know how to do my OLD job, either, so it's just a matter of keeping my head down and plugging away.  The staff who are training me are very friendly and encouraging, which makes it a LOT easier. 

I'll get there!

Plus, our office is right down the hallway from the cafeteria, and the food is both good and cheap, so I predict it won't take me long to put all that weight I lost back on. :)

Last night, I trapped for the rescue at a local barn (the one from my July 3 post).

As sometimes happens when I'm trapping in a new place, we actually trapped two adults and a few kittens while we were in the process of setting other traps.  The kittens went with the founder of the rescue (pictured) to be socialized, and I put the adults in a quiet corner of the barn for transport in the morning.  This wee one went to the founder's house.

We were back bright and early this morning to check the traps - we caught a total of 9 cats and kittens overnight (not including the ones caught while we were at the barn), including a first for me - two cats in one trap:

Time to head for the vet's office - the adults for spays and neuters, and the kittens for vaccinations before heading to the founder's house for socialization.

At the vet's:

I was very excited when the vet said I could stay and observe (and take photos for the rescue's website and, well, for my blog, haha.)  I'd never seen a cat surgery before.  Now, these next few pics show surgery offices and surgery, so if you're squeamish, stop here.

Lots of paperwork:

And preparation:

The first cat is on the table and ready for her spay:

Here we go!:

And the actual moment of spay:

The vets and their staff were there all day long, performing the surgeries.  The kittens who were too young to be altered went home with the founder, and the adults will stay at the vet's office overnight before heading back to the barn in the morning.  We'll keep trapping every few weeks until we've got all the adults spayed and neutered.  We're on our way!