Twenty Cats arriving for surgery at Capital.

This whole week has been consumed with the fate of forty-five cats.

Let me explain.

I received an email at the beginning of the week from the director of the Ohio SPCA telling me about a lady who lived in Logan County who had forty-five outside cats. Teresa, the Ohio SPCA director, wondered if we could take a few of the cats. The Health Department had become involved, ordering the woman to remove all the cats from the property. She had until the end of the month to carry out this major feat. Of course, the end of April was only five days away.

While I told Teresa we really didn’t have any place for additional cats, I’d see what we could do to help. I began emailing and calling different groups we work with to see if any of them might be able to squeeze in a kitten or two. Another one of our volunteers, Carol, called people who had expressed an interest in barn cats.

On Wednesday, Carol and I arrived at the woman’s house to assess the situation. In the meantime, Teresa had made arrangements with Capital Area Humane Society to do a spay and neuter clinic that would allow us to fix thirty cats (if the woman could catch them). So Carol and I took nineteen carriers, ten traps, and one large metal dog crate for the woman to use to contain thirty cats for the clinic.

The woman told me she would catch several 5-6 month old kittens that we could take with us for placement with the Union County Humane Society.

In her inventory of forty-five cats, she told me she had ten 5-6 month old kittens, fifteen that were one year old, and an assortment that were older. So in one year, twenty-five cats were born at her house or were brought to her by neighbors.

When we arrived at the house, the lady had two cats in boxes, two cats in carriers, and she also brought a mother cat out to us who was nursing her own litter of kittens and another cat’s litter. There were seven kittens in the two litters. She had told us that there were two pregnant cats. Obviously now, there was only one pregnant cat, because the one litter was only a few days old.

One of the 5-6 month old kittens was a gorgeous Himalayan/Siamese mix, which happily Union County was able to take. The cats were all terrified, but did not seem feral. It became pretty obvious that this poor lady had been feeding all the cats in her very nice housing development. The neighbors brought her kittens when they found them and because she put food out, all the strays came her way. She had a huge heart, but should have been fixing the cats as she took them in.

Right now she was very overwhelmed and afraid for the cats–afraid that they were all going to be killed.

Besides us and Teresa from the Ohio SPCA, the only group that had responded to the lady’s pleas for help was Wyandot County’s Humane Society, which I learned takes in cats from the whole state to get them out of horrible situations. But, because they do that, most of the cats are euthanized.

Carol and I gathered up the four kittens and the mother cat with the two litters and left the property. I had to return in the morning to take any captured cats to Capital for their clinic day on Friday. On our way home, Carol and I stopped at the Union County Humane Society. They took everyone except two of the older kittens that had upper respiratory infections, fearing they would infect the whole shelter.

When Bobbie and I arrived back the next day, along with a very nice volunteer, Claudia, from Capital, the lady had been able to catch twenty-one cats. One of those, a Maine Coon, went to Noah’s Ark. The lady also gathered up a mother cat who had just had a litter of four kittens the day before. They were so new to this world that their umbilical cords were still attached.  They went into foster care with a volunteer from Union County.

Not part of the 45 count--four newborn kittens, born on Wednesday the 28th, umbilical cords still attached.

Happily, Capital Area was able to fix, vaccinate, and deworm all of the cats, and even give long acting antibiotic shots to several of the cats that had more serious upper respiratory infections. We were able to place nine of them in barn homes and only ten cats returned to the lady’s property.

Within the next few weeks, the lady plans to catch the remaining fifteen cats so they can also be fixed and vaccinated. Capital Area has kindly agreed to also fix all of those for the lady at no charge. I cannot thank Capital Area Humane Society enough for all that they did to help these cats.

The Health Department inspector is also very happy about the situation. While he still wants the number of cats to decrease, he is allowing us more time to work on this very large project.

This story proves that when several people and groups all work together, insurmountable obstacles can be overcome.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


*

Subscribe by Email