Irked

Guess who?

Millicent now comes when I call her but she is pretty skittish and has found a few hidey-holes around the barn. Yesterday I just fed her in one of them. She is getting along fine with the other barn cats, although Keaton chased her upstairs yesterday. Mind you, he does that to all the cats!

Now for the "irked"... a man dropped by on the weekend to see if I would take in two more cats that someone had dumped on his property. His family is allergic and he wanted the cats to be somewhere warm before winter, and the OSPCA doesn't have room for them right now. 

Do I want 19 cats? Well, maybe if I had some full-time cat-servants here to help out. So I told him that I was sorry, but I couldn't take them because I already had 17. And he said, "What's two more?"

And he was a nice man, and I wish I could have helped because he was trying to do the right thing, but I do get a tired of this "You already have X number of , what's one more?"  I'm not really irked at the man, but I hear that all the time. Well, where does it stop? I never want to cross the line into becoming an animal hoarder! And these animals all cost money to keep and so far as I can recall, only one person (the lovely woman who asked us to take Millicent and offered to pay for her spay) has brought an animal here with any offer of compensation. And I'm okay with that, but at a certain point, you have to say "no" or bankrupt yourself, whether monetarily or emotionally/physically (by no longer having time to do anything but care for animals.) I'm at neither of those points and I don't ever want to be.

It also irks me that the person with the 17 cats is the one who hears "What's one more?" I think the person with one or two cats is the one who should be taking in an extra feline. Unless you have an allergy or simply can't afford to care for another animal (completely understandable!) how about taking in that stray yourself instead of adding it to my cat pile? Our OSPCA shelter has the highest cat intake in Ontario, which is appalling. Use your imagination about how many cats must be euthanized there every year, because people refuse to spay/neuter, refuse to commit to a pet they once thought adorable, or simply refuse to be humane. If everyone else pitched in a bit more, maybe fewer cats would die. Obviously some people simply can't take in more, and I completely understand that. Not all cats get along with other cats, not everyone can afford to care for multiple animals; there are many valid reasons for not adding another pet! But for the people who might be able to give a home to one more needy cat, or a barn cat who would do a fine job taking care of your rat problem,  I would just say to give it some though before asking the person with 17 cats to take in another. And if you do, please spay/neuter and vaccinate them, and provide them with food and veterinary care, and most of all, LOVE.

And then of course I spent most of Sunday feeling sad for the two cats I didn't save that day. I did encourage the man to keep in touch with the OSPCA and get them in there before winter, and I will ask around as well. But I know I could have 100 cats tomorrow if I never said "no."

And finally I got angry. I got angry at the morons who allowed a cat to breed, then dumped the offspring on someone who actually gives a damn, but couldn't keep them (this man says cats are dumped at his place every year. He also said these two cats are friendly, which means someone played with them and gave them attention before they were dumped.) I got angry at all the idiots who have dumped cats at our farm (Redford, Emerson, Naomi, Emily, Keaton.) I got angry at the people who were once kind to many of our cats, and let them know how it felt to be loved and cared for, then callously dumped or abandoned them (I'm not talking about the animals that came here from loving homes were the owner took the time to find them a new home when circumstances changed.)

 I've had to work hard  to win back the trust of  neglected animals like these. It is something to behold when you see a scared cat like Millicent (abandoned to the elements when her owner went into a nursing home) realize that maybe she has a home again, maybe she can trust a human being again. The first time she purred while I cuddled her brought tears to my eyes. Her whole demeanour is now beginning to change. I just keep telling her that yes, this really is her forever home and she doesn't have to worry anymore. I hope she believes me.

And I'm angry at the people who get pot-bellied pigs on a whim, then dump them at the shelter because they start acting like pigs. Dogs, ponies, goats... the list of unwanted animals is endless, and their suffering is so damn unnecessary. I wish I could help all of them, because it breaks my heart to know animals are suffering. But I know my limits and Gordon knows his.

And of course I still can't get those two cats off my mind... it irks me that I am the one feeling bad about those two.