Look! More Kittens!

This has been a busy week, and I am in pretty constant pain, so I am just going to stop kvetching about that. Everyone else is fine; Romeo is fine, Harry still has his job, and Meg is in a generally pissy mood for some reason, but other than that, she is fine. Mummers is still batshit, however.

Oh, and my brother just had a birfday. Happy birfday, you stuffy bastard.

Butsoanyway.

I have given the task of feeding the Eviljob cats to Harry and Chrissy for the time being; I need a week to a month off to catch up with work and school, and to get used to being in pain all the god damned time.

Was is Camus who said that after a while, one could get used to anything? I sure hope that son of a bitch knows what he is talking about.

Sigh.

So I am putting trapping on hold, at least any that I might have been personally doing, or personally involved in. Anyone who wants to trap on their own at Eviljob has my best wishes. But on Monday evening, I got a call from someone in Security who knows someone who is working Security at this car auction place, and this guard has made friends with a feral cat there that has a litter...and it is the only feral cat on the entire property, which is at least the size of a football field, maybe two; they are the Ancodia Region centre for national and international auto auctions of cars that have been totalled-out by insurance companies, and they have a total turnover of stock -- the entire god-damned football field's worth -- every sixty to ninety days. Who in the fuck is buying all these smooshed cars????

And this guard wants me to find a momcat in this mess. 'Cos no one else will help.

Bwaah.

Fine. So I had a bout of retardation yesterday and forgot that it was Tuesday, and so I skipped a pretty important meeting, but feh. Whatever.

I get down to this place after getting lost at least twelve times in the ginormous industrial park it is in -- you know, the type that are always polluting the crap out of your Sim City? I always get lost in those, 'cos once you see one of those water tower thingies with the conveyor belts running up to it, and the cool-ass piles of rocks beneath, it's all one can do to keep driving and not think about climbing up one and having a cool-ass fist fight, or a shoot out.

So I got there, and the place is HUGE, and we have to take a golf cart halfway across all these lines of smashed cars...it looked like the parking lot at the Superbowl after Godzilla stepped on all the cars, ok? Really cool and freaky-looking, and part of the back lot used to be a car dealership, I think, 'cos a dead car dealership-looking building was still standing there, needing a good paint job way out in the back half of this place. It even had a service garage attached, and everything, though the back entrance from the road (what I am assuming was the back entrance) had been reclaimed by foliage, and now this tall-assed concrete and electric fence (concrete on the outside, electrified on the inside) separated the auto auction lot from the interstate on one end. This guard promised me that I could go check out the old dealership building if we got the cats with enough light left.

Heh. Yeah.

It took over an hour to find the mom cat. The Guard had named her Sweetie, and she was a light-coloured tortoiseshell. This cat, once she came around, walked right up to me and wiped her dirty fur all over my pants, and when I knelt down to pet her, she purred and *kissed* me. Then went over to rub all over the guard. Feral cat my *ass*...this was totally a PET. Though how in the crap she got over the fence, no one knew. The fence is (1) too high to jump, and (2) electrified on the inside, and there is a gap between the concrete wall and the electrified fence that is intentionally made so that even if one *did* make it to the top of the concrete fence, one could not jump over without touching the electrified fence, at which time one would get one's ass zapped. I am half-convinced that she might have been a passenger in one of the wrecked cars, or something. Maybe she was in an accident and got dazed, or was too stunned or scared to run, and she got towed away, hiding in her car? I guess we will never know.

Butsoanyway.

Sweetie had taken the guard to meet her three babies, and so the guard brought me over to where that was...no babies. I decided to sit still and see if they came out, and the guard went to look in nearby cars. After a while, I heard a whistle, and went to look; the guard had found them in a big pick-up truck, like an F150, or 250, whichever, or something. I could see one tiny nose sticking out from under the back bench seat. So I opened the back door, and I got hissed and spat at by a tiny kitten.

To make a VERY long story short, the sun was thinking about setting by then, all the employees had left, and as I wondered what I was going to do if I had to spend the night out here 'cos we'd been locked in, I was trying to lure the kittens out with tuna in a cat carrier. Sweetie was helping me. Then the lot manager (who has a fucking BEAUTIFUL Saleen like you would not believe parked up front...the guard had to walk me away from it before I put my dirty paws all over it) came out to find out why one of his carts was missing 'cos he personally closes up every night. Not that I blame him; if my business kept me in fucking beautiful Saleens, I'd be herding everyone out and locking up my damn self, too.

I thought he was going to be a dick, but he was really, REALLY nice when he found out what we were doing! He said he just wanted the cats out of there, and if I would catch them and take them away, he'd help any way he could. So he opened up the other side of the pick up, and showed me how the back bench seat lifted up...and there were FIVE kittens there! All crouched together. Mr Manager grabbed the tiniest one and handed it to me, saying 'Runt goes first!' :-) I put the runt in the carrier (a big one!) and then scooped up two more and stuck them in, then two more. Then we tried to get one that we saw run under the front seat (that's SIX, mind you), and it darted up into the dashboard on the passenger side. I was afraid that if it got out, I would NEVER find it in this huge lot, and it would get smooshed by a tow truck or fork lift, or shipped off to Pakistan (why are people in Pakistan buying wrecked cars?), or something. Mr Manager took the a/c assembly out in like two *seconds*, and assured me that the kittens could not get out, but the guard went and stood by the front, just in case. We pulled the glove box down, and tried to reach up the vent, but no luck. Then the Manager saw a kitten face behind the a/c big box that is behind the glove box, and he tried to reach it, but he got bitten. So he took this thing that looked like a spatula (all the cars had personal stuff still inside...the pick up truck still had some kind of folding baby carriage in the back) off the floor and tried to poke it out, but it just hunched down and refused to budge.

BWAAH!

We were out of stuff to disassemble on the dash, and Mr Manager suggested that I put Sweetie in the cabin and close the doors to see if they would see Mom and come out. I was not crazy about the idea, but Sweetie was pretty docile, and I did not have any better ideas, so I did it, and held the door closed.

If Sweetie had been feral I would have never tried that, though.

We waited about ten minutes, and then I thought I saw something stirring under the hanging glove box; I opened the door and grabbed Sweetie and the kitten, and as I turned to dump them in the carrier, I saw ANOTHER grey kitten that had come out of the dash!

Ok, that is SEVEN. As in four more than the three I went there to get.

Mr Managerman let me do a once-over to make sure that was all of them, and I really believe that it was. I think they had all been asleep in the back underneath the seat, and the one I saw skedaddling up into the dash was actually two. The guard said he would check over the next few days to see if he saw any signs of kittens that got left, and since the Manager had to go and wanted the day guard and myself to leave, that was ok with me. I really *really* believe that seven was it, though; Sweetie is only about a year old, I would guess, and she is not a big cat.

Butsoanyway; here are the only pictures I was able to take, 'cos I was told that I am completely NOT allowed to take pictures in there, so I had to sneak and take them on my cell phone:

This white truck was Home.
Sorry for the crappy view, but I had to sneak this one.

Sweetie & Co., immediately after being cotched. :-)

After everyone had calmed down a bit.

God is a good driver? Ummm...maybe not so much.
Just god damned funny -- you might not be able to see it in the pic, but the bumper sticker says, 'GOD is STEERING...I'm only in the Driver's Seat'
I damn near wet myself.

And the Manager said that I had to leave with him and the guard, and was not allowed to be walking around the property anyway (the guard asked for me, but Mr Manager explained to me that half his employees are not allowed back in the lot for security and insurance reasons, and *I* was totally NOT allowed to be back there, so once cat-catching was done, I had to vacate ASAP), so I missed out on checking out the dead dealership building. Sigh. No justice...I swear. And if the Manager had not been with us, I think the night security guards would have fricking strip-searched me, or something. I was getting *glared* at. Sheesh. Back off...I'm packing kittens!

But at least we stopped a feral colony before it started. Yay.

I called in my very lastliest favour with this rescue group, and got to bring Sweetie and Company over to the home of one of their past presidents (thank GOD!). She is going to give Sweetie a chance to eat (she is hungry as HELL) and calm down, and then take her to the vet on Friday or Monday to see if she is microchipped. If not, she'll get an FIV/FeLV test, and if that is negative, she'll stay at this lady's house until she stops nursing and her babies are old enough to be speutered, then they will all go to get adopted. Now I have to come up with something really nice to do to have more favours...as run-down as I am, that may be crapping out and just buying a bunch of traps and donating them, or something. Sigh. But at least Sweetie and her babies are safe. I hope she is microchipped, and could maybe go back home; she is a nice cat, and a good mom.

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