Tag Archives: saving animals

When Doing Good Goes Wrong (in the short or long term)

I was just trying to do good. As I always do when I’m spaying or neutering a stray cat or a feral one. This time it didn’t go the way that I wanted it to. 

It was Spring, 2018. The lady who’d been feeding the cats on the base where I worked in the south of Belgium let me know that there were two pregnant females. The Société pour la Protection des Animaux and the private no-kill rescues were all overrun at the moment with cats and kittens. I knew that we had to get them and either spay them (aborting the babies) or let them have the kittens in security and safety and keep them from being wild, or at least help them to not be too frightened to be adoptable. 

This was already about to be a nightmare for me, as I pride myself on what I call my consistent life ethic. I am vegetarian, anti-death penalty, anti-zoo, anti-vivisection, pro-immigration, and anti-abortion. And as to the latter, I’m not what’s come to be known as an anti-birther; I want to take care of babies that are born, somehow, and well. So knowing that on the table was the distinct possibility of aborting kittens was already tearing at me.

On Thursday evening I arrived at the site before their caregiver. A couple of days before, she had told me where the more fearful one would appear, and I set the humane trap there. I withdrew from the area and sat in my car about 100 meters away from the trap; this was a cat who didn’t come very close to her caregiver. I could just see the trap, as it was dusk and pretty far.

Soon I saw a long-haired black cat approaching the trap. Baited with fresh sardines, I knew that if she was hungry, she would go in. Sure enough, I was shortly rewarded with the distinctive clap of the metal door closing. I grabbed a large towel from my car, ran to the trap, and covered it with a towel because I know that the cat will be less panicky if she can’t see out of the trap. I took a brief peek at her, but she was balled up in the corner as fearful cats tend to do, so I really couldn’t see anything except that it was indeed a long-haired, black cat. I called her caregiver, who was on her way to the site to pick up the other one, a far less fearful short-haired black female. I headed home with the little black cat in the trap.

Shortly after my arrival, the caregiver arrived with the other less wild one in a carrier. We discussed next steps. She was against spaying them immediately; she wanted the cats to be able to have the kittens. Her husband was of the other, more practical, mind. As she is the caregiver, I did not want to do something against her wishes, and of course I was grappling with the reality of killing kittens in their mothers’ wombs anyway. We decided to give it a couple of days to think about what would be best. I put the cats in my “cat room” where they would be safe and where I could look after them well.

Over the course of the next few days, we talked regularly, the caregiver and I. On Sunday, she let me know that she thought it would be best to have the cats spayed immediately thereby ending the lives of the kittens. She had done some homework and found that this is the common solution when the shelters are full. I had expected that this could happen, so I had called on Friday and set an appointment for both of the cats for Monday morning with my vet.

On Monday evening I arrived at the office of my Belgian vet to pick up the cats and bring them home for their recovery. The veterinarian’s mother, who is her assistant, came out and said something in French that I asked her to repeat. “The longer haired one was not pregnant; she already has kittens somewhere. She had a litter of kittens five or more weeks ago.” The look on my face must have communicated volumes. “Mais oui,” she responded.

My heart dropped. 

A few minutes later the veterinarian emerged from the treatment area. “She had probably five or six kittens she said, at least five weeks ago. Maybe longer, but at a minimum five weeks,” she told me. “I can tell by the way her uterus has gone back into shape that it has to be at least five weeks.” By now I’m practically sobbing. “They can’t survive this long, can they?” I demanded. “It’s been since Thursday that she’s been away from them!”  The veterinarian grimaced. “If someone is feeding them, perhaps. But it has been quite cold.”

“By now they’re likely dead,” I admitted. The veterinarian’s facial expression told me she thought I was right. I rushed home, called the caregiver on the way (who was as devastated as I was), dropped the two cats off to my cat room for at least a day or two of recovery, and rushed back to the base where I spent the next hour and a half walking in the fine misty rain, near where I had trapped the momma cat. It was nearly dark, and the area is filled with possible hiding places. 

Shining my flashlight under the many small buildings, in the brush, amongst the new Spring growth in the light wooded areas, I searched, looking in vain for the glow of eyes or furtive movements. 

In the following days, I repeated the walk, drove around the area, asked for info on the local Facebook page, and banged on a door after hours so I could talk with the people inside the building who had placed a dish of cat food outside. No one has seen any kittens. Cats, yes. Kittens, no.

More than likely, with the cold, they got hungry, and when mama didn’t come back, they snuggled up in a pile and died of hypothermia. I didn’t know this for certain, but it was the most likely outcome. 

At the moment I was having a hard time forgiving myself. The poor mama cat must have been wondering what happened to her babies. Yes, I know animals mourn. I am sure she was mourning…her babies and her lost freedom.

The caregiver adopted the less wild one, Lily. I called the wilder one Mama Rose. She remained in the cat room for the next ten days so I could try to socialize her in the hope that she might be adoptable. Alas, it was not to be. She was too traumatized and frightened, so I released her where I’d caught her, where she’d be fed and have familiar places to hunker down in the weather. She regained her freedom, but she will never regain those babies.

And then, a few days later…

We found them. Five kittens, skittish and scared, brought out into the open by the presence of their mama. I got them trapped in short order. I brought them home, got furiously bitten by one of them, and cried with joy knowing they survived.

I got to work. They were so young, maybe six to seven weeks at the most. Only a little time hanging out with them and they were no longer afraid of me. Four boys and one shy little girl. One of the boys was smaller than the rest and sickly. But he was fearless. Every time he pooped all over himself and had to be cleaned up in the bathroom sink, he bounced right back. Many was the time he climbed up my pants leg in eager anticipation of dinner! He tried to sneak out the door of the room they were in, and he annoyed his siblings to no end.

Eventually, all the kittens were accepted in no-kill associations and adopted. All except the sickly one. He ended up with a wobble to his walk, perhaps the result of one of his fever episodes. I named him Liam. He is no longer little and sickly. He loves to eat and play and annoy his adopted feline siblings.

Sometimes doing good goes wrong, but things work out anyway.

Liam facing the camera. That’s his older adopted brother George looking out the window.

Update : this is a post written years ago but never published. It is time. Liam is now eight years old, and sweet George has crossed the Rainbow Bridge, and I am eager to see him again. Maggie and Gwen returned to the USA with me and Liam (pictured below in our new home) last summer.

I am grateful for the happy ending.

More Waiting

This evening I tried again to trap one of the several black cats on the base. I was successful, although not the way I’d hoped.

First I trapped the same cat that I trapped a couple of weeks ago. I had her spayed the first time, of course, and didn’t need to trap her again. And despite her terror the first time she found herself with no way out, she went right in that trap again. “Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?” I asked her. She didn’t respond. Too ashamed of her inability to resist tuna, I suppose.

Next the elusive cat that I was trying to trap the last time I posted sauntered coolly into the trap, gobbled up the tuna, and exited without setting it off. Again. Which is all for the best, I suppose, as I am pretty sure she is no longer pregnant. Her nursing babies are going to need her for the next few weeks. I did finally get a good look at her and she is magnificent. Long charcoal fur with a full mane.

Finally the third and fourth cats appeared. One is clearly a Tom, with the telltale fat cheeks containing all those pheromones. The other is a fairly small, smooth coated, and of course, black cat. She couldn’t resist the tuna either, but she is not so wily as the other. As soon as the trap closed, I rushed her to the vet, and he helped me confirm what I suspected: she is nursing. I took her right back and released her.

It looks like in five or six weeks I will have at least two adult females, an adult male m, and who knows how many kittens to TNR or socialize. Until then, I leave them in peace. I, on the other hand, will be diligently seeking an elusive peace, knowing that all those little souls are struggling to stay alive in a hard world. Say a prayer.

Waiting

I’m sitting about 100 meters from a humane trap in which I’m hoping to catch what I’ve been told is a pregnant cat. I’m listening for that distinctive clap which tells me that the trap has sprung and the desired prey is safely inside. This is the fourth time I have set the trap for this particular cat. She’s quite wild, and she’s very clever. Perhaps she’s been listening to her pal tell her about when I trapped her and had her spayed a couple of weeks ago, a successful, although stressful TNR.

(TNR means Trap-Neuter-Release, the only option to successfully control a community cat population.)

Within the confines of the NATO base where I teach are a number of cats who don’t have family to go home to. Over the course of the last six years, on the campus of the school on base, and on the American base a few miles from here, some friends and I have trapped or otherwise assumed responsibility for upwards of 50 cats and kittens. The ones on the NATO base are primarily the cats abandoned by military members when they PCS, or are the offspring of those cats. Many of them, like the last five, have been kittens, which I and my compassionate cohorts have socialized and either found homes for or found no kill associations which found homes for them.

The adult cats have been much more difficult. Often they have become very distrustful of humans, and a few have been downright feral. The solution for those is very complicated. Some of them have been released in areas unfamiliar to them. I deeply resist that option because sometimes it turns out very badly. One such cat was kept in the ladies garage for several weeks, where the lady fed her, spoke softly to her, and even petted her some. In spite of this, when the cat was finally released, she ran off and was never seen again, breaking the hearts of her caregivers; I still worry about this cat sometimes. Obviously we don’t want that outcome. Ideally a cat who is truly wild, or who is so fearful of humans that they can’t let themselves be socialized, needs to be released where he was trapped. Luckily in this case there is a lady who has been feeding this small colony of cats and because of her, I was alerted and we are now trying to get this population of community cats TNR’d.

In spite of my repeated requests on social media for people to let me know when they’re getting ready to leave so that I can come by and get their cat or find a suitable home for it, folks continue to abandon their animals when they leave. Dogs get dumped at shelters, and cats simply get left behind. I always thought it was “those other countries ” who were doing such things, but I’ve come to learn that we Americans are just as guilty as everybody else.

Even after all these years associated with animal rescue, I still can’t understand how you can do that. How can you welcome an animal into your home without coming to love it? And how can you love anyone or anything and decide that they’re not worth taking with you when you go? Did you know that there are even people who abandon their animals when they go on vacation? They simply turn it out if it’s a cat, or if it’s a dog they tie it to a lamp post by the side of the road.

Before I became an animal rescuer I didn’t realize such things happened. I wouldn’t say that I was living in a state of complete ignorance; in fact I had spent many years weeping over articles that I read, statistics, and photographs. I belonged to the ASPCA, the Humane Society of the United States, and subscribed to vegetarian magazines. For a time I was a member of PETA until I realized that they too are simply an animal killing machine. But until I became an actual rescuer myself, I didn’t realize that our next-door neighbors and sometimes even our friends are not really animal lovers or even animal likers. Because if they were, these “good people” wouldn’t abandon their animals leaving, in the best possible situation, other people to pick up pieces.

So I’m sitting here waiting for that trap, praying that tonight will be the night that this female cat goes into it. Cross your fingers. Say a prayer.

Three Cat Night

Yesterday I went to Brussels and “adopted” three adult cats to foster. I intended to foster two but I ended up with three because eight was too many.

Ahem. Well.

There were two cats on short time in a shelter in Brussels. They are two of eight or so that were in the cattery there, all adult neutered males, and all have been there for over a year, some for two years. I went for Bambi and Toby because they have been there the longest, over a year each, and they are only a few weeks away from their time being up. When I arrived, I fell in love with Alban, Mingati, and a sad tuxedo cat. And I stood in the sterile, concrete cattery and tried my best not to cry. I was mostly successful. But only mostly.

I managed to get out of there with only three cats to foster, but with a heavy heart and a determination to find homes for as many of them as possible. For now, Benny (The Cat Formerly Known as Bambi), Toby and Alban are safe in my upstairs guest bedroom. They have a veterinarian appointment on Monday for a check up and then hopefully they will be ready to be adopted.

Mingati, the handsome tabby with Bengal markings, is on a short list as well, but I didn’t take him because there is a lady interested in him. He is on a 12-day quarantine to buy him some time. He is gorgeous.

Mingati

Mingati: his curious face and his stunning Bengal-like coat!

Although Mingati still has a lady interested in adopting him, he isn’t out of the woods yet. Until he is safely adopted, he is not out of the woods. In fact, as you might imagine, any animal in a shelter is at the mercy of the people who run the shelter. Sometimes decisions are made that are in the best interests of the animals, and sometimes decisions are made for expediency. That is why the No-Kill movement is so important, and why so many people are on board.

Alban in the middle, Toby bottom left and Benni bottom right. Top left and right are two who remain at the shelter.

Alban in the middle, Toby bottom left and Benny bottom right. Top left and right are two who remain at the shelter for now, but they are in my heart.

The tuxedo boy, top left, is very sad and shy, but he loves attention. Top right is a fat-cheeked small cat who loves rubs and snuggles. Not pictured are a small, inquisitive tabby, a bigger friendly tabby, two reverse tuxedo cats who love people, and I can’t remember if there are any others. All are sterilized males, and I think they are all two to four years old.

So for now, we think they are safe there, and Benny, Toby and Alban are here with me. But that isn’t the end. I’m not the end for these little ones. They need their forever homes. My own George, Gwen and Maggie are mine; they and my little dog love me and they need the majority of my attention and love. So these fosters and the ones left at the shelter must be adopted. You see, this is how no-kill works; people like me and you, we adopt these animals temporarily and work our butts off to find forever homes for them. We work really hard to find their homes because we have a vested interest; they are living in our homes. We have much greater motivation than shelter employees. It’s pretty simple, really, and it’s proven to work.

I love doing this because I know I’m making a difference. These cats deserve a chance and I’m helping to give it to them! It feels good for me, and at the end of the day, when they go to their forever homes, it will feel beyond good for me and for them. I can hardly wait.

Until then, I’m having three cat nights. Well, to put it precisely, they are six-cat-one-dog nights. And days.

But George isn’t going to put up with that for long!

George, my alpha cat.

George, my alpha cat.

So help George out and spread the word!

A footnote: be aware that when you look for no-kill information, you will find some naysayers. They are wrong. Keep digging before you make up your mind.