things and kitties

so i seem to be doing OK overall, though i'm having a terrible time concentrating on work still. i need to kick myself harder in the ass, i guess.

meanwhile, one of the three feral kittens my neighbor stephanie and i have been keeping an eye on is at the vet. he got caught in a fan belt this morning; she said he looked like he was mostly ok, but he needed stitches and got a pretty serious whack on the head, so the vet is keeping him for observation. we're hoping we can talk him into trying to find him a home; meanwhile i must offer devout thanks to chakaal, who kindly offered a contribution toward the vet bill. stephanie has been spending a lot of money caring for the ferals and strays on the property, and i'm trying to help out, but i can't really afford it either. *sigh*

anyway, hopefully the little stripey guy (i think we should name him Pontiac) will be all right and the vet will find him a nice home; we'd like to place the other two kittens before they're too feral to be socialized, but catching them is a real trick. we're also trying to trap a couple of the adult ferals; the humane society will neuter/spay them for free, and then we can let them go again and not have to worry about them making more kittens. unfortunately we think there may already be more -- the one stephanie caught last night appeared to be nursing, so she let her go again.

it's the goddamned Wild Kingdom, right there in our parking lot.

i am officially a cat lady

so the good news is that stephanie has caught the other two feral kittens and installed them in a nice big cage on her balcony where she can spend time socializing them to make them adoptable. *plus* she found someone who'll come and trap the adult ferals and take care of getting them fixed and re-released.

the kitten who was injured is doing ok, but the vet is keeping an eye on him because he's had a head injury and there's no way to know what'll happen, really.

isaac, the handsome gray adult stray who hangs out and rubs up against people and obviously really wants to get back inside, got tar all over his paws today after the parking lot was resurfaced; together with blanche and bonnie, other friendly neighbors, we tried to wrap him up in a rug and use vaseline to get the tar off. stephanie and blanche held him while i worked on his little foot. he did not like that at all, and in the process of struggling managed to bite stephanie pretty severely.

we decided we'd better let him go for the moment and get him to the vet and stephanie to the ER. blanche volunteered to take stephanie to the hospital, and she'll take isaac in tomorrow morning, to avoid the outrageous fees we'd be charged if he went in as an emergency. bonnie is going to help out with isaac's vet bill. (her brother henry, whom i met earlier today, has a couple of indoor kitties of his own and has been taking care of a stray he calls 'sweetie' for ten years now; sweetie lives in a box next to his front door and gets regular veterinary care.)

yes, we have both cat ladies and cat gentlemen in this complex.

i was ordered to come home and get some sleep so i can be effective at work tomorrow. ha ha ha ha. and here i'd planned to get to bed by 10pm...

anyway. we're doing what we can. i gave stephanie my phone number and told her to call me and let me know what's up and how much things are costing. we'll see what we can work out.

so. need any cats? because boy, have we got cats! we have boys and girls, adults and kittens, tabbies and calicos and tuxedos and grays.

kitties. what can you do?