Angels

I have a friend who feeds feral cats.

This doesn't seem like maybe a big deal. After all, we've probably all had an encounter with a feral cat, either in our neighborhood, our barn (that would be me), or even on vacation, when we see wild cats and leave a little food near where they're spotted.

This is different.

This woman goes out, every night, and makes the rounds of a number of places in an industrial (read dangerous) section of a large metropolitan city, and she feeds the cats and puts up with the ugliness (some of it on two legs) all around the area. The cats are her furry family. A couple she's adopted, the ones who allow themselves to be petted and obviously want to get off the streets. She can't rescue them all, although she'd like to. The shelters in her city are full; there is no place for these cats to go. So she feeds them, cares for them, and worries about them.

When she can coerce one to allow itself to be caught, she'll take it in and work to get it spayed or neutered. 

She still does the rounds she did when she volunteered for a cat rescue. She stopped volunteering but they are short handed, so these cats, which had depended on her for years, couldn't be abandoned. She keeps working for her feline family.  She begs kibble from the cat rescue, but the money she spends weekly on gas comes right out of her pocket, and she also treats these street cats to the occasional can of wet food. So does the money for a euthanasia, like this fellow who crossed over the rainbow bridge just a few days ago.

Cosseted and cared for

She called him Little Brother, one of three cats who grew up together. Kathleen could see he was getting weaker and weaker, and he finally started following her around, which she says they will do when they've had enough of the streets and can't take it anymore. She brought him home, where he wouldn't eat and was suffering.

Rather than contact the pet rescue and having him wait for a couple more days before he might get into a vet, she took him to a local vet and paid for the euthanasia herself. She wrapped him in a blanket and stayed with him while he crossed over. That cat's last few hours were a miracle in caring, because Kathleen cares.

I could not do what she does. She's made of tough stuff. So I help out with some animal communication and to help her go a little less to the dark side when one of the cats disappears. You see, she knows them all. She knows their habits, which ones come running, which ones hang back, and when something changes, maybe a cat is not around for a couple of weeks, Kathleen worries. She knows they each have their own journey, but it doesn't make it any easier to suddenly no longer see an eager face that she's been feeding for a couple of years.

I don't always get it right (no animal communicator does). She told me about a tortie who looked massively pregnant, and then appeared one day all slimmed down. What happened to the kittens? I felt into it, and to me it felt like maybe they hadn't survived. Eight weeks later, and there's this:

A couple members of Momma Tortie's family.

Oops!

Of course now the kittens are the next generation on the street. Momma Tortie can smell a trap from a mile off, and although she showed off her kittens, once thoughts started floating around about getting them (and her) off the street, she had them hide again. They disappeared for several days, and then the brave orange kitten started coming around. Momma isn't thrilled being on the street, but she was abandoned and doesn't trust anyone. Orangey is the front line; he wants to be caught, so he can let his brothers and sisters know that it's okay. And maybe Momma will get the message too.

If you know anyone who does this kind of work, give them a lot of respect, and every penny you can spare. It's not easy, and they need all the good vibes we can send them. These are angels, and Kathleen, especially, has wings that encompass a fair amount of an ugly environment where she makes the lives of street cats a little better.