So there's this nice lady, see? And she keeps taking in litters of kittens because she's good-hearted, see? And now she has 12 cats in her house, see? And 6 of them are male and 6 of them are female, see? And 3 of the females are in heat, see?

Yes, a disaster waiting to happen...

Fortunately, this lady realized what she is getting herself into, perhaps a potential hoarding situation spinning out of control, so she contacted Feral Fixers for help.

I picked up the 6 friendly-feral females today and they will be taken to PAWS-Chicago tomorrow (along with some outdoor ferals) to get them all spayed/neutered. On our next go-around, we'll take in the 6 males and then we'll have this group taken care of.

But this neighborhood needs help, too. While I was loading up these 6 cats (the picture is of the carriers in my car - click on the picture to see a larger version of it), I saw at least 3 other ferals roaming around the neighborhood. And that was in a period of just a few minutes, so I'm sure there are many more here...

I'm sure we'll be coming back here several times to get this situation under control

We took 8 more cats to the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic today; 6 cats from the 'House of 12' (see previous blog entry) plus two others, one a 'friendly-feral' and one a 'regular' feral.

Transport was again divided between Jennifer and myself, but this time she took them down in the morning and I picked them up in the evening. The PAWS clinic is in the middle of expanding and remodling as they have recently signed an agreement with the Purdue University School of Veterinary Medicine to "...focus on helping animals in shelters." This program was funded by a $1.2 million grant from Maddie's Fund and I expect great things from it. In the meantime, PAWS is doing this remodling and expanding AND, at the same time, continuing to provide their spay-neuter services. I'm sure they'll be glad when the expansion work is done and they can concentrate on fulfilling their mission of a "No-Kill Chicago" (and helping us out in DuPage County, too).

With today's 8 cats, that now brings the Feral Fixers "Fix-o-meter" up to a total of 632 cats spay/neutered since our inception.