Feral Fixers had another 8 cats spay/neutered at the PAWS-Chicago Spay-Neuter clinic today. 5 of them were from the "House of 12" I wrote about earlier. This means that a total of 11 out of the 12 indoor cats at this house have now been fixed. We would have done the 12th one today, too, but he was sick. Still, 11 out of 12 means that no cats in this house will now get pregnant and we will get the 12th one done in the near future.

As with our previous trip to PAWS last Sunday, Jennifer took the cats in the morning and dropped them off at PAWS while I picked them up in the evening. Unlike the last trip, however, I was 'processed' almost immediately. My timing was good. I got there at the same time PAWS began showing their "after-surgery care video". PAWS has a TV mounted in the lobby and they periodically play different videos for people in the waiting room; one video deals with housetraining pets, another discusses bringing home an additional pet and how to introduce it to the pets already living at the household, etc. They also have an 'after-surgery care video', a video that tells petowners how to care for their pet after the surgery they had that day. As I said, my timing was good. While the video was playing and the people were watching it, PAWS-personnel got me and 'my' cats out of there in about 10 minutes.

With today's surgeries, that makes 640 cats that have been fixed due to the efforts of us at Feral Fixers. As impressive as that sounds, Tammy told me yesterday that she has, literally, requests for another 100 cats to be processed (and it's only February!). We'll be looking for ways to step up our efforts ASAP...

We 'did' 10 more cats today; 2 friendly-ferals and 8 'feral' ferals... Our first couple of batches this month were mostly friendly ferals, but that's an anomaly - normally we'll do many more cats that are truly feral than those that are not

As I both dropped off the cats this morning and picked them up this evening, there was no need for PAWS-Chicago to hold onto either the paperwork or the towels we use to cover the cages. This simplifies things. However, something new always seems to happen during our trips to/from PAWS. During my evening pickup, as I was carrying our cats from the PAWS clinic to my car, a fire engine pulled up in front of the clinic with lights flashing and siren blaring. A few seconds later, a second fire engine pulled up, again with lights flashing and siren sounding. Shortly after that, several PAWS personnel came out of the building to see what was going on. One of them approached me and asked if I would be willing to help evacuate all of the animals from the PAWS building should it become necessary! Argghh!!

Fortunately it was a false alarm and, after a few minutes of confusion, the fire engines left and I was able to finish loading up my car with our 10 cats.

Normally when I pick up the cats, I bring them directly to Tammy's house and, from there, they get distributed out to their colonies. This evening, however, Tammy asked me if I would be willing to drop one of the cats off on my way to her house; the cat belonged to a colony in Downers Grove and it wasn't very far out of my way. On my way to the house, Tammy called me and told me that there would be an ambulance out in front of it. When I arrived, the ambulance was there, picking up (as I found out from the woman who was the colony caretaker) someone who had been having chest pains. I guess this was my evening to interact with emergency vehicles - I'm just glad that none of them was for me ☺

With today's 10 cats, this makes 650 cats that have been spay/neutered due to the efforts of Feral Fixers.

(The picture shows the 10 cats we brought into PAWS-Chicago today; 8 were in traps while 2 were in carriers. You can click on the picture to see a larger version of it.)