This past Sunday, Feral Fixers brought in two more cats to the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic to be fixed. Feral Fixers Director Kurt Meyer picked up the cats from Tammy's in the morning and brought them to PAWS and then brought them back from PAWS that afternoon to Tammy's for recovery and distribution. Thanks Kurt! Tammy had this comment about the two cats:
"Two cats done as ferals, one the caretaker is going to try to bring in and the other "Chuckie" seems very interested in trying the fostering thing with no interest in going back outside. He is currently in Judy's garage as it is just a fraction cooler than mine, he is a black medium hair with brown tones that they get when they are in the sun a lot."
And today, we brought in 20 more cats to PAWS. Super-volunteer Charli helped me pick up the cats from Tammy's this morning and bring them to PAWS (Thanks Charli!) while I brought them back from PAWS this evening to Tammy's. And as always, super-volunteer Judy was at Tammy's both in the morning and afternoon helping out with all of the work necessary to make this all work. 13 of these cats were feral with the other seven being "Friendly Ferals". Tammy also reports that 12 of these cats were female. We were supposed to bring in 21 cats today, but when Tammy and Judy checked out the cats this morning, they found that one of the ferals had given birth overnight. This is probably its second litter of the year and means one more batch of kittens that Tammy and Judy are going to have to deal with. At least this will be the last litter for this mama...
An interesting story about one of the cats, "Jorge"... When I arrived at PAWS in the late afternoon to pick up the cats, one of the clinic vet technicians told me that "Jorge" was extremely animated when coming out of anaesthesia, to the point of repeatedly banging his head against the cage and injuring himself (though not severely). The vet techs tried to calm him down, but were unsuccessful. They finally gave him a mild sedative and, to make sure he didn't injure himself further, they put him in a carrier, totally swaddled in towels. By the time I got to PAWS, he had calmed down and when I brought in to Tammy's, she was able to get him back into his trap for recovery with minimal difficulty. This is just another example of the PAWS people going "above and beyond" in their treatment of animals. Every one is important to them, including feral cats. We really are very lucky to have such a dedicated group of people doing the surgical work on these cats. As I often tell Rochelle Michalek, the Executive Director of the PAWS Spay/Neuter clinic, the only "complaint" I have about PAWS is that they're not located 30 miles west of where they currently are...
With these 22 cats, Feral Fixers finished up June with processing 125 cats. We've processed 457 cats for the year (47 ahead of last year's pace), and 5,190 overall.