Well today was a new experience for me. I had dropped off 10 cats at the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic this morning to have them run through the full TNR package. Five of the cats were ferals while the other five were 'friendly ferals' (they were all kittens).
As I was driving back to PAWS to pick them up this afternoon, I received a phone call from Sue Robinson - she's the Community Outreach Director at PAWS and runs the Feral program there too. She is also a super, super person to deal with - always helpful, knowledgeable and she's not afraid to get her hands dirty to get things done.
Anyway Sue called to tell me that as they were getting ready to anaesthesize one of the ferals, they discovered that she was giving birth! Of course, this put the surgery, vaccinations, microchipping, ear-tipping, etc. all on hold. She wanted to know what we wanted to do with this cat. I quickly got on the phone with super volunteer Judy and Feral Fixers president Tammy and had them deal directly with Sue on this issue.
The upshot of this was that PAWS put the feral in a large carrier and let her carry on with giving birth to her kittens. By the time I got there, she was giving birth to her second kitten. Sue had the day's resident vet, Dr. Von Waldau (also another super-person to work with) monitor the process. Dr. Von Waldau helped clean the birth sack off of the kitten, cleaned out the carrier, checked the status of mom and the newborns and pronounced them good to go.
So, I got to drive back a mom and two kittens and who knows, she might have been giving birth to another kitten while I was driving them back to super-volunteer Judy's house. This mom and kitten wound up with super-volunteer Mary, someone who is wise and experienced in the ways of helping feral mom cats and their kittens - they are in good hands for sure.
So, just another day at the office for all concerned...
With these 9 cats, Feral Fixers has now processed 75 cats for the month of July, 467 for the year and 1,946 overall.