And how, do you ask, does "(1 + 5) + (8 - 1)" = 13 cats? Well, it's like this...

Last Sunday, we took six cats to be spayed/neutered at the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic. As sometimes happens when they have an overrun of animals and/or shortage of staff, they can't get them all done. Ferals are usually the last ones done - PAWS personnel schedule appointments for all pets while ferals can be brought into the clinic without an appointment (this is one of the many things I love about PAWS - they understand how difficult it can be to trap a cat and so they don't try and straight-jacket you with scheduling which may be nearly impossible to satisfy). The downside to this is if too many animals 'show up' on any one day, not all of them may be done. The six cats we brought in were a combination of one 'friendly feral' and five true ferals. The one 'friendly feral' was done, so I drove down on Sunday evening to pick it up so that it could be returned to it's caretaker as quickly as possible. PAWS is closed on Monday, so on Tuesday, I drove down and picked up the other five ferals. So, this is the "(1 + 5)" portion of the formula...

On Wednesday, Jennifer drove eight ferals down to PAWS to be spayed/neutered (thanks Jennifer!) and I picked them up in the afternoon. However, it was discovered that one of them had already been spayed. There was a tiny eartip on the cat (which we missed) as well as a micro-chip, so this cat just had the rabies & distemper shots, was de-wormed and was treated for ear mites. We really can't count this cat as being spayed by us as it had been done already, hence the '(8 - 1)' factor of the formula.

Add it all up and Feral Fixers had 13 more cats spayed / neutered over that four day period. This brings the total for November up to 56, the total for the year up to 787 and the total number of cats overall that Feral Fixers has had spayed/neutered since its inception to 1,398.

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