Today was a long, long day...

First the numbers: We brought 38 cats to the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic today to be fixed; 37 of them were ferals while one was a friendly feral. One of the ferals didn't make it (more on that in a minute) so we had 37 cats fixed in all. Super-volunteer Charli helped me pick up the cats from Tammy's this morning and bring them PAWS (thanks Charli!) while super-volunteer Jodie helped me pick up the cats at PAWS this evening and bring them back to Tammy's for recovery and redistribution (thanks Jodie!). Super-volunteer Sue loaned us the use of her van so that we could bring in this number of cats in just two vehicles (thanks Sue!) and, as always, super-volunteer Judy was at Tammy's this morning and this evening to help out on all of the preparation and recovery tasks (thanks Judy!).

One of the ferals was severely injured. When we got him to PAWS, Charli noticed that his trap had a lot of blood in it and that the cat was bleeding profusely. I asked Shannon, the PAWS Vet clinic supervisor, if this cat could be looked at right away. Normally PAWS does ferals last, but being the rock-stars that they are, they sedated this cat and brought him to the vet immediately. Then the bad news. After an examination, the vet determined that both front legs were necrotic and nothing more than clubs, really. The upper part of the front logs and one of the back legs were bleeding profusely. Someone, in a misguided attempt to help the cat, had wrapped up part of one of the front legs with surgical tape. The back legs had also been severely ripped up by something (A coyote? A barbed-wire fence?) and some of the tendons were showing. The vet determined that neither of the front legs could be saved and that the cat was obviously in a lot of pain. After consulting all parties, the difficult decision to euthanize the cat was made. We've brought approximately 5,000 cats to PAWS now and I think this is the third time this has happened. Each time is very, very hard.

PAWS had an overflow from the previous days surgeries and everything was backed up (which made their willingness to look at this feral immediately even more amazing). Charli and I didn't get the paperwork finished until a little after noon. That evening, the cats weren't ready until about 6:45pm and the paperwork was ready later. Jodie didn't leave PAWS with her load of cats until about 7:30pm and I didn't get out of there until a little after 8:00pm. And, then, of course, when we brought the cats to Tammy's, Judy and Tammy had to do additional work to get the paperwork ready to give to the owners and get the cats settled down for the evening. A long, long day for everyone concerned...

26 of the ferals we brought in were from a barn. The people who had been feeding the cats thought that there were 15-18 or so cats! In addition to the 26 cats trapped this past Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, there was also a mom and 3 day-old kittens (all are doing fine) and it still appears that there may be 3 more cats at the location. Sigh...

With these first 37 cats of April, Feral Fixers has now processed 194 cats for the year and 4,930 cats overall...