I am sitting here right now in my arm chair. Decompressing from today and everything that has happened. On my lap, Aspen and Laurel are sharing this time with me. Aspen is vigorously marking me with her claws, kneading her paws in and out on my leg, Fortunately, I have prepared myself by draping a large bath towel over my legs. Laurel, she is head, bumping my cell phone, she is chasing my fingers as I type. She is obstructing the view of the screen. She is such a wonderful distraction.

I sit here and wonder why I can’t have normal cats. In the same breath, I say to myself, “Why would they be normal? I’m not!” The cats who are here now under our care are so not normal. That’s why they are still here. Why would somebody want to adopt a cat who sprays?  Would they even perhaps gamble with a cat who is so pet aggressive, if you stop petting him before he wants you to, you turn into shredded meat.

They all have their issues, they all have their quirks. Some of them keep me up at night because they’re PTSD goes to a higher level after dark. We take the casts-offs, we take the cats people when they call us. Tell us how they want to “get rid of.” They tell us in graphic vivid detail how exactly they wish to accomplish this. That’s when we race for the door.

I go to battle for these cats every day. I try to dispel the myths that abound about “feral cats.” I can honestly say that in the 35+ years that I have been working with these cats, I have only met three true, feral cats. They were all different ages, one was even a kitten. But they were all truly feral cats. I tell people that there’s quite a difference between a true feral cat and a cat with feral tendencies. And sometimes I asked the person if they’ve ever  read Lord of the Flies? Those boys weren’t born feral, circumstances beyond their control made them feral. Same with the cats with feral tendencies, you do all that you can to survive.

Today I faced, probably the biggest battle I’ve ever fought, I’m actually still fighting it. The fight is occurring via email. You can’t even get these people on the phone. I am fighting a Big Box Store who somewhere in the maze of qualifying as a nonprofit and being vetted, the computer has lost me somewhere in cyberspace. Today was the day that I was supposed to hear positively that we have qualified. I have pieces of email here that I could copy and send them to show them that both of these websites (which I had to navigate through in order to get here) say that I have done everything that I was supposed to do and that I am qualified.according to what I was told, that’s not going to help.

However, there’s this List that I am supposed to be on. I was told it only takes 48 hours to show up. But so far if someone’s put me on the List, they did so in invisible ink. Because of the type of rescue we are; not open to the public, no big parking lot for people to pull in, you can’t just drop in and see cats. (All they’d do is hide) so what’s the fun of that? Lol.

We also don’t adopt out to just anybody, no matter how many dollar bills they’re waving in our faces. You lol have to fill out an application first, then your home is inspected and now we meet every family member. We learned a years ago by omitting that  last step (because the husband was on a business trip)  it almost cost a kitty dearly. We found ourselves re-rescuing her quickly before she was dreadfully injured. It was close, a lesson learned.

So anyway, once your home has been inspected and approved, we hope the kitty has found her forever loving home. We also flatly refuse to put our cats inside cages unless it is medically necessary. This means that putting them up for adoption in a store will never happen. For those types of reasons, we are often overlooked or disqualified when we apply for assistance or help or virtually anything. You have to fit their mold. We step away from it.

I will find out tomorrow if this current battle is in our favor or not. Whatever the outcome is, the kitties here will continue to be loved, cared for, vetted when needed and fed. if one happens to show up at our gate, it will not be turned away. Somehow, someway they always do get fed. We were just hoping that The Big Box Store would be the one helping to feed them for awhile so we could stop begging on their behalf.

Wish us luck!