So it’s pretty obvious from Tuesday’s post that we have exciting news in the form of a new family member, and I will be posting about that soon, but something else also happened that day that was not so good, and I wanted to share that here first…
Some of you may know that our house has a shared driveway, and that the renters in the house next door were being evicted. We knew this when we moved in, which is why we hadn’t already called the health department about the trash. Monday there was a frenzy of fighting, yelling, furniture and belongings being piled out in the yard, cars coming in and out, police coming, a visit from some other woman who looked like probably a parole officer or someone from DSS, and other assorted calamity… none of these things are unusual for that house, but having them all happen within a few hours was. We deduced that they must be finally moving.
The truth of the matter was that the next day the day the sheriff’s department was going to be coming to enforce the eviction, and those losers bailed with some of their stuff Monday night and LEFT ALL OF THE ANIMALS. We didn’t realize this is what they had done until Tuesday morning when I was loading my van and the property owner arrived along with a police car, and the renters were nowhere to be found. They had left their dog, Frankie, and upwards of fifteen cats and kittens.. including Wren. The officer had no choice but to call animal control to come and take them all to the shelter, and I watched, heartsick, as Wren and all the others were captured, caged and taken away.
The commotion has freaked Winter out so bad that she has been hiding for days… we thought it was the new dog but she’s clearly not afraid of him. I wonder if she was watching out the window or from the yard as all those cats were being rounded up? I get a lump in my throat every time I look at the dogwood tree, or the back stoop, or the many other favorite spots Wren had, and know that she’s gone. At least there won’t be any more litters of kittens from that house.
I think they would have let me take her, but what could we have done with her? Winter hates other cats, Wren hated our cats and dogs, and our cats have been exposed to the FIP virus. Wren, for that matter, could have been carrying either of the other two big viruses that cats get, so bringing her in our house was out. I did give my name and number to the officer and said we’d try to get them into a rescue if they were not claimed. The director of the shelter, who was a very nice guy, called me later in the day and we discussed the unlikelihood of getting the cats placed with so many homeless cats and kittens flooding the area. And he’s right. And while, at first, we thought maybe we could at least get Wren into a rescue, we were uncomfortable with our valuing one of their lives over the others, just because we’d gotten attached, and with the idea of our pressuring a rescue group to take one or all of them when we aren’t able to even foster any of them.
There’s a chance they might not have made it into adoptions at all, as many of them had eye and nose discharge (though they said this might have been due to conditions in the house) and the shelter is already full to capacity. Today was their last day that they had to be held before either being put down or moved to adoptions. I feel bad for the shelter staff that is faced with this day after day, and for the animals, and for the children that were living in that house and had to go through all this.
I’m sorry, Wren, that we couldn’t step in and save you. If there isn’t a good home in your future, then at least I hope there will be a gentle end and maybe next life around you’ll get a better break.
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