It’s been quite a month. While the crew was tending the hundreds of furry rascals onsite, Mama Su turned little broken Ashby into a demanding diva, survived jury duty and the ‘rona and kept up with all the special needs cases, super-foster Stephanie Yeats Cymanski and Mama Natalie Schafer emerged as adoption superstars and the vets at Palm Bluff Veterinary Hospital scrambled to keep up with the hundreds of scuffed up little ones we shuttled into the clinic. We didn’t pull any kittens from storm drains, rooftops or freeways, but we did provide the bollocks for Fresno T.N.R. to turn a carefully planned neuter event into a wild rumpus of volunteers, vet techs and intact males, and when it stopped, 389 male and 18 female cats were no longer part of the Central Valley gene pool.
To hear Brandi Can tell it, when she complained she had more applicants than spots for the original event, we offered to do another 200 and she had a breakdown after the call. Not exactly. Before we could even put the bourbon down and get our ego in check, she pounced.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course not. But we’ll make some calls.”
“Can you do more?
By all reports, the event was a success—shocking given the short timeline and rabble assembled to conduct it—and resulted from the combined talent, commitment and kindness of Fresno TNR, Palm Bluff Veterinary, The Cat House On The Kings.com, Petco Love and dozens of volunteers. The event caught the attention of local media, city and county officials and rescues across the state. “How did you do THAT? Can you do it again?” Well, yeah. That’s the point. It IS doable. And to show it was no fluke, we’re all doing it again this week.
Yet it’s never enough. Recently a poster threatened to dump twelve kittens on the street because caring for them interfered with his vacation plans, and while sipping margaritas at his rented beach house, chided us with snarky comments for not responding to his request to take the problem off his hands. Staffed with fewer people than the local shelter has in the lobby turning people away, we oversee the care and safety for hundreds of animals, but it would never occur to us to dump any of them. Well, it for me it does—the lifers in the Main House can be little @$$holes—but Mama Su would never stand for it. Hell, we’ve got a paraplegic (Kirk) that opens doors, flips us off with a hiss and drag-races around the property whenever he can, and Mama Su won’t let anyone relax until he’s back inside, grungy but safe and the failure to keep him secure unequivocally assigned to me.
To put it in perspective, in the last three months, we’ve overseen over 500 spays, 700 neuters, 1,350 vaccines, 350 snap tests, 200 exams or follow-ups, 40 sets of X-rays, 7 amputations, 7 break repairs, 19 enucleations, 11 horrible laceration/infections, 3 pellet/bullet wounds, 4 dentals, dozens of lab tests, 131 anti-biotic shots, 21 extreme flea, mite or mange treatments and sadly 10 euthanasias. There’s a gut-wrenching and often heart-warming story in most of these cases like little Misty here—pulled from a rat trap with a smashed face and covered with trap glue—but what rarely gets attention is the support of PetSmart Charities, the individual donors, volunteers and staffers that make it possible. We say “Thank you!” a lot, but not nearly enough, and if you've volunteered or donated and wonder if it makes a difference, Misty would like you to know that it does…
Hope to see you at the neuter event!
