This week in Barn Cats - 10/18/2010 - 10/24/2010

WOW – What a week!

20 placements!  There are only 4 cages full in the cat rooms. 

Nancy Kuntz was with me on most of the relocations this week and it was a very busy week. 

• Tuesday  -  We were off to Farmersville in the eastern part of Collin County. We set up 5 cats at a great barn. The 5 cats are all gray tabbies from the SPCA.
• Thursday  -  Sanger was the destination for 5 additional cats today. Ellie, Emerson, Rita, Tamara, and Brooklyn went there. They were set up in a large workshop with great ventilation. When I went there last Friday, a beautiful, young gray tabby came out of the hay stack. The barn owner did not know her and she was not spay. When I called her, she came right to me – what a beautiful, little girl. The barn owner wanted feral cats, so “Penny” went with me (immediately) to All Care for testing and spaying plus rabies and distemper shots. She was traded to New Beginnings Cat Rescue on Thursday evening. That makes 6 cats placed on Thursday.
• Friday  -  We prepared today for a LONG trip to Paris, TX. At least the 121 toll road and the new fly-over from 121 to 75 North saved us 40 minutes from what we used to do going that direction. We made it to Powderly (that is north of Paris) in just 2 hours. 2 hours from Dallas/Fort Worth is the limit of our service area. We placed 5 cats there, tool…Preston, Baby, Gerka, Tally, and Miranda. The folks were nice and the barn clean.  
• Saturday  -  As volunteers, Linny and Chris, cleaned the cat rooms, I left to place “Silver” in McKinney as a backyard cat in a very nice neighborhood. They back up to a golf course…which means there are many rodents to control. Silver came from Decatur a little over a week ago. He just “showed up” at a barn where we placed 3 ferals several years ago. His presence upset the others and the barn owner asked Barn Cats to take him. Silver is a big, Russian Blue looking cat….very handsome. I think he will do well in McKinney.
• Sunday  -   (Since it is just Saturday now). Three friendly cats will be going to Cat Matchers tomorrow…a big, polydactyl brown tabby, a wonderful orange classic tabby from the Tri-City Shelter, and a Siamese mix. 

Well – that makes 20 for the week. Strangely enough we were not in that many counties this week (Denton, Dallas, Tarrant, Wise, Grayson, Lamar, Collin, and Fannin). Some DAYS we are in that many counties. BUT – Lamar is a new county for us which makes 37 Texas counties and 5 southern Oklahoma counties.   

Thanks to Linny Heagy and Chris Johnston for cleaning up and to Nancy for the 3 big trips this week to place 15 of the cats and for weekday cleanups.  It takes a lot of cleaning to maintain both cat rooms, all the equipment (comes from the barn dirty/dusty and smelling nasty), and the room full of “older than dirt” cats. I will feature them one by one in my “Cat Tales” entries.