On Wednesday, we brought 27 cats to the PAWS-Chicago Spay/Neuter clinic to be fixed. 17 of the cats were ferals while 10 were 'friendly ferals'.
I picked up the cats from Tammy's and drove them to PAWS in the morning and, in the evening, picked up the cats from PAWS and drove them back to Tammy's for recovery. Once again we want to thank super-volunteer for the use of her van - allowing us to take such a large load of cats. Thanks Sue!
One of the friendlies we brought had a high fever and runny nose and was pronounced not healthy enough for surgery. A second friendly, somehow, had some food trapped in her towel in the carrier. While no one could be sure if she had actually eaten any food since the past evening, the risk was too great to take. If she had eaten and then aspirated during surgery, she could have died. She'll just have to wait until our next trip in.
And, one of the ferals gave everyone a surprise when the PAWS Vet-tech went to give her an anaesthetic shot in preparation for surgery. Not only was the feral in the trap, but so were a couple of her just-born kittens! So, no surgery for this one either. Super-volunteer Mary took the mom and kittens (thanks Mary!). She'll let the mom wean the kittens and then they'll be fostered out, hoping that we can make them friendly enough to adopt. And then we'll get the mom spayed...
Mary reported that a total of five kittens were born to this mom, so, I took 27 cats to PAWS, but brought back 32 - and of the 27 cats I took, 24 had spay/neuter surgery.
With these 24 cats, Feral Fixers has now processed 46 cats this month, 328 this year and 2,809 overall.