Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: EPAA

We had a quiet week this week.
Only two exciting things happened.
First…
My cute little red-haired brother, Richard, acquired a couple of kittens and during one of our evening chats he mentioned it was time to get them fixed.
“I’d love to get ours fixed too, but it’s so expensive,” I whined.
Later, on another day, I was mentioning this to the Kipp’s on one of their morning visits.
“The vet has a spay and neuter clinic for feral cats,” Lamar told me. “Ten dollars for a male and thirty for a female. It’s a good idea to get them a rabies shot too.”
I finally got my butt in gear and called out to the vet on Friday a week ago now. “I’m calling about your low cost spay and neuter clinic.”
“We quit doing that a couple of years ago,” Mark told me. “But here’s the phone number for a mobile spay/neuter clinic.”
I wrote the number down on a scrap piece of paper here by my computer. “As long as I’ve got you on the phone, how much does it cost to have a male cat neutered?” I was thinking that in the very least, we would have Smudge done.
“A male is $91.42.”
“How much is a rabies shot?”
“$21.10,” Mark answered after a few clicks of his keyboard.
“And how much is it for a female?” I might just as well find that out too since I had him on the phone.
“A female is,” and he paused as he pulled up the price on his computer, “$156.96.”
I scribbled the prices down. “Okay, thank you,” and I hung up.
I called the phone number Mark gave me and talked to a nice lady who answered the phone. “I’m calling about the mobile spay/neuter clinic. How much is it to have done?”
“It’s $35 and that includes a rabies shot and ear clip.”
“Is that for a male or female?” I asked.
“Either one,” Lisa answered. “How many cats do you have?”
I did a quick count in my head. “Two males and two females,” I answered just thinking of the kittens, Spitfire, Rascal, Feisty and Cleopatra.
“I think there’s room for two this Monday and we can get the rest in next month. They have to be at least three months old.”
Mine are so I reserved the two open spots.
The next time we visited with the Kipp’s I told them that the vet shut down their spay/neuter program a couple of years ago.
“That’s funny,” Lamar said. “We had a cat done last summer.”
Could I have misunderstood? I guess it’s possible. Maybe he said a couple of months ago…
“I want to take Feisty and Callie but I’ve barely been able to pet Callie,” I complained to the Kipp’s. “I don’t know if she’ll let me pick her up and put her in a carrier.”
Lamar didn’t seem to think it would be any problem for me, “Just pick her up and put her in there.”
Easy for him to say, he’s handled her before.
We have a small dog kennel but it’s Smudge’s bedroom and I didn’t really want to use it. Besides, I didn’t know how well Feisty and Callie would get along if I put them in the same carrier. I have a regular size cat carrier and I thought I would borrow one from the Robinson’s. Two carrier’s was all I needed. Before I had a chance to ask Stephanie, we were invited up to play cards on Sunday night. When we got there I asked to borrow the carrier and was told I could. I knew she’d let me; she let me use it once before. At the end of the evening, when we were done playing cards, Mike and I promptly walked off and left it.
Sigh!
Rather than go back for it, it was the perfect excuse for me to say, “Forget it. We’ll just take Feisty and Cleo in Smudge’s kennel. It’s plenty big enough for two cats.” I didn’t forget the kennel on purpose but secretly I was relieved. I didn’t want to admit that I was a little afraid to try to pick Callie up.
Monday morning, we loaded Feisty and Cleo in the kennel, loaded the kennel in the back of the Jeep and it was off to Tunkhannock for us. I thought for sure we were going to have to listen cats crying for the half hour drive but the little girls were very quiet and barely meowed at all. Maybe being in the same kennel together was a good idea.
This might be a good place to tell you that the chip in the windshield has turned into a full blown crack. It goes the whole way across the windshield from one side to the other. So much for the guy thinking it wouldn’t go any further. Mike hates it and will have it replaced before summer I’m sure.

In Tunkhannock we had a little trouble finding the place because some dummy thought she knew where it was. I had to call Lisa and she talked us in. They stage in a garage of the Department of Agriculture building.
“How long will it take,” Mike asked.
“If they’re first in they should be ready to go by noon,” Lisa told us.
Mike and I weren’t looking forward to two trips to Tunkhannock in the same day but there was no help for it. Drop off was between 8:30 and 9:30 and we were there at 8:30, even before the Spaymobile was there. We could kill a couple of hours shopping but four? We’d just have to suck it up and make the trip. We made a couple of stops at the hardware stores, looking for something Mike wanted, then did our weekly shopping at Wal*Mart. We then headed back to Wyalusing. “Don’t forget we need to stop at Dollar General for cat food,” I reminded Mike. We’d no sooner gotten back to Wyalusing, pulled in the parking lot at Dollar General, parked, I pulled on the door handle to get out and my phone rings. I dug my phone out of my pocket and looked at the caller ID. “It’s the clinic,” I told Mike. I swiped the answer button and put the phone to my ear. “Hello,” I answered in a sing-songy voice.
“Peg, this is Lisa. Your cats are done.”
“Great! How did they do?”
“Just fine. They’re awake and alert,” Lisa answered.
“Okay, we’ll be back to get them,” I thanked her and hung up. “Should we turn around and go get them?” I asked Mike.
“No. Let’s go home first.”
I went into Dollar General and got the canned cat food. I was happy to see they had 9 Lives on sale. Three for a dollar! I stocked up thinking 9 Lives was a better cat food than the off brand I normally buy. At home I put the cold food stuffs in the fridge, walked the girls, made a travel coffee and we went back to Tunkhannock.
The van they use to spay and neuter in is a converted Winnebago Adventurer.

Inside the garage I looked at all the cat carriers covered in sheets. There was one really big one. “I think this one’s ours,” I said.
The lady lifted the sheet and checked the girls.
“How is this funded?” Mike asked.
“It’s all donations,” one of the ladies answered.
We were told to keep the girls warm for the night and give them food, a little at a time to make sure they could handle it. Tomorrow they could join their family or clowder, as a group of cats is called. They could also be called a glaring, says Wikipedia. A male is a tom, or a gib if he’s neutered, a female is a queen and juveniles are called kittens, of course.
Another website says they can also be a clutter of cats or even a pounce but never a pride which is reserved for lions. Just for fun, I clicked through the slideshow.
A shrewdness of apes.
A leap of leopards.
A crash of rhino’s.
A paddling of ducks.
An unkindness of ravens.
A business of ferrets.
And they say a group of kittens is a kindle. I’d have thought it was a litter…
And puppies? They say they’re a piddle of puppies. Again, I’d have called it a litter!
And there I go again! Off on a tangent!
Feisty and Cleo got into a little spat that evening and Cleo camped out in the litter box. I didn’t like that. I went out to the garage and got the small cat carrier, fixed it up for Feisty and the girls spent the night separated. The next morning I carried them out to the cat room and turned them lose.

This morning, as I started working on this blog, I wondered how many cats they fixed a month. I sent a text to Lisa with a ton of questions and she was kind enough to call me. “How many cats do you fix?” I asked.
“The Spaymobile comes to Tunkhannock once a month and we normally do 40 cats. In the springtime, when the kittens are born we’ll ask for an extra day and might do an additional 50 cats. That’s 90 cats in one month!”
“Are you making any headway?”
“I’m not sure. We just keep trapping all of the cats in one area until we get them all then we move on to another area.”
“And what is your position there?”
“I don’t have a position with the EPAA — Eastern PA Animal Alliance— I’m just a volunteer. But I’m the Humane Officer for Wyoming County. When I saw the cat problem we have here I thought, We have to do something! That’s when I connected with the EPAA and got them to add us to their schedule. That was in 2013. But I have to tell you, I have another job and when they come to town, I have to take that day off work. All of the people that help with this are volunteers.”
“What about the vet that does the spaying and neutering?”
“There are several vets that rotate through, they’re paid and so are the vet-tech’s that help them.”
“Do they do dogs too or just cats?”
“They used to do dogs but they lost one of their vans and didn’t have the money to equip this one with the equipment that it takes to do dogs.”
“Have you ever lost any?” I didn’t say the ‘d’ word but Lisa knew what I meant.
“No. There have been a couple of times when we had to take them back in the van for a reversal shot. That’s why the volunteers are so important. They keep an eye on the cats and make sure they come out of the anesthesia okay.”
Lisa gave me tons of information. She told me all the places the mobile spay/neuter clinic goes, all the good it does, and where their two brick and mortar clinics are — more information than I can remember. But here’s the thing. I don’t have to remember it all. I just need to know who to call.

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Tuesday, the only other exciting day in my week, we got three or four inches of snow! So here are snow pictures for you.

The snow was wet and heavy but we didn’t lose our electric.