Wednesday night at choir practice Linda sang the loudest and gave me a look like I had murdered someone. So after practice I went up to her very quietly, and I told her the countys humane officer and a code inspector would be at her porch Monday, with a rescue group, to take the cats somewhere safe, and that I would be there too.
Because I do not hurt animals and never would; what I did was keep a notebook. Counts every evening. Photos of the food trays, the crawl space, the damage under my house. Our pest control guy put in writing what he found. And I called the county to ask the limit. It is four. Last I counted there were over forty.
For all these months the only thing I had lacked was proof of the scale and a way to help the cats and not just complain, and the moment I had nightly counts, a pest pros letter, and a four-animal limit against forty, the woman they called a cat killer became the one who brought a rescue group to take them somewhere safe.
She had wept on her porch that I wanted to poison her babies, and the whole church prayer chain heard I was a cat killer, and a lady I had sat next to for twenty years moved pews. But a notebook of counts is not cruelty, and a rescue rescues cats, it does not harm them.
I did not fight her. I said, the humane officer and a code inspector are coming Monday, and a rescue group with them, to take the cats somewhere they will be fed and cared for. The county limit is four. There are over forty here, and my husband is on oxygen and cannot breathe in our own house. I will be there, and I want them safe as much as you do.
The counts were the counts. There is no poison-her-babies-ing your way out of forty cats, a documented health hazard, and a four-animal limit.
The county did what my gentle request never could. The humane officer and the rescue group took the cats into care, got them vetted and placed, and Linda was helped down to the number the law allows, with the rescue checking on her after.
The strays stopped sleeping under my car and living in my crawl space. My husband moved back out of the recliner in the garage and into his own bed, because the smell coming through the floor vents was finally gone.
Here is the part that matters: those cats are better off. Fed, vetted, safe, instead of forty strays starving on a porch. Months of that ended not with anyone harming an animal, but with a nightly notebook and a rescue at the door, and it turned out the cat killer was the one who got forty cats taken care of.