Monday, May 12, 2008

The Mobile Clinic

The AzCATs schedulers try to assign 75 cats to a high volume spay/neuter day because you can never tell with cats-- how many will you be able to catch? The Volunteer and I were the last ones there (because the Volunteer has super-powers and got us permission to be there an hour and a half later than we were supposed to!) and at that point, my 12 included, they had 53 cats. I think they said 4 more by the time I left, so very close to the 'ideal' of 60. Everyone was very nice and very efficient, and very reassuring. And very congratulatory, too, for catching 12 cats and for raising so much money. The scheduler (I never know whether it's okay to use names online, so I guess I won't) said that she'd seen my blog, and even told another woman who'd brought in a cat for spaying about the blog!

There was one vet and 3 techs working. And man were they working. 60 cats, mine were the last and mine were done by a 10:40am. Seriously. They needed another hour before they could be picked up, but they'd only been dropped off at 8:30, and that was with other cats ahead of them. That is fast work. I watched one of the techs anesthetize (is that the word I mean? I am so tired), one of the cats ahead of our crowd, and he was very deft, knew what he was doing, despite the cat being angry, feral and in a trap. That made me feel better about the whole process. (It's always nerve wracking to leave an animal, even if not a family pet, for surgery, y'know?)

The clinic is actually a truck (see picture), that was parked at a private residence for these two days. I think what happens (and I know enough AzCATs people are reading this blog that someone can correct my mistakes for me!) is various organizations can rent it, and hire veterinarians for various spay and neuter days.

Anyway, everything seemed to go fine because I had a call from the Volunteer at 11:45 saying he had the cats and that everyone was okay.

The cats are now up on my balcony, recovering. More on them later. :)

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