Yikes!

I love animals.

Currently I claim two cats, but I think I'm feeding 7, maybe 8.  Plus 'possums and an occasional raccoon.

I keep a feeder-full of dry cat food on the outside window shelf for all the cats/critters. Not only is it an easy place for the cats to jump up and eat in peace from Francis, our chicken, but we can watch the animals from inside without scaring the more wild ones.

Cat inventory:
   My 2
   Mom's 2
   My brother's, 1

Then there is:
   Mr. Stray
   Willie Boy
   And an occasional fluffy pale orange cat (this one I think really does have a home over on the next street.)

So that is 7 to 8 cats.

Now, Mr. Stray and Willie Boy definitely are homeless.  If they aren't, then their owners should be strung up by their little toes because they are not getting fed or de-fleaed or pet to keep dirt and debris off their coats.

The other day I was doing my morning routine of feeding the stray/outside cats and chicken from a can of cat food, when Willie Boy jumped up onto the shelf to eat.  My heart just stopped.

He was red all around his hind end and much of his middle, with some red on his cheek.

I thought it was blood.

As he came over to bonk his head against me, I realized that the red was in fact paint, not blood.

*whew*

So before I would put food into the dish for him to eat, I thought I had better try to clean him up, as the red paint was literally getting all over everything that was in his vicinity.  Plus, if he tried to clean himself up, I was afraid the paint might make him sick.

So I grabbed a wet rag and a bucket of warm soapy water, and proceded to try to get the paint off of him.  He wanted food first, and then be pet, so I was having a hard time trying to get the cloth to do a good job.  Plus he didn't like the seriousness of what I was trying to do.

After watching my futile attempts at trying to clean the paint off of Willie Boy, my mom suggested we just try to get him into a pet carrier and take him to the groomers.  Sold!  Sounded like a great idea to me.  Now to try to get a stray cat into a pet carrier...

Although Willie Boy is sweet, friendly and gentle, we were pretty sure that he had never been in a carrier.  Our own cats despise being put in them, so a stray cat would probably be terrified.  And right we were.  With the two of us trying to get him inside, we failed miserably, and Willie Boy was getting frantic to the point where we were having a hard time running interference between him and the fence that he was trying to bolt.

My mom went and got a towel.  We finally successfully got that thrown over him, thus containing him again.  This time after only a couple of attempts, we finally got Willie plus the towel inside the carrier. 

Poor Willie Boy!  He looked so pathetic covered in goopy red and now tangled in the towel inside that carrier, looking out at us with his big wild green eyes.  From his look, I knew it would take awhile before he would let me near him again.

And he had to sit inside the carrier until the groomer's opened at 9:00 a.m.  It was now about 7:30 a.m.  I tried to feed him some food, but by now he was pretty upset.

Finally, it was time to go.  We got him in and it took them an hour and a half to get him clean.  They had to use a whitening on his fur (he's a gray and white tuxedo tabby) to get the pink out.  When we picked him up, he was so soft and clean!  They put a brown and green bow on him, too, which I got the feeling he wasn't very thrilled with.

As soon as we let him out at home, he went over and pottied in the dirt.  He reluctantly came back to the shelf and wolfed down a half a can of food while we petted and praised him, but then took off at a gallop over the fence.

It was three days later before we saw him again.