Today was such a typical day. I woke up at Richard Martin’s mother’s house and drove him to work at 7:30 a.m. I made my face while I read the classified and finished up the paperwork I had taken to his mother’s last night. Richard Martin cooked breakfast and I drew up some ads for him, reviewed a contract for him and listened to Donna (his ex-secretary who hangs out in the office all day) tell me all about how her arm got sucked up into the drive through shuttle at Walgreen’s. If I were that stupid, I sure wouldn’t brag about it.

Richard Martin had a hearing to go to at 10:30 and I left for home. Entering Easy Street, Don’s van stops in front of me and it’s Jon telling me that someone let the lemur out of his utility room and they found blood all over Shatia’s mouth and her cage, but no remains.

He’s taking Shatia the Canada Lynx to the vet, only he doesn’t know who she is, only that she’s a Lynx. I send him on, fearing that it is Shatia and that her cardio myopathy has resulted in a bursting heart. I go back to her pen and discover that it is her on the way to the vet and I look the cage over myself for traces of the lemur. I go inside to call the vet and tell her it is Shatia and remind her of her heart condition only to find out that Jon has left the cat there in a carrier and no squeeze cage or net so the vet can’t sedate the cat.

She is foaming blood from the mouth and the vet says it is probably her heart and asks me to send the squeeze cage and net up to her so she can examine the cat without causing enough stress to kill her. I send Jon back up with the needed supplies. I go looking for Dad and Kenny Farr who repeat the whole thing over to me and give me more details.

They have fixed the place in the fence where the Tiger had climbed over and nearly out the day before. Richard Martin calls to gloat saying someone has offered him 12,000 for a building I thought he would be lucky to get 4k for. He wants me to pay up the $100.00 I bet him. I told him I’d pay it when he had the money in hand. He asked if I was having a good day and I broke down crying over Shatia. I’ve had her for five years and raised her from just a few days of age. I always knew this day would come.

The computer has crashed taking with it all of my cat’s health records for the past six years. I call around for help and am told it will run me $100.00 per hour, so I decide to fix it myself. Weirdly enough, the first thing I did (reinstall the program itself) worked and I was able to save all of the information I thought was lost.

A reporter calls and says a story he is doing about me makes me sounds a really bad and he asked if I could rebut the claims by Don’s kids and Anne McQueen that I fed Don to the Tigers and that I ground him up in the Butcher Boy. That’s ridiculous because the throat of the grinder is about the size of a half dollar, if that. I tell him the cats would have killed Don, but that they wouldn’t have eaten him, because they’re fussy, like that. Not a great answer, but I am sick of stupid people.

This isn’t the original meat grinder, because I never took a photo of it, but it is the same shape and size.

I search for the lemur and then check on the serval who decided to give himself a stroke over having new bobcat neighbors yesterday. He was shaking so bad a day later that I had locked him in the house so he couldn’t see another cat. I coaxed him into eating for the first time in two days and felt better about his condition.

I’ve just gotten Nirvana through her illness that nearly took her life a week ago. Susan Aronoff calls, elated that she got the job with Richard Martin and she talks forever. I get off the phone with her and my attorney calls and can’t get anyone to show up for depositions. He says the kids have changed their mind again and now they want to finish the deal we agreed to but they want accountings for all quarters since Doug Stalley never has gotten any of them signed and submitted to the court. Mom was gracious enough to drop everything and to re-copy all of it.

I spend the day booking the cabins, answering questions, ordering supplies, sending out volunteer and photo tour info. In between, I work on evictions and foreclosures and prepare a satisfaction of a mortgage I never could find a file on and make copies of the documents I hope will save me from a battle with the EPA on a contaminated site Don got involved in.

I call the vet and expect to hear that Shatia has died, but instead the vet says she has a laceration on her tongue and that she can come home now. (a cut on her tongue? I’ve been agonizing over her biting her tongue?) I send Jon after her in Don’s van because I don’t want her riding in the back of his pick up truck. The vet says the problem is that it will hurt to eat and she will probably try to starve herself to death and how was I going to get her meds in her if not in her food?

Feeding time arrives and no one but Crazy Gary and Susan Aronoff show up. We are racing against time to get the cats fed before dark and smoke is blowing in. Two female bobcats get into a cat fight over who is going to eat first and the hose is shut off. I yell at the cats, and bang on the wire to no avail. Shanda is down on her back and Cherokee has that look that says she’s going for the kill, so I duck down and attempt to storm into the cage, but I stop short.

I look at the gaping gash in my leg, that has been impaled on the wire and wonder if I will bleed to death and worse yet, can I get un-impaled and get the door shut before all three of the cats get loose. I run for the other end of the hose and turn it on, but by now the cats have forgotten what they were fighting about, so I flush out the wound and decide I can still get the cats fed before I am going to think about how much this hurts.

It’ s dark as we are feeding the last of the cats and as I’m cleaning buckets my Dad and Jon come in and tell me the van has broken down on the way home from the vet again and that they had to toss Shatia in the back of Dad’s pick up truck to get her home, but that they covered her with a tarp. They tell me that the smoke is from the pig farm next door and that the flames were leaping above the tree tops. The fire department has dug a trench around the fire to stop it from spreading. I’m wondering if the lemur set it.

Crazy Gary comes back in from feeding and has been scratched by the serval, Dakota. He’s carrying on over how much it hurts and I turn around to face him in my blood soaked clothes and he shuts up about this nick on his hand.

Exhausted, I check on Shatia and try to get her to eat her medicated meal, but she’s not interested. No one fed the cat in the bathroom so I go back out to fix him a plate. I am so tired and hungry. The baby bear cat is dirtier and hungrier, so I clean her cage and cut her meal up into 1/8 inch squares.

I warm up left overs from yesterday’s Volunteer bar-b-que and Jim Moore comes flying through the back door yelling that he needs a flashlight. I really want to just hand him one and not ask why, but can’t. He tells me that two females and two male leopards are all in the same pen and one of them is Simba. I grab two lights and we dash out to the cage.

Some stupid, deaf, volunteer is about to drive us both insane as we race against time to get the cats into separate lock outs before they engage in a bloody battle that will surely leave someone dead. We finally succeed in correcting the problem and getting everyone safely tucked away and I go and check on Shatia again.

Richard Martin calls in the middle of all this and I ask him to check on the progress of the fire. There have been news helicopters buzzing around our heads and it has been the least of my worries. Richard Martin calls me back to say that no one from the fire department or the Sheriff’ s office knows anything about the blaze, but he has asked them to dispatch another fire truck. He wants me to come spend the night at his mother’s with him, but I am afraid I’ll get blood all over her bed and would rather stay home and let this wound air out.

I get dressed and go out to check on the fire myself. The smoke is cleared and I don’t see any smoldering embers so I pour a glass of red wine and discover the 35 gallon fish tank in the kitchen is leaking all over the floor. Too tired to deal with it, I put a bowl under it to catch the water and hope it doesn’t fall apart before morning. It was just another day.

I've been writing my story since I was able to write, but when the media goes to share it, they only choose the parts that fit their idea of what will generate views. If I'm going to share my story, it should be the whole story. The titles are the dates things happened. If you have any interest in who I really am please start at the beginning of this playlist: http://savethecats.org/

I know there will be people who take things out of context and try to use them to validate their own misconception, but you have access to the whole story. My hope is that others will recognize themselves in my words and have the strength to do what is right for themselves and our shared planet.

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Music (if any) from Epidemic Sound (http://www.epidemicsound.com) This video is for entertainment purposes only.