Cat Scratch Fever...

If you have 140 goats on 20 acres you are going to have to supplement them with feed. And if you have feed sitting around then you are going to have mice...
So we weren't too concerned when a neighbor moved off a year ago and left us with a mama cat and her little white kitten. It was even cute when she had more kittens a few months later, six this time. After all, the first white kitten had gone the way of any pet you actually WANT to keep--Cat heaven.
We were so proud of her mice-catching ability and glad to see that her kittens were gaining the same prowess until my daughter who is much more knowledgeable about animals than I am, announced that Mama Cat was going to have more kittens, prefaced by, "I thought you were going to have Mama Cat fixed."
"I am," I said, "I've just been busy". Well needless to say she was right and I had waited too long and so Mama Cat greeted us the other day with 5 new baby kittens.
This blessed event happened a couple of days after somebody had dumped three dogs at our driveway so I was feeling a little overwhelmed. This put me over 150 months to feed when you counted the goats, dogs, cats and us.
We decided we would ask everybody we knew if they wanted a dog. Instead one lady said she would like to have a couple of mousers. Well, we could sure fix her up.
I smiled at Richard's need for my superior cat-catching skills when he said he tried to catch one and it scratched him and got away. The secret, I told him, was about feeding them in the big cage we have for transporting a single goat and then we would move the ones we wanted into the small dog crate to deliver.
Food got all the cats in the cage and I smugly opened the door and removed the ones that weren't taking a trip; one at a time. While some of them tried to run away from me since there was still food in the cage, I didn't get a single scratch.
My loving husband asked if we should go ahead and move the two destined for a new home to the smaller crate but they were munching away on the remaining food so I decided, in my great wisdom, that we would leave them in the larger cage overnight.
That was where my plan took a wicked turn. Those cats plotted all night about how to get back at us for leaving them trapped in the cage. I caught the first cat by surprise and popped him in the crate with hardly a hiss and scratch. The next one was a different story...you've heard about a tiger by the tail...well trust me, I think a cat might be just as bad. Not only was it clawing my arms and biting me...I couldn't get it OFF! A leech doesn't have anything on that cat!!!
Needless to say the lady had to settle for one mouser and I had to go to work and confess I had been attacked by my cat!
My friends were quick to point out that cat scratches were very dangerous and could result in cat scratch fever and I should hurry to the Dr. for a tetanus shot which I did, only to hear from the Dr. after she gave me the shot, that tetanus was less of a problem than cat scratch fever...which the shot didn't protect me from!
So now my scratches and bite marks are starting to fade away but at least for the next couple of days I won't be able to forget my less than noble experience because of the sore shoulder I'm still sporting from my tetanus booster!
To add insult to injury instead of getting proper sympathy from my daughter---she asked in true wonder---"didn't you use a towel to grab it?"
...Now why didn't I think of that!!!