The amount of animal carnage a farm owner sees was a little daunting to me when I first moved to the farm nearly 25 years ago.
You save what you can (except Ground Hogs) and learn from your mistakes. Baby Rabbits are hard to rescue at certain stages. The Swallows are easy. We repatriate a few a year...they are hard over on a nest in my garage so I keep a door open in the summer. They are the most talented flyers on the planet.
We also get a lot of "drop offs": former pets that show up after their "owners" have decided they will survive in the country...at least one a year that makes it to us and survive...
The latest is Walter, a cat that showed up at my shop a few weeks ago. Big talker, Walter: "Ya Putz!", named after Walter Matthau.
I have found homes for every drop off but decided to keep Walter. We took him to the vet and were surprised to find that he was a "chipped" pet, meaning his info was on a chip embedded under his skin.
The owner said it was her husbands cat and that they have been divorced for ten years. She didn't want the cat any more than she wanted to talk to her ex-husband.
What are you going to do? Good cat, trying to fit in.
I have a few human rescues flying H-60's for the Navy. Easy stuff and they didn't need cat food after the rescue.
