Kate emailed and has a request:
I recently started a blog called “From Alone to Home: Stories of Adopted Pets“, and my hope is to collect adoption stories (and photos) from around the country and encourage other people to adopt. I work at a shelter in upstate NY, so it’s a really important issue to me. I’m really excited about collecting and sharing people’s experiences with pet adoption, and I’m sure you have a lot of readers who have adopted.
Go check out Kate’s awesome blog and submit your stories and pictures, y’all!
Texas is having horribly wild fires right now, and Bastrop (outside of Austin) is getting hit hard. Many people have had to evacuate without their animals and some animal shelters have also had to evacuate.
Austin Pets Alive (APA) has been instrumental in stepping up and managing/coordinating a response to help the animals. They have recently been allowed into the evacuation zones to help search for animals that had to be left behind.
They really need donations to help foot the bill of this very large rescue, rehome (existing fosters), and reunite mission. They have a chipin page (listed below) to help defray the expenses.
Austin has worked very hard to become very close to a 100% no kill city and dedicated groups like APA helped make it happen.
Please, if anyone can help, I know it would be much appreciated.
The pictures on that ChipIn page are just heartbreaking.
Remember, y’all – every little bit helps!
Just a quick one today!
So, to recap from last week, last Tuesday Cilantro:
was adopted! That left Clove, Coriander, and Ciara waiting for their forever homes.
And THEN, on Friday I got the word that Clove:
was adopted! She went to a home with a very active older cat and a 10 year-old boy who was very very excited to be bringing her home.
Saturday afternoon, my cell phone rang. It was the shelter manager. “Hey,” she said. “Want 7 more kittens?”
There was dead silence on my end as I (1) tried to figure out where we’d put another 7 kittens, and (2) tried to figure out a nice way to say “Um, NO!”
But before I could respond, she laughed. “I’m just kidding! Ciara and Coriander were just adopted. TOGETHER!”
TOGETHER!!!! Princess Poutyface not only has a forever home, she also has a forever sister!
Ciara and Cori are going to a family with a teenage girl, and Ciara apparently sealed the deal by climbing into the dad’s lap and making herself at home. She’s no dummy!
This has been a great week for my girls. I was starting to get worried that they’d never be adopted and then – boom! – all four in less than a week!
This doesn’t mean that the Peppers Gang will be going soon, though. There are other kittens on the list ahead of them, so they’ve got a little while yet. Unless, of course, adoptions keep up at this rate, in which case they could be going any day now. We’ll just have to see!
Last week, I got an email from the shelter manager. Someone who had adopted a male kitten – now an adult – from Challenger’s House last year was returning him. She was pregnant, and her doctor had told her that she shouldn’t be breathing in the ammonia fumes from the litter box.
(I have no comment on this ridiculous excuse except to say that ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!)
You know, we rarely ever have adult fosters here, we tend to get the little ones because, well, I do love a baby kitten and that’s just the way it tends to work out. So I called Fred and told him about the return and suggested that since Charlie and Patty were in a cage, we could move them to the bathroom and put the adult in the guest bedroom for a while and give him lots of attention. Fred was amenable to the suggestion, so I told Susan we’d take the returned cat.
Thursday, I went up and had breakfast with the usual Thursday crew, and then I went and picked up the returned cat from the vet’s office. If a cat is returned to Challenger’s House, they get a quick exam and a re-test to be sure they are still FeLV and FIV negative, and their shots are updated if need be. He tested negative, as expected, and I headed home with him. He complained the whole way home in a sad little voice that got louder the closer we got to home. At home, when I walked into the house, he sat in his carrier and growled and hissed at the other cats he saw, all the way to the guest bedroom. I let him out of the carrier, and he walked around the guest bedroom, sniffing all the smells of the other cats who’d been in and out of the room, and he hissed and growled and complained like a little drama queen the entire time. I finally left him alone so he could sniff to his heart’s content and maybe settle down a little.
All through Thursday he was very hissy and growly. Fred let Jake in to visit with him for a brief period of time, and he and Jake sniffed each other and then butted heads. Jake rubbed up against him (honestly, Jake is just the best cat on earth) and then after a few minutes Jake was overwhelmed and asked to go out of the room.
Friday the new guy was a lot calmer, so we let him out into the house to sniff around. There was no reaction at all from our other cats, but eventually the new guy got overwhelmed and started hissing and smacking at the other cats, so we put him back in the guest bedroom for the night.
Fred got up Saturday morning and let the new guy out of the guest bedroom to let him explore a little. He followed Fred to the laundry room, saw the cat door to the back yard, and was out into the back yard in about two seconds. Fred put a collar on him, and he spent all of Saturday either in the back yard hanging out, or in the kitchen on top of the cabinets. If he wasn’t in either of those two places, he was twining around my legs trying to convince me that he was fading away to nothing and needed a bite to eat. (He is not at all a small cat, so I wasn’t convinced.)
Since Saturday morning, he’s been out of the guest bedroom. He’s getting along fine with the other cats (though he and Alice are rather hissy and growly toward each other), and he is one happy boy.
It took very little discussion for Fred and I to make the decision to keep him. He’s so at home here with us, and though adult cats are adopted from Challenger’s House all the time, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to put him through sitting in a cage at Petsmart while all the kittens in the cages around him were adopted and he waited and waited. (Not that that’s necessarily how it would work – Maggie, after all, was adopted in less than two weeks. It’s possible he’d be adopted immediately, he is one gorgeous boy, but we couldn’t stand the thought of it.)
So it’s not official yet – I haven’t filled out the paperwork – but we have a #13 again. We’re not going to keep his “official” name, though, it really doesn’t suit him. We have a much better name in mind for him. We’re going to call him….
BUSTER!!!!
(Yes, it’s really the real Buster aka Bolitar the Bookworm, who went to what we thought was his forever home last December. As you see, that didn’t work out, and he’s back here with us, for good. More details (and pics) tomorrow! Also, no – I did NOT know when I posted the pictures comparing Charlie Peppers to a young Buster that Buster would be coming back here!)
Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: I think that “Cats are bossy and like everything on their own terms” pretty much covers, well, EVERYTHING when it comes to cats!
2007: Human eggs, scrambled, taste just a bit too humany, if you ask me.
2006: I sense I’m being royally fucking screwed over by the goddamn advantage-taking photographer. Who’s probably lighting his cigars with $100 bills as he drives around in his limo.
2005: Ants ain’t fuckin’ welcome here, if you hadn’t guessed.
2004: No entry.
2003: What above the Bumsen is up with that?
2002: It’s the front yard or bust, baby.
2001: That’s pretty much how we all felt.
2000: That’s the price of getting old, my friends.