The 4th

I'm headed here today ... for the best 4th of July celebration. Hope you're having a great holiday! :)

::sigh::

Caturday: 3 Cats & A Funeral

My sister has been making arrangements to take her friend's dad's outside cats because he is moving away. She got my mom's ok to add them as barn cats and my sister also asked me to go with her to meet the three cats - all boys she tells me and the one might be declawed (and outside?!).

I go with her and the first cat we see is "Weenie" (aka Halloween)... "Ugh," I say to my sister, "Are you sure all the cats are boys?? Because never in my life have I seen a calico boy! It's like 1 in a million!" (calico cats) Hmm, definitely a girl! (I checked) And an affectionate one too! Weenie is so friendly, that after rubbing up against my sister while she pet her, Ween then jumped down and followed my sister over to where I was ... checking out "the boys" - the other two cats, who were in fact male. :)

Boy #1 was Chloe - yes, Chloe is a boy cat. He also happens to be declawed - I checked that as well. I picked him up and touched his tiny paws - yup, definitely maimed (declawing info here). A nice boy though! I mean, he let me pick him up and everything. Apparently, an ex left him behind when the relationship ended and so the family put Chloe out so he'd have the company of the other cats. I don't know how long he'd been out, but obviously, he was my top concern and priority. I didn't feel comfortable bringing him to our place to be a barn cat when he had no claws. I mean, what would happen if whatever killed the ducks came back?? Or if the rumor is true about coyotes in our area now?! Ugh, no! I worry about my tough guy ferals enough as it is, this nice, declawed guy I had to find an inside home for!

And then there was Joey - a big white with orange spots guy who was buddies with Chloe. Could I find them a home together? Well, it was hard to evaluate him on a friendly scale since he didn't really let me touch him. He ran off at one point, but only a few feet... I could get close, but I wasn't able to touch him.

After agreeing to take them, the grandmother in this family was quick to call Michelle and essentially demand she remove the cats on Friday ... while my sister would be away. Coincidentally , Friday also happened to be the services and funeral of my Aunt Mar's uncle, Edward P. Henry, which we planned to attend to support my Aunt Mar and her family who my family has known for so long. This was obviously going to be a very hectic day...

My mom and I attended the services Friday morning to support my Aunt Mat, giving our condolences and staying at the church until my Aunt Mar's husband showed up. Then, my mom and I headed out to catch the cats...

Attire for this event: dress pants, a nice shirt with a t-shirt thrown over it and I remembered to change out of my heels
Tools: 3 carriers of various sizes, a trap, some newspaper and 2 cans of smelly, yummy cat food
Then plan: get Weenie & Chloe who we could probably pick up and I had places arranged for, attempt to get Joey and set trap for him if necessary
Arrangements: Weenie to a woman who a volunteer I'm friends with knows, Chloe possibly to a person looking for a declawed cat who knows a rescuer who knows a friend of mine (or the local shelter where I know someone who will keep him safe and said he'd quickly be adopted out) and Joey to our back barn.

What actually happened??
- Chloe was caught easily. Weenie, the same. She was sprawled out in a sunny spot and let us pick her up. Joey we did have to set a trap and leave him for. His adoption got re-arranged, but they couldn't pick him up for a day or two, so he stayed in our bathroom for that time period.
- Weenie went to her foster home, get vaccinated, tested and ended up having FIV :( Her foster home knew all the facts, but had two immune compromised cats and didn't want to risk anything
- Joey was trapped fairly quickly and he came back to spend some quality, goodbye time with his buddy, Chloe, in the house where Joey definitely proved to be more feral than friendly - shying away and hiding, which consisted of smushing himself under our towel cabinet at one point. He's huge!! I have no idea how he fit himself under there...

Dogs On Thursday - Workin Girl

I have a new job and have already received one pay check. I'm pretty excited! What does this have to do with Dogs On Thursday? Well, take a look at this photo...

Puppies!!! Oh my goodness, I got to hold the cutest little beagle mix puppy who had been in with her sister that day from SOS Beagle Rescue to be spayed at the low cost spay/neuter clinic in the building where I'm working now. The wonderful woman who came to pick them up after they woke from surgery that night was nice enough to let us hold the cute little puppies, the one I'm holding and her sister who was solid red and white (the little girl I held had more of a ticked/freckled coat). They were adorable and definitely "mixes" the rescuer said since their ears were much longer than a Beagle's should be ... I just think it made them that much cuter though. What do you think? :) Who can complain about a job with puppies, right??

In an odd doggy case, we actually only have a handful of dogs right now where I'm working too - which is quite unusual! We're not intaking any dogs either at this time. Why??? Well, we're getting brand new kennels! We're knocking down the old dog kennels and putting in brad new ones which will be great for all the future dogs that come into the shelter I'm working at now. You can check out all the cool details here. Construction is suppose to start in the next week or two so hopefully by mid-April we'll be packed with dogs again in brand new, wonderful kennels piping them soft tunes to keep them calm.

Some people!!

I overheard a woman say today that she heard an "old wives' tale" that to keep her cat from getting fat, she should allow the cat to have a litter of kittens. Are you kidding me?! If nothing else, finding several kittens homes (because cats aren't already dying all the time from over population) is better than perhaps a slightly pudgy adult cat?!!

So, following this old wives' tale because they're always so true!, this woman formulated a plan! To ensure her cat would not get fat like this woman heard her cat would, she tempted a male cat into their house ... and then locked her cat and the male stray up in the bedroom. Oh my gawd!!!!

tan

I'm watching Transformers, the second one, and so far I'm disturbed by how tan the main characters are (the human main characters, that is). From far away and in most of the lightening, they're disturbing, unnaturally tan ... even for laying in tanning beds. I do not like this at all!

Sick girl here

Sick, sick, sick. I'm so sick that I cannot even talk. Though this hasn't stopped me yet, today I finally called out of my new job. Somehow answering the phone with this voice (which just keeps getting worse) didn't seem wise. What do you think?



That's right, home from vacation, employed full time ... and sick! No good! Not fun!!

Oh well, let's stick to the good stuff - here are some photos from FL I'd like to share with you:

Oh yay, FL sun...
The coolest tree house ever, I must say - it's got windows, a tree growing through its porch, etc...
Brand new butterflies fresh out of their cocoons! How cool...
I sent a lot of time with Shanna since she's home raising Silas. We went to pick up Ada from school one day and she wanted to show me her garden plot at school. What a neat idea - each of the kids having their own garden...
I went along with my friends to one of their friend's birthday parties. It was a nice night ... which was capped off by lighting a very old Christmas tree on fire. It was awesome, though looking at the photos afterwards makes me think we should have been a bit more scared...
It was way too early in the morning for all this, but here's the short version of the story: pulling up to the drive thru ATM to get money to go to breakfast, we're behind an old lady on a mobile ... and she was behind a car that had pulled out after using the ATM, then stopped, then had it's passenger door sit open for several minutes before this very interesting woman emerged to wait beside the mobile old woman. Craziness and way too early in the morning...

Farm-life Fridays: In FL

Here's a special Farm-life Friday for you ... a Farm-life Friday post about the wonderful farm my friends have going on in Florida! This is where I'm actually at right now and I love it! Love the people here, love my time here and love whatever it is I end up doing here. Now, they have this wonderful farm going on as well, called Swallow Tail Farm.

Stolen right from their website: "Swallowtail Farm is located north of Alachua, along a fertile ridge of highland soil that crests the spine of Florida. We have crafted the farm as a model of sustainability and fine land stewardship, with a focus on appropriate scale, conservation of resources, and nature-produced fertility. No synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals will ever touch our fields or your food."

This post is brief because I'm busy, but I'm going to edit this entry and try to post some photos when I'm home to this.