Let's catch up! We have been busy with cats and landscaping projects (which are, not coincidentally, cat-related). We took a bunch of cats to the new Glendale, Queens, ASPCA spay/neuter clinic, the newly-opened facility that replaces the mobile clinics. In order to better provide mobile spay services to the public, the ASPCA decided to stop running concurrent vans for both regular folk as well as us feral cat enthusiasts. I guess it makes sense, but there is a big learning curve for the new system, for both us and the ASPCA.
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September 24, 2010 – 1:15 pm
Journeyman, our first trapped feral
The last 7 days have been some of the most stressful in recent memory. Last Thursday I got word that we had a Toby Project mobile spay clinic booked … for the following Tuesday. We had been planning a big TNR (trap-neuter-return) project for the feral cats living behind my neighbor's house for a while but booking the truck was the big unknown. (more…)
August 12, 2010 – 3:37 pm
After putting it off as long as I possibly could, I have now seen that the rumors of a large cat colony across the street from me are true. Man are they true! Our neighbor, unbeknownst to us, has been feeding stray cats in her yard for who-knows how long. There are currently some 20 cats and kittens that we saw. Many are little kittens so we think we can nab them manually and focus the real efforts on the adults. We will be undertaking a TNR effort to get all these guys fixed up as soon as we can. (more…)
August 24, 2009 – 1:15 pm
I keep waiting for the heat to subside, but it keeps being hot. I have so many projects to complete this summer, projects I specifically waited for summer to begin, only to find myself unable to complete them because I'm sweating so much I can't hold a paint brush or get a proper grip on the staple gun.
Of course, soon, I will have all the time in the world to do my little household tasks. Unemployment is looming, but for the time being the focus of my paranoia is not so much on the actual getting of a new job so much as on why I'm not sweating over it enough. Maybe it's because I'm doing all my sweating climbing the stairs. But I can't get really freaked about not having a job, which I find odd since I haven't been out of work more than a couple of months since college, and nearly all of those situations were in fairer economic climes than this. It seems like all the people I know who lost their jobs since the economy gave out are still not working regularly, and it recently dawned on me that even though I am technically an adult who moves in certain tech-friendly circles, I somehow don't have any friends or old school chums who are ultra-successful, who have invented something unique or written a one-hit wonder song. In short, my friends are no help in my desire to leech off somebody's good work so I'll have to go ahead and get a job after all. Unless I win the lottery, and I'm starting to think that Quick Pick machine doesn't like me and keeps giving me bad numbers.
I'm trying to formulate a plan for a new web site project, something to demonstrate some skill and maybe be of some use to somebody as well. Considering all these cats we have I have concluded I should build a site to help advertise these cats for adoption, though I don't know who will actually see the site since I'm not exactly Nick Denton. But it will be good to exercise my web muscles and give me something to do at the office since I'm clearly not expending any effort in that area anymore. It's totally way hard to give a hoot about this job now that I know it's going away. I just plan to keep my head down and make sure I come out looking okay in the end.
Now, I just need a name for our home-grown cat shelter adoption joint. I'm thinking of something with the word "hoarders" in the title.
Pictured (from top): Powder, a lovely 14 year old princess I catsat for last week, Hotplate, recent TNR victim, and Granita ("Granny"), recovering from spay surgery in the basement, possibly the mother of pretty much every cat in the neighborhood.
In an effort to both clean up this site a little and cross-pollinate my stuff, I edited this home page slightly. I've added a list of cats we have up for adoption, which I assume I'll keep updated as needed. Now, normally we only advertise for cats who are currently under our roof, and several of these cats are not technically residents. But they live right outside among the ferals, but have proven themselves tame and friendly enough to warrant a mention. I've also included longtime holdouts Augie and Marbles; I don't really think they'll get adopted as they are really bad at selling themselves … and we've sort of gotten attached to them in the meantime. But hey, if the right people come along, who knows? So that leaves Spike and Haley as 'classic' adoptable cats, living with us but with every intention to move them out once we find a decent home.
Spike is still with us, we've decided he can only go to a home as an only-cat. He just doesn't get along with other cats well enough. He's a real people-pleaser otherwise. Haley finally got spayed a few days ago, so she's all set. I'm having a hard time describing her personality since most of the time we had her she was in heat. She's very different now that she's not constantly rolling around yowling, holding her butt up in the air and running in place. Time will tell.
You may also note Ainslie on the adoption list, he's a recent TNR guy who just decided to reveal how tame he is as well. I kinda figured he was tame but I thought it would take months to win him over. Naw; just a plate of canned food did it. The number of tame cats around is setting a dangerous precedent (namely, our house full of tame cats) so we're trying to be more aggressive with the adoptions. If we can't find a good home for Spike, we're campaigning to get him in on an Empty Cages Collective Adoption Event, which have a great track record for finding homes. Haley will also get in on this, although there's a waiting list for getting in. How New York.
