... and they're off!

Back last May 25, pretty Rosalita came to Foster Camp.

We waited and waited and WAITED for her kittens to arrive ...

And on June 24, they did!:

A week later, I got a call from the founder of the rescue - someone had surrendered four orphaned kittens.  Did I think Rosa would care for them?

Rosa proved herself to be a CHAMPEEN mom.  She nursed Pistol Pete, Lady Bernadette, Sandy, Jughead, and India (her original litter), PLUS Firecracker (formerly Pretty Pretty Princess), Squeegee, Bam Bam AND Pebbles!

One of the kittens (Lady B, if I remember correctly) started eating solids at two-and-a-half weeks.  I guess she got tired of waiting for space to open at the Milk Bar!:

Pretty soon, they all started on solids:

With plenty of time for snoozing, of course:

In October, Punkin Pie the barn kitten became an honorary Foster Camper:

And they started going off to the adoption center in twos and threes, as space opened up.  Finally, just Sandy and Jughead were left here at Foster Camp:

On Saturday, it was their turn to go to the adoption center.  I visited with them on Sunday and they seemed to be adjusting well; all of the other campers, plus Rosa, have already been adopted, so hopefully Sandy and Jug's families will come for them soon as well.

Bye, guys!  Don't forget to write!  Have fun!  Be good!

Thank you very, very, very much!

I wanted to take the opportunity to say thanks again to Kris for the generous donation to the rescue I volunteer for, Every Dog's Dream.  

That's Audrey, the founder of the rescue, on the right.  On the left is Kat, the long-time volunteer who adopted Pebbles and Bam-Bam!  (Bam-Bam's appointment at Cornell had to be rescheduled - He will be going in on Feb. 9.  In the meantime, he is doing great.)  

Thank you, Kris!  

And Miracle would like to say thank you, too:

Miracle was an owner-surrender with a badly broken leg.  Due to the severity of her injuries, the leg had to be removed, but she is already getting around on three legs and doing great.  And in the you-learn-something-new-every-day category,  the other volunteers tell me that cats with three legs are highly adoptable, and that as soon as her fur grows back and she looks a little less, well, gruesome, someone is sure to adopt her right away.  And in the meantime, we're keeping her comfortable at the rescue while she waits for her new family to come along.

Kris, it's donations like yours that enable us to help cats like Miracle, and all the others in our care.  Thank you!

I always feel like, somebody's WATCHING meeeee ...

Oh wait, they are!

Yes, it was time yet again for more Adventures in Trapping Barn Cats.

My friend Sarah mixed up the mackerel:

 We visited with some of the less-ferals in the horse barn:

And then it was off to the equipment barn to set some traps:

 

We only had three slots this time, and we had no problem getting three eligible cats:

So it was off to the clinic bright and early this morning.

and hoo boy, does my car SMELL.  :)

Winter morning, interrupted

We got some snow last night, so this morning I was up early, shoveling and taking pictures.

After a while it started to get light out ....

I took some snow in for the foster kittens to play with :

And I just happened to be taking  a photo of Sodapop looking out the front window when the snowplow came by:

And deliberately swerved to knock over my newspaper tube.

Yep, he definitely swerved:

Now, SOME might say it's because of the flag I fly:

Or maybe it's the rainbow horse in the front yard that angered him:

Myself?  I'm reserving judgment.  We'll just see how long it takes for the town to send somebody out to repair the damage.

Originally, I was going to travel to Washington to march, but in the end I decided to stay and march at home.  And, in an incredibly awful turn of events, two of the three buses that were supposed to head to D.C. from here got canceled by the bus company at the last minute, so it's just as well I had changed my plans.  Last night I checked with the woman I sold my D.C. bus ticket to, and she and her family had decided to carpool down to the Capital and make the march anyway.  Ain't nobody as determined as a pissed-off woman.

As of yesterday afternoon, the local March had six hundred RSVPs on Facebook. Today's current attendance estimate?  Three thousand. Not bad for this little town!

                                             Dear Donald Trump:  Go f*ck yourself.

Freaky Friday!

One of the things I bought for myself for Christmas is this Saint Lucia statue.  It all seems so ... graven idol-ish.

I don't know why, but I am really interested in religious statuary.

And of COURSE, Saint Lucy is one of my favorites, because she carries a pair of eyeballs around on a plate.

Freaky!

Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.

1.  Growing up Stubborn at Gold Creek by Melody Erickson - Memoir about growing up in Alaska in the sixties.  Good.

2.  Where am I Now? by Mara Wilson - Essays from a former child actress - Meh - did not finish.

3.  Perfect Peace by Daniel Black - Novel - Interesting premise - Boy child raised as a girl by delusional mother - but not very well written - I gave up about thirty pages in.

4.  Trials of the Earth by Mary Mann Hamilton - Innumerable memoirs have been written about settling the American West, but this memoir was about settling the South in the 1800s.  Very interesting, if hard to read at times for the heartaches that beset Ms. Hamilton and also the vernacular language, which included ample descriptive use of the word "nigger", but I understand that that is the word that was used back then.  Still a good read.

5.  The Whole Town's Talking by Fannie Flagg - Novel about the inhabitants of a small Missouri town, from the 1800s up through present day.  I normally love Ms. Flagg's novels, but this one had so much ground to cover that it was more a series of short vignettes than a comprehensive novel.  Each time I'd get interested in a character, the story would switch to someone else, and in the end I didn't finish it.  I still like Ms. Flagg's books as a whole; I just didn't care for this one.

6.  Little Heathens by Mildred Kalish - Memoir about growing up on an Iowa farm in the 1930s - This book is really interesting, because it goes into great detail about how people actually lived back then.  Very good.

7.  Dairy Queen Days by Robert Inman - Novel about a teenage boy in Alabama in the seventies.  Booooring.  It was well-written I guess, but there was not a single character I cared about.  I got about two-thirds through, decided life is too short, and quit.

8.  The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katerina Bivald.  Novel.  Nope, too cutesy.

9.  Moonlight at Midday by Sally Carrighar.  Nonfiction about Alaska.  Nope, too dry.

10.  The Immigrants by Howard Fast - I read another Howard Fast book (Max) and really enjoyed it, but The Immigrants was basically Max all over again, just with different character names and a different setting.  Did not finish.

11.  I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows - Novel about a family in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the 1930s.  Interesting.

So!  That's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?









  

The Sign

I was originally going to go to the Women's March on Washington this Saturday, but when I realized it would require a full twenty-four hour commitment, plus it would mean being in a huge crowd for the entire day and I DO NOT do well in large crowds, I rehomed my ticket.

But!  They are having a March in my town that same day, and that one I WILL be attending.  I can handle a crowd for a few hours, if it means showing my anger at the incoming sh*tstorm.

I have never attended a protest march in my life, but I'm going to this one.  And I want to carry a protest sign.  It may be silly, it may not make a difference, but I feel so helpless in the face of the upcoming administration, I figure doing anything is better than doing nothing.

So!  What should I put on my protest sign?  Ideas welcome!

Breaking News!

I had heard rumors this past week, but yesterday it was confirmed - Rosalita has been adopted!

Rosa, the first-time mama who raised her own five kittens AND four orphan kittens, AND helped out with the education of Punkin Pie, was adopted by a woman who will give her a life full of love.

That means that right now, the only one of "my" fosters currently at the adoption center is Punkin. 

Punkin is proving to be a bit of a challenge. As a former barn cat, she is a bit more feisty than most of the other kittens at the center who are around the same age. She also had to be recently quarantined for ten days after she BIT one of the volunteers who was trying to clean her ears (PUNKIN!).  However, I visited with her yesterday and she is doing well,  plus she currently has an application pending by someone who wasn't scared off by her determined spirit, so hopefully she'll be going home soon.

Bam Bam, the little heart murmur foster, has an appointment at Cornell on the 26th for further testing to determine the extent of his condition, so I'll keep you posted.  Not sure if I told you, but the same person who adopted him (a volunteer at the center), also adopted his sister Pebbles, so he has plenty of company while he waits for his doctor appointment.

I still have two fosters here at the house, Jughead and Sandy, who will be going to the center soon.  And everybody else has been adopted!

Yaaaaaay!

The quilt

As I mentioned in an earlier post, an acquaintance gave me a bunch of old blankets and comforters to be used for the feral cats' traps and transport carriers.

When I got around to sorting through them, I noticed that one of the comforters was a hand-stitched quilt.  A BIG hand-stitched quilt; it more than covered my full-size bed when I spread it out.

And each of the squares was different.

Once I realized what I had, I knew there was no way I could cut it up and let feral cats poop all over it.  I contacted the woman who had donated the bedding.  I thought maybe she had grabbed it while cleaning out an older relative's house (I have reached That Age:  The age when cleaning out relatives' houses after they die is a Thing One Does) and would like it back.  And in the meantime, I took a good long look at it.

Lots of the panels had monograms, making me wonder if it was a family project, or perhaps a joint effort of a quilting club:

1925. The year the quilt was made?  The year someone quilting it was born?  The year a relative died?  I DON'T KNOW:

Ethel (? - it kind of looks like "Eathel) is a name you don't see much anymore:

A lot of the panels were quilted so that no matter which way you looked at it, one of the images would be upside down or askew.  Maybe so you would have something to look at no matter which side you were facing the quilt from?

In the quilt block below, I can't tell if that's supposed to be a dog, or a bear wearing a collar.  The same dog/bear is pictures in a different block with a dog angrily barking at it, so I'm not sure what it is ...

Birds, cats, dogs, books, teapots, pipes - all recurring themes.

In God We Trust:

I wasn't sure which way was supposed to be "up" on this panel - It's either a W.O.W. monogram, or it could be "MOM" if you turn it around:

As fascinating as these panels are, there are a bunch more, AND there are some that I can't decipher; I'll do those other posts.