Saturday, August 24, 2019

Are you ready for the Fair?!

Yep - it's that time of year again - the great New York State Fair!  I took a day off work and went up with a friend.

We watched some of the 4H judging:


and some of the horse-jumping competition:


We fed the giraffes:





We saw the Birds of Prey exhibit:




Lunch was pulled pork and sausage sandwiches:




We gawked at birds and they gawked back:




We saw lambs with coats on:


And we wrapped up the day with an aerial tram ride that took us up and over the midway:


According to Patti's fitbit, we walked just over seven miles, and it was worth every step.   Another perfect day at the Fair. :)

Friday, August 02, 2019

Foster Camp Update!

Let's see, I think I made a brief reference in an earlier post to the new Foster Campers.  I think it's time for an update.

The campers I had been fostering for the rescue for which I had been volunteering (lots of past tense, there), went to my friend Sarah's house so that I could put Good Boy in the foster room while I worked on smoothing his integration into the Permacats.

Once THAT was accomplished, I realized it was time to look for a new rescue to devote my volunteering efforts toward.  While the rescue I had been volunteering for certainly accomplishes lots of good things, their colossal failure of the Good Boy situation left a bad taste in my mouth.  The founder of the rescue never apologized for what happened to Good Boy, instead throwing one of the other volunteers, a good friend of hers, under the bus, blame-wise, and when I called her out on THAT, she resorted to bullying tactics to try to keep me in line.  Oh, hi, have you ever MET me?!  The one thing that will NEVER work on me is bullying. :) 

So I went to another local rescue and filled out the volunteer foster paperwork, and within a day they called me, which is how I got Toby Thomas, a scared-to-death feral kitten who needed LOTS of forced handling to tame.  He was 12 weeks old when I got him, which is old to try to tame a feral, but with time and work he came around.


But Toby was lonely, and still not fond of human contact.  What to do? Why, go to the rescue and bring home a kitten to show him the ropes, of course!  Which is where Nani came into the picture:


And then I started trapping for TNR in a neighborhood, and I noticed a tiny little kitten running around in the street. I asked the people I was trapping for to try and catch him, because I thought he was young enough to successfully socialize, and he was so terribly thin I was worried about him.  On Wednesday night, I had to go out to trap, and we managed to get the kitten into a carrier. I took him home, kept him separated from the other cats because due to his poor condition I was worried about feline leukemia, and took him to the vet the next morning.






He tested negative for leukemia (yaaaay!), but was crawling with fleas and ear mites and loaded with worms.  Several medications and a bath later, he's here at Foster Camp to gain some weight and get used to human attention.   And I've named him Two Miles, after the location where he was trapped.

So there you have it! Foster Campers, Summer 2019 Session:  Toby Thomas, Nani, and Two Miles.  :)