For The Love of Animals

After 4 weeks or so it was time to say good-bye to our 3 foster kitties.







It was much harder than we thought it would be. Much. The first one to go was Zazu. The woman who adopted him had adopted a kitten from Fearless a few months ago, so Zazu will have a playmate, which made us happy.

That's MISTER Nala to you.

Nala (who we thought was a girl, was actually a boy)

Rafiki was very possessive. Mine!

and Rafiki ended up part of Maddie's Pet Adoption Event. It's the biggest free adoption event held nation-wide. Fearless Kitty Rescue was hoping to adopt out all their cats and kittens. It goes on through Sunday (6/1), so if you're wanting an already neutered, microchipped, and vaccinated cat/kitty for free contact Fearless by the end of the weekend (otherwise you still get a great cat with the works but you pay a nominal fee). I'm not sure if all the other organizations participating offer all that, but all the animals (dogs & cats) are free through Sunday.

This may all be for a great cause, but it's still painful to say goodbye to a furry thing you've gotten attached to. Seriously, look at these faces. Nala had such a pathetic meow as we left them behind.



Whaaaaa. Every time Michael & I walked into the kitties' empty bedroom, we'd tear up.

Jack comforted me though and reminded me we still had him (and Zura). They are two great cats, and why we're not taking on any others permanently.

Jack always knows just what to do.

                And guess what?!








The good news is that Nala and Rafiki were adopted out together!

Whoop! Whoop!

Now Michael and I have to decide if we want to do this again. There are many more where these came from. We definitely need to think about it. I love volunteering at Kittyville to clean up after and pamper the kitties, but it's not the same as raising them from pups, so to speak.

One reason we put ourselves through this is because we've debated starting a rescue shelter in the islands. We're wanting to see how it all works and see if we're cut out for it emotionally. I'm really not sure. In order to keep kitties from going feral, you sometimes have to tear them from the feral mother cat. Look at what this cat did for its kittens (it's an old story making its rounds again). I couldn't intentionally take them from her, which seems to be the standard method. Sometimes siblings really bond and don't want to be separated, causing quite the scene. Sometimes an animal you adopt out gets abused. Is there enough good to counter the bad? Dogs are a whole other can of worms, especially on islands where pit bull fighting is still popular.

There are 700 cats on 12 acres here.
Photo by: Christina Gandolfo

Since I'd rather keep clingy siblings together than separate them and apparently have separation anxiety, I'd probably end up like this huge no-kill shelter in California. I would love to visit there as well as Best Friends in Utah. When we visited Hemingway's house in Key West, there were over 45 cats on the property and it didn't seem like a horror movie, so maybe that's our limit. Not sure.

Anyway, there's nothing but relief and some continued mixed feelings. We love the fostering part, but giving them up and wondering where they're going to end up is hard. Maybe we're meant to be cat hoarders - only we'll treat our cats better...

Here's a tour of where I volunteer 4 hours per week.

If that's not enough, you can see that it's been busy at Liberty Wildlife too, thanks to wildfires and high winds, among other things (they've got a great blog). I'm pooped, and I'm not even putting in as many hours as so many others in these organizations. All these places are always looking for volunteers, especially during newborn season, so if any of you want to put yourself through this, give them a call. I know I've made it sound harrowing, but we really did enjoy our 4 weeks with the kittens, and what I do at Liberty is very rewarding too.

Memorial Day

Memorial Day, Fountain Hills

We had a rare 3-day weekend, Michael doesn't get many holidays off. It started with a lot of food on Saturday. Nancy and Ron offered to bring a "few snacks" up to munch on for a picnic and then packed the whole rear of their SUV with food and drink. Burp. The picnic will continue all week.

Sunday, we were invited to a birthday party for 3 young (but now slightly older) girls. Of course, that meant lots of food & drink. Once in the backyard, we ran into this behemoth. Holy cow.

Seriously, look at it. It's taller than the house! It didn't take long for Michael to test it out. 

I don't know what this is...

Men.

The view from the top. This was not a slide for the faint hearted.



And then it was Memorial Day.


Neither of us remembers actually doing anything to commemorate this holiday in the past, so we decided to attend the memorial organized by the local VFW. There are a lot of veterans in Fountain Hills and several organizations to represent them from the VFW to the Rotary to the Kiwanis, to the American Legion. The Boy and Girl Scouts also participated by planting flags for soldiers who had lost their lives since 9/11 (they plan to do this for a different conflict each year; they might want to skip doing that for the Civil War and its over 600,000 casualties). They created a list of the fallen by the state they were born in and then lined up the American flags behind the state flags. It was a lot of work (there were over 2,300 of them) but very effective.



There were also displays to memorialize 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.



The speeches were really interesting. We heard a great account about Mitchell Paige who fought against the Japanese during WWII and was the inspiration for one of the GI Joe action figures. We also learned about the USS Arizona and burials at sea. Then we heard a story told from a father to his son (both soldiers) about where Taps originated (the same story is listed as a "legend" on Wikipedia). All I know is that Taps gives me goosebumps every time I hear it. It was also nice to be able to applaud a live veteran, recently returned from Afghanistan. He was in charge of Mortuary Affairs so that really brought home the meaning of the day. Here's to a peaceful future and better care for the veterans still alive.

To finish off the day and weekend, we took another hike up Tom's Thumb. And then we ate again...

A Little Culture

After starting to feel like Cinderella - feed (birds/cats/kittens/myself), scoop litter/clean bird cages, play, comfort, repeat - I decided to get out of the house for a bit. Sunday was International Museum Day, which meant a bunch of museums were free. I actually only knew about the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMOCA) being free, so that's the one we went to. It was... sparse. I think the gift store had more stuff to look at, and it is worth a look, by the way.

A couple of rooms had a display of photos from the 1970s called Suburbia.

This is what it looked like on the other side of the room... sparse. Hello... hello... hello... hello...

Does this make anyone else want to do a cartwheel? Or yodel?

I could have filled that wall up with some hysterical pics of my family from the 1970s - ha! I did get a laugh out of this one. I could so hear my mom saying this.

I even looked a bit like her. Maybe all pouts look the same.

The main exhibit was from a Danish artist whose specialty is light. You walk into this dark, angled hallway, fumbling for the light on your Smartphone, when you run into this.

It was humid. We thought we were back in Key West for a minute there! It's basically a mister with a light angled on it, but it was rather interesting.

Michael couldn't resist. Was he allowed to do that? Dunno. But he looked cool doing it.

When we got back home, the litter was still waiting. Sigh. It's worth it though.

Nothing but Kitties

Well, we haven't done much to share except that we took on 3 kittens to foster for a few weeks for Fearless. They need to be socialized and to get a little bigger (they're less than 2 pounds) so they can be fixed, microchipped, and vaccinated for their big debut at an adoption event at the end of the month (free kitties with all of the above taken care of?!). We got to name them and had to pick a theme, so went for The Lion King (cliche, I know, but we liked the names).

Zazu



Nala



Rafiki



And here's your moment of aaaaaaaw.

You have to admit they're adorable. They started out hissing when you even looked at them, but just 3 days later this happened. Nala climbed up some pillows on the floor and went to Michael! She's even started purring.

Here's our cat's response to this...

It's not going to be as hard to give them up as it will be to separate them. They play hard together and they pass out on each other - just like that.



That's a fish video they're watching. So cute.