I was on my break during the Tuesday morning shift at Shropshire Cat Rescue last week when a lady brought in a tiny black kitten. Roughly 8 weeks old, he’d been found abandoned in Bridgnorth, a nearby town.
Now, despite evidence to the contrary (a growing menagerie!) volunteering at the cat rescue has hardened my resistance to the “omg cute kitty” fever I was once plagued with. Nonetheless, I saw this little kitten’s tiny sad eyes and almost entirely melted then and there. Perhaps it’s a soft spot for black cats thanks to the late great King of Cats, my beautiful Hex?
Who knows, but I *wanted this kitty*.
I did however manage to exercise some good judgement, and after a brief fussin’, put him down for someone else to tend to. Shortly after, he was joined by another kitten, roughly 12 weeks old, who’d been found somewhere else:
They immediately took to one another and so I left them to it.
Until Thursday. On Thursday I was back at the rescue with Gaz for a meeting about the rescue’s new website, which we’re working on (complete with a spangly new WordPress theme design from Pretty Content) together, and Gaz is an even bigger “crazy cat person” than I am. Within minutes of walking into the staff room he declared that we should have them.
Now let me remind you that at that exact moment we had 4 cats, 6 guinea pigs, 2 rabbits and a recent baby tarantula addition waiting for us at home.
But we “had to have them”.
I stood firm. I said no. I pointed out that within the next 12 months we’re hoping to move to a bigger home, which is going to require clearing some debts and being sensible with money and generally not spending more than we can afford. Ozzy has been at the vets this week, the house still stinks of cat pee from when we had Pixel. It was a Bad Idea. We left that evening without the kitties.
And then I started my shift on Tuesday. I didn’t look the kitties in the eye, I knew I was in dangerous emotional territory after some recent bad news. I IGNORED THEM. I tootled off to do my usual jobs. I fed the village cats, I medicated the oldies. I swept and I cleaned. But then it was break time again…
It took less than a minute in the break room for me to cave, reserve the tiny kittens and make a coffee.
I am a bloody sucker.
Things have been a bit shit in the jemjabella zoo/household recently. Firstly, we had to make the decision to re-home Pixel, the aggressive stray whom I’d hoped to integrate and ‘tame’. Ultimately she was not getting on with Fudge, and as low level dislike turned to full on fur-flying fighting and her cowering under the… read full entry »
So, the first (proper) question in my recent ‘AMA’ was from Melissa, who asked: Can you provide a comprehensive list of all your animals with names + types + breeds? And also how you manage your litter box organization! ^_^ Now, there should be a page for this, but every time I work on my… read full entry »
Holy crap, it feels like I basically haven’t stopped doing stuff lately. I’d blame that for my inconsistent blogging but we all know that’s been an issue for many years, so I’ll cut to the chase and get you up to speed on the funky biz that’s happening in my life at the moment… The… read full entry »
After the recent loss of Hex, and prior to that both one of my older male guinea pigs and Bramble AKA MEGABUN, I decided that I was fed up of things dying on me (melodramatic, much?) and that was it for pets and me: no more animals. Considering that at various points I’ve had up… read full entry »
I did something yesterday that I’ve been working up to since August last year. I called a local free weights gym to see if they could give me advice, check my form, and generally just introduce me to the gym environment so that I can progress with my lifting (which has unfortunately plateaued again). My… read full entry »
Not sure I made that blog title long enough? Anyway.. hi, here I am. Not dead. Which you probably already know because you all follow me on social media. Don’t you? Things have been a bit hectic lately. Last time I spoke to you I was just starting my new drugs. Which … oops, haven’t… read full entry »
You’ve probably been able to tell from my moaning on twitter and facebook that I’ve been a bit stressed lately. What with Isabel starting school last week (and the tantrums started by day #2), lots of stuff going on at work, money issues (a bloody great big tax bill) and general life chaos I feel… read full entry »
After Stephanie asked how we manage all the animals with everything else we’ve got on, and we recently doubled our guinea pig population, I thought it was probably a good time to write about how the hell we care for all these animals without going crazy. We have a routine Back when we only had… read full entry »
Last year we built a cat run. The original plan was to have one built for us by a guy who specialises in bespoke wooden runs but after 2 visits he went quiet and despite numerous calls and emails we’ve never heard anything back. Anyway, we did some searching and found some metal run panels… read full entry »
