When a career goes full circle

My very first job was a live-in position as a cleaner and night veterinary assistant at Four Winds Animal Hospital in a small city back in 1980, 45 years ago.

I found it in the local newspaper a few days after I turned 18. The veterinarian thought I was too young, but offering $25 a week with an in-clinic efficiency apartment but no benefits, he didn't push back too hard against the office manager's choice. 

I think maybe I was hired because I was only a few years older than the manager's super-smart, sweet, and hardworking daughter, who cleaned and assisted on weekends.  Also, a young and rather-meek youngster would probably be a bit more malleable than an older person set in her ways - especially for a live-in job. A week later, an older rather acerbic vet tech quit (or was fired?) and I got extra duties and a boost in pay to $60 a week. I kept that job until I left for college two years later. The vet trained me hard, thinking that my acceptance to "Ithaca College" meant "Cornell in Ithaca to become a vet." He wasn't particularly pleased when he found out my future major was environmental ethics/philosophy, but I got six solid years of vet-quizzed education (two full-time years and four additional when I was home from college during breaks, summers, or weekends). 

From then on, that lucky foundation led to one job after another. And each and every job was unusual and eye-opening.

After career twists and turns, and immersion into countless different worlds, from animal control and cruelty investigation, to a fabulous internet start-up, to ratings-centered TV and digital entertainment, pet food, police emergency dispatch, humane wildlife control (my own business), laboratory animal and plant science, and digital/brand marketing, I'm actually back in the veterinary clinic space with a spay/neuter/special-surgeries clinic about 35 minutes away. 

The pay is unremarkable, but it comes faithfully every Friday, unlike my last 2 years working for online marketers who sacrificed the well-bring of their team for their online image. The commute eats up a lot of gas in my not-meant-for-daily-driving van, but it's purging to have 35 minutes of time in my own head twice a day. And it's actual work for actual humans and actual pets. No more creating false realities for online professionals who have fallen for the belief that just a shiny online image will somehow bring profits rolling in.

And wow, is it eye-opening to be back in an environment that cares about animals and their owners, with a team who to put their effort where their heart - and public image - is. I didn't realize how much fibbing I had been asked to do in my previous digital marketing life, and it's almost a rebirth to shed all of that. Every workplace has its bumps and quirks, but when the work has a real cause, rather than a super-shiny professed one, it's so much easier to sleep at night.

I've taken the first tiny steps to dig myself out of the huge financial hole I allowed myself to be shoved into. Sadly, when people said "Hey, could you jump in this hole?" I replied "Sure, you seem like a nice person, I trust you and admire your creativity so I'll jump and trust that you'll jump with me." Yeah - no. Not how it worked. It's a lesson I should have learned a long time ago, but you know...you always hope.

Yeah, I'm bitter, but it's fading fast. It's going to take years to clear away the financial damage, but luckily I have retirement resources I can tap that will allow me to pay back people who helped me shortly.

And seeing - every single day -  animal rescuers and pet owners so incredibly relieved to find a veterinary option they can afford for spay/neuter and emergency services,  helps douse the anger I have after years of smoke and mirrors in the so-called online 'pet space.'  Trust me. The real 'pet space' isn't online. 

The long and the short of it:  I am so glad this opportunity came by, to get me back to the roots that really mattered to me back as an 18-year-old, taking my first working steps centered around animals.

Becoming the architect of your endgame

A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a scary epiphany. I realized I had begun counting my life from the end back, versus from today forward. Somewhere ahead is my last day, and between now and then, I have a finite stretch of time that is mine to use. 

And this wasn't necessarily a bad way of looking at the rest of my life.

I'm no longer living on a big bright forward curve full of possibility. I'm living a big bold black line with a stark beginning (today) and an end. I'm in my endgame. Every day I don't do something, my endgame is a little bit shorter.

When I was young, I was drifting toward some hazy, undefined future that seemed full of possibilities. Even if my current life, finances, or love life sucked, there were still all those bright decades ahead when I could buy that cabin, get that horse, find that perfect guy, build that spay/neuter clinic, etc. 

I first realized time was truly finite when I gave up the dream of the horse. I'd chosen cats, and they were taking up all my time and dollars. Even though I had acres enough for horses, I didn't have fences, and a big enough bank account to be immediately available for horse injuries and monthly farrier visits. When I looked at my priorities, those fences weren't on it. I also suspected that if I built fences, I'd become the caretaker of every local shelter's found horses. So...

• Horse = strikethrough.
• Gut the upstairs of my house and add a balcony = strikethrough
• Learn the mandolin to expert level = traded for ukulele (easier on the fingers if practice is haphazard)
• Build a spay/neuter clinic = Love the vision, but prefer the hands-on to the ownership admin work

At first it seems like striking things off your list is kind of sad. On the other, I begin to focus more sharply on what I could really do over the course of that big bold black line. What thing could I do that might REALLY make a difference? Did it have to be what I was doing now? Did what I was doing now make me happy - or even make a difference?

More and more of us over 60 are waking up to the reality: there’s no cushy, pension-paid retirement ahead. We have to work. The question is — how? 

• We can find a job that keeps us moving, gives us some satisfaction, and maybe even some benefits—something that lets us live while we do what we love on the side. 💥
• We can grind ourselves into the ground, making someone else’s dream come true, just trying to keep the lights on. 😖  (Hint: This is where I am now)
• We can cling to a career we’ve outgrown, constantly updating our skills to stay relevant in a game we no longer care about.😕 (I'm here, too)
• Or we can be the architect of our own endgame.✨

I like to think that an endgame architect doesn’t waste what time is left. You don’t mindlessly chase money, or work yourself into exhaustion for a mission that no longer fuels you. You don't just give up, plodding away at what you are currently doing hoping that something will change on its own.

• Maybe that means quitting the thing that’s draining you. 
• Maybe it means starting over—crafting a legacy that actually matters to you. 
• Maybe it’s finally making something of your own rather than building for someone else. 

One day, our names will be printed in an obituary. What do I want mine to say? (Quiet tip: Go ahead and write your own obituary now. I would have loved it if my mom and dad had left a rough draft of what they wanted to be remembered for, rather than me worrying my sisters and I had left something important out, or highlighted something they really didn't care about). 

We don’t have forever. But we have now until our end day. And that’s enough to build something that lasts.

So what about me? I do have a pretty good idea of what mine will be. I've been talking about it with a friend, and making a few new professional contacts in hope it will come true. It needs to be simple (because you know, I'm tired). But it needs to make a difference.

I'm just putting Step 1 here, now, just in case anyone else has also discovered that perhaps that unforgiving big black line right in front of us could have even more power and potential that that big misty curve did, decades ago.

My word for 2025

I've always kind of felt a 'word for the year' to be another New Year's cliche - a marketing ploy that coaches etc. use to get people engaged so they'll commit to even more communication. It's fun, it's easy, and what does it hurt? It works on me, after all. In previous years, when I saw a little "what's your word for the year" call to action online, I usually paused to spend at least a few seconds mulling the thought.

But, let'ss face it. Anytime I've chosen a 'word of the year' by the time it comes around to choosing the next one 12 months later, I've forgotten the last one. So much for impact!

So this year, I found myself rolling my eyes and scrolling on by when I saw online-product coaches prompting readers for their 'word of the year for 2025.' Although for the purposes of this blog post, I did ask ChatGPT it's AI suggestions:

Resilience – For staying strong and adaptable through challenges.
Simplify – Focus on what truly matters by decluttering your life.
Intentional – Live with purpose and focus.
Bold – Step out of your comfort zone and take risks.

..Blah, blah, blah.

That doesn't mean that I'm not using the New Year as my excuse to get shit done. After all, see? I'm blogging. But after 5 surprising years on the fringes of digital marketing, I've become very skeptical of so called self-help suggestions that are really just marketing hooks (IMO)

Until, as I was reviewing my 'gotta do if I wanna be' and rephasing my 'I wanna be' thoughts into "I am' affirmations, a word of the year suddenly stamped itself on my brain as I was writing down phone numbers for businesses, goverment agencies, and financial institutions I need to call to wrap up loose ends.

ENOUGH.

Not "I am enough."
Not a big, round fulfilling "enough."
More like "Enough of this shit"

I'm not going to go on a blogging rant about what I'm fed up on, but I am going to plop this here so that throughout the year, as I squash a few ridiculous connections, or solidify a few good habits, I can reveal that I've put this or that thing behind me. None of these are earth shaking, which is why it's important to just say ENOUGH!

If you've got a word of the year, I'd love to hear it. However, if you are rolling your eyes and moving onto better things, I'll absolutely send you a virtual high five.

New Year, New Cliché

It's hard to write on New Year's Day without resorting to some cliche about new beginnings or new resolutions. After all, every year we get older we hear the same things over and over again, so yeah, since I started paying attention at about age 5 (my parents would bring home party hats and noise makers that they'd pass over to us kids) that would be 57 years of the same old platitudes.

Nonetheless that "new start" vibes are hard to shake after all that time. The higher the expectations you place on 'starting over,' the further you fall when you don't meet those expectations. Which is why I'm aiming for a lot of little 1% changes this year. Day by day, month by month.

I had to do some bigger 10% changes yesterday, getting all the cats on AdoptAPet.com after giving up on Petfinder when it kept giving error notices everytime I tried to add a photo. Of course, as soon as all of my cats were added, Petfinder started working again. But, too late. I'm too tired to re-add them all to Petfinder this week. And I've already gotten some inquiries via AdoptAPet. Now my 1% will be improving their bios a bit each day, and maybe adding one each day or so to PF. We'll see.

Today's 1% is writing this blog post. Any blog post. A blog post a day will help keep the lonelies away, once I've gained a little traction again, and follow up by reading my friends' blog posts, too. There are still a few old-time bloggers out there, doing it to stay in touch, rather than to sell, sell, sell.

Here's to incremental changes in 2025!

When life pushes you out of the nest to fly

How many times has life done that to you? Basically pulled the rug out from under you so you're forced to think "Ok, fine. I guess I HAVE to do this, now, instead of thinking about it, obsessing over it, but not doing much of anything on my own."

It could be due to work changes, relationship changes, health changes ... anything. Sometimes it's a traumatic 'rock your emotional world' push (and I'd like to point out -- my current 'nest push' isn't that, so if you were thinking of firing off an 'R U OK' text...I'm OK).

Sometimes it's just an "Oh shit, gotta flap these wings or I'm gonna hit the ground HARD!"

I be a flappin'

I work for a lovely digital marketing business that was recently sold and has had to do some restructuring to streamline their bottom line, which mean this month I became a contractor, rather than an employee.

That means both LESS freedom (gotta come up with funds for my own health insurance instead of using a stipend through work, and gotta pay my own taxes, while making a bit less than I was before when taxes and fees were covered). And MORE freedom (no longer have to sit behind a computer from 8am to 5pm and can conceiveably work for other organizations if I'm not overtly competing with any of the contracts I should hold).

At the same time, at a point in my life where I was planning to transfer my cat-love energy from hands-on rescue to helping other rescues...I stopped for a little yellow kitten in the road, pulled into a nearby driveway, and encountered a literal swarm of skinny, unfixed cats and kittens, and people nice enough that you really can't just say "Sorry!" and drive away, no matter how limited your resources are.

(Plus, catch my undertone of simmering anger against the national push toward 'community sheltering' which means folks like this get no help unless some unwitting cat lover pulls into their driveway and non-sheltering organizations step forward with reduced-cost or free spay/neuter)

And because these approximately 30 cats and kittens are underweight, have fleas, and some have an upper respiratory infection, I've had to open up the barn area to house them - an area that hasn't been used in at least 5 years.

So:

• At 61 yoa, I'm launching a new digital marketing business - something that was never on my radar
• I've suddenly got to get along on $21K a year instead of $42K after paying 15% self-employment taxes and $400/mo health insurance, at least until I find more work.
• After retiring the barn, I'm opening it again, at least so it can host cats for this project, and so it's ready for future unexpected emergencies (and looks good for a future sale of the property)
• After dragging my feet on launching a digital marketing strategy for my own work (because I had been spending so much time on others') I don't have a choice.

Honestly, this could be a good thing, although I'm glad it's summer so I can eat out of my garden while I get my feet under me before winter.

Gotta FLY!

A Rescue Reset: Benji's Boost

As you probably can tell from the crickets chirping on the blog, I've been keeping my head down, rescue-wise. Despite the hush, there's no shortage of feline residents, with 16 cats and kittens on the prowl here looking for new homes. But with the Kitty Kia clunking (literally) along unreliably, commiting to regular spay/neuter hauls hasn't really been an option. I've been doing a "kitty here, kitty there" sort of thing, chipping away at cat drama for friends and neighbors, mostly.

The Kitty Kia's steering dissolved spectacularly on the notoriously steep and winding Swartwood Hill (luckily I was going UP) and I managed to limp to a mechanic/car dealership, where I abandoned her for $500 and went home with a 2017 Promaster City van that was conveniently sitting for sale in their lot. This meant when a person I'd helped in the past called to say a cat who had been limping around the village with a dangling leg was eating on her back porch the night before snow and sub-freezing temps were forecast, I said "yes -- but call the shelter first." No surprise -- the shelter did not call back, so by the next morning, Benji the big-headed tomcat was in one of my traps in the back of the new-to-me van. (Here's his capture video on YouTube)

Any cat owner probably knows your bank account is crap-out-of-luck if you have a cat with a traumatic injury. Private veterinarians now often defer to emergency clinics, and emergency clinics often (not always) require 50% down on the estimate for the full medical care plan. That's just not an option for my bank account (currently at $98) or my credit cards at the moment. Luckily a wonderful clinic called Spay Neuter Save Network recently mentioned to me they will also do amputations, and when I shot them an email they replied "come on down!"

I threw up a fundraiser with a silent prayer that we'd raise the money before surgery was over. This clinic not only expertly lopped off Benji's leg, they extracted some bad teeth, drained and repaired a hematoma in an ear, neutered him, tested him for FeLV/FIV (negative!) and vaccinated him -- all for about 1/4 of what an emergency clinic would ask. The fundraiser is coming along great, but I could really use a little more help if any readers would like to pitch in:

I'll follow up with more details, and some great video of Benji hopping around my bathroom like he could care less about what body bits he no longer has, now that he's warm, fed, and getting lots of love. I'm guessing he'll be an easy boy to adopt out. Stand by for updates. I'm shaking the dust off this blog! (Yeah, yeah, you've heard that before).

Goodbye to the goodest dog

I lost my Molly this past week.

I tried to write a little about how she passed, but in addition to losing her, I'm also finding myself quite sad about losing two beloved veterinarians I really trust who have since retired. Molly's passing was a completely different experience than it has been for my many other animals when their final day arrived. But I try to remember she was a joyous little dog, who loved the roadtrips to animal welfare conferences and manning the Petfinder booth, camping trips and twice-daily walks on our beautiful country road. She loved playing with cats and kittens. it was probably Molly's love of hiking and camping that got me thinking about my future plan to travel and aid animals via fundraising and video, with her and Wiki with me, so that Molly would have some exciting final years.

I always tell people, when they ask when they should let an animal go, to see if they still enjoy the things they most loved. So, while waiting for the results of bloodwork from her vet visit, I took Molly to a new trail on some nearby farmland. Nice and flat, but with a little stream to explore. You could tell she wanted to like it. She trotted the first few feet, but then dropped to a walk. For the record, Molly NEVER walks. She always trots. She didn't sniff. She stopped dead if she had to push through grass or a weed. She was uninterested by the stream. Then she just looked at me. She wanted to go back.

So back we went, and I knew that was my last adventure walk with Molly. The next day, she died while waiting for late-afternoon veterinary appointment.

I got Molly after Mark left. She was supposedly a little neglected adult dog, sadly tied in a back yard, who frequently escaped to look for love. A neighbor contacted my friend and fellow rescuer Debra, who knew I was looking for a dog. While I always expected to adopt on from a shelter on one of my Petfinder trips, I agreed to take a look. From the neighbor's yard, Molly looked like an older adult little blonde Pomeranian mix, with tear-stained eyes.

In fact, when I knocked on the door, it turned out Molly was a well-loved but way-too-active 7 month puppy owned by a couple who loved her. They had two active little boys, and a labrador they'd adopted from the shelter and nursed through parvo. Molly was "tied in the back yard" because she should dig under AND climb over their sturdy chainlink fence. The mother was pregnant and about to have yet another little boy. Molly ran around like a happy demon while we talked. Turned out they realized Molly was just too active for an apartment with another dog, two small boys, and a baby, and were happy to have a Petfinder employee and rescue person knock on the door like an unasked-for solution. After a quick drive around the village to be sure Molly liked trucks and didn't get carsick, they handed over her veterinary papers and Molly came home with me. Turns out I was Molly's third home.

Molly unfortunately didn't have the best puppyhood with me. I was still upset over Mark leaving, so having a puppy tick-tick-ticking around on my heels meant she got yelled at far more than she should have, for things that were just normal puppy behavior. But once I finally grieved out, Molly came with me on roadtrips for Petfinder, and the last three years we shared a lot of camping adventures. My mom loved her, so she came along on most of my family visits, and my sister Linda also welcomed her. So Molly and I had a lot of fun, active times together.

When I first got her, I had dreams that she'd go everywhere with me. But too often the truck or car air conditioning was broken, or I was tied up taking care of the house and farm, and chasing cats. We didn't have the "joined at the hip" life I'd really dreamed about, and that she would have thrived with. Molly had a good life with me, but she could have had a far better life with someone else. She wanted to be a kid's best friend, not a cat lady's sidekick, even though she loved me and had fun with me. I guess that's true for many of us -- whether four-legged or two-legged.

As time goes on, I'll tuck photos I find into this post, but here are some videos being the bouncy sweet dog she always was, so I have one place to visit her, always.

Miss you, Molly. Love you. 

Molly playing fetch, getting ambushed by a kitten in the curtains (with a cameo by three-legged Cricket)

Molly diving into the deep snow one winter, chasing imagined mice and bunnies

Molly enjoying a stream

Rosemary checks in

Marita and Kyle saw that I was posting on the blog again (of course -- that was weeks ago!) and sent over some beautiful pictures of Rosemary to share. She came to us as a momcat with two buff colored kittens, and after being spayed was lucky enough to score an incredible home who -- like a lot of our home -- have gone on to rescue other cats through fostering.

Rosemary’s been a great buddy through everything. She loves snuggling and she knows a set of tricks, including sit, wait, high-five, and beg. Pepper, the neighbor’s cat, is her nemesis, and she really wants to murder any kittens we bring in to foster but she restrains herself because she can tell we like them. 😄

Updates from past adopters really give me a lot of joy. If you'd like to let us know what you are up to, you can email us at owlhouseadopt@ gmail dot com . Even if you cat has passed -- since we've been adopting since 1993 -- we'd love to hear from you.

Killian the Grey checks in

Killian the Grey -- the sweet but shy-with-strangers cat who was here with us (another years-long resident) has gained a little weight but actually looks fit and trim compared to the squishy, plushy self he was here. Now he has a big apartment to romp from room to room, and one person who dote on him morning, noon and night. For those of you who met him here, you can be sure he scored an amazing home.

Killian checking in --- thin and fit!

 

Pepper and Timea come to visit

Some of my rescues come back to visit, when their parent has to travel. Sometimes I petsit at their home, but when I have space here on the landing, or in the three-level cage downstairs, they can come and stay with me. Pepper and Timea spent a couple of years here on the landing until they were finally adopted together by Nancy. They come to visit once or twice a year, and it's nice to get to see them -- and know they'll be leaving again on a scheduled day in the future, instead of being a big question mark, like all of the other cats and kittens who come here. I sent some pics of them off to Jo, their original rescuer. One big circle of nice.

Waking up from hibernation

 

It's a Saturday, and life is catching up with me. I have kittens who need adopting, cats who need home, a house that has pending projects, taxes to file, and deadlines looming. Basically, I'm facing the responsibilities of any homeowner (minus the cats of course) who owns a house that is way too big for her -- but is a heck of a lot of fun to live in.

These kitties need to be placed by spring, so I'm finally rousing myself out of my post-COVID infection malaise (I caught it on a multi-store shopping spree -- had my mask on but wasn't good at all about disinfecting my hands). Because I'm super paranoid I've isolated myself for the full two weeks plus that was recommended before health officials decided that 5 days was more important for the economy. and then super-cleaned the house to match my paranoia. 

The store shelves are empty of cough medicine, and three other people who escaped COVID for years are now dealing with it, so I'm guessing our area is now in another wave of infection. It won't make the news (because COVID news doesn't get clicks anymore), so our communities are mostly in the dark about the ups and downs of COVID, any more.

Anyway, enough of my snarkiness! 

A friend of mine and her husband are now blogging their way around the United States, and every time I get a blog update email from her, I'm reminded of my poor neglected blog here. So I've decided to update it. And since it's not one of those SEO-optimized blogs, those few of you who read it can count on my random cattiness (both the feline and attitudinal kind). I'll be sharing a link to a new, "optimized" blog in a few days (weeks?) that's my post-cat-rescue plan to continue helping cats once I've sworn off crawling under bushes and beggering my bank account. Really, I DO need to add a bit to my languishing retirement fund before I hit 65. Kittens are cute and truly provide purpose, but they won't pay my bills when I'm 70. 

At any rate, I'm getting my foster cats up on Petfinder, so if you'd like to see them, they'll be posted here (a few now, and more later!) 

 

A scrubbing Sunday, and my disillusionment with the hard turn in national cat rescue messaging

It's pre-noon on a Sunday, with six feral teenagers returned to their colony, and two more going to a relocation cage in their new barn home later today. These four are ready for adoption (they were born here to a feral cat waiting for TNR) but the house needs a thorough cleaning before welcoming visitors.

While none of these first "back to blogging" posts will be particularly earth-shattering, it suddenly occurred to me that I print my blogs off as books as journals for my future self. Since I haven't been blogged, I have no record, really, of my last few years. 

This year is going to be a biggee for change, so I do want to save my progress. 

I need to sit down and flip through them -- I haven't in quite awhile. I've found my enthusiasm for cat rescue waning as I get older. I find I'm just going through the motions catching and getting cats fixed, and no longer really feel that spark of joy I used to. 

My emotions have experienced an even more precipitous drop in the last year, primarily due to my disillusionment with the new national animal welfare message. It has veered hugely away from making shelters better places for cats, and providing grants for spay/neuter, and has turned almost exclusively toward grants and programs touted as "community sheltering." Community support for pet owners started out as a wonderful program (like the groundbreaking HSUS Pets for Life program) that actively supported diverse communities. This admirable, forward-thinking and dare I saw successful sentiment of pet care appears to have been seized and subverted on by a few charismatic veterinarians and animal welfare administrators as a way to push the responsibility of animal rescue -- particularly cats -- into the laps of the community, and eliminate the sheltering of cats almost entirely. 

I'm not saying that existing excellent community support programs have been subverted. I'm suggesting that the sentiment of community support and involvement has been seized on by a group of advocates as a way to appear to jump on the community assistance bandwagon -- while instead actually foisting more work, cost, and heartache on them.

I've had to delete countless following paragraphs, because I need to address these issues one by one -- not in one long rant. And let me make it clear, this IS a rant. I have over-simplified the issue greatly, and there are good aspects of the community sheltering movement. 

BUT, I no longer feel like the handful of cats I help each year is part of a steady trudge toward a bright day when cats skittering across a village street are nearly as rare a sight as a stray dog rummaging in garbage bags in trash day. We were really getting there  -- we really, really were -- but I've seen a huge reversal.

So if I've only got a few decades left, I think I need to take some unique action that could actually make a difference, and leave the kitten socialization to a younger set of rescuers. I won't be stopping anytime soon -- after all, I expected to downsize TNR this summer, and THAT didn't happen -- but I expect to hit the road within the next two years. 

 

A summer hijacked by cats

This was supposed to be the summer I worked on the house and got it ready for sale. It ended up being a a flurry of TNR starting in August, plus a bucket of kittens. I finally made a contact -- and a friend or two -- at a barn I've been wanting to address, and once I had a a paw in that door, I didn't want to  put it off. 

Then a bunch of kittens were born on Debra's street in Waverly, and mom cat was due to pop out a second litter and refused to be caught. Litter #1 was too feral and too teenaged for socialization, so I had to warehouse them until the second litter and mom could be caught. For 81 days 10 teenaged ferals hissed at me from their big (thankfully) double level Ferret Nation cages. Then a couple who are close friends had a feral show up on their porch, who needed an extra long stay when his tail needed to be amputated due to an old wound. And I drove by a house in the village of Spencer where cats were basked in flowerpots on her front porch. Her veterinarian had told her (???!!!) that they likely had feline leukemia because the probably mother cat tested positive and that they wouldn't survive being fixed. She was lovely, but she took a little convincing when I knocked on her door uninvited. We got her batch fixed and they all survived nicely. I doubt a single one has leukemia -- they all seemed quite healthy as they glared at me from their traps and recovery cages. 

At any rate, my summer fixing the house was a bust, and the peeling paint is still peeling, the cellar stairs still need fixing, the back barn roof is still collapsed, but at least there are a lot less feral kittens in the world.  Luckily a lot of the spay/neuter was free or low-cost, and with some donations from landowners, an unexpected donation from a local credit union, and a birthday fundraiser on Facebook, at least the cost didn't come entirely out of my paycheck.

The light of my life has been my new heart cat Wiki. I've been training him to travel, so that we can move on to the next phase of our lives in a few years. I have only three pet cats now, and little Coraline will soon be leaving to live with close friends of mine, and then I'll have only two. I'm about to embark on a big adoption push for the adoptables I have here -- about eight adults and six cute kittens.  It would be nice to just have one cat room open for the winter, so I wasn't pouring money into electricity over the winter. I think things are going to be hard for everyone this winter.

So that's the update, before I dive into detailed topics. I haven't been good about staying in touch with the wider friends of Wildrun. I'll do a better. job. 

How do old bloggers reinvent themselves?

Many of the blogs I used to follow years ago are no longer active.

I miss a lot of my blogging friends. Some of them I never met, but we exchanged comments, read about one another's lives, and even sometimes sent each other something in the mail. Luckily, I'm still able to follow some of them on Facebook, but some -- well, I never knew their names, so was never able to track them down...when I thought to try. 

I was certain I'd never fall out of the blogosphere, but I have, like so many others. I spend a lot of time blogging in my mind, which doesn't do much good for anyone, even myself. I've reflected a lot: "Why am I not blogging?" "Why did so many others stop blogging?"  I'd thought -- about others -- that they just got bored or distracted, or it was a fad that passed.

I've only posted about 11 times since I left Purina/Petfinder two years ago -- even though I've blogged in my mind about million times.

I began blogging back in the 90s, back when blogging wasn't tied to ads and SEO (search engine optimization -- using key words to make your content appear at the top of search results). Blog posts were shared organically. There was a lot of conservative and liberal blogging going on back then, and it wasn't as polarizing as the world of crazy we have now. (I even found my old blog -- actually 2 of my blogs -- here!) Cats were the excuse for a lot of those political posts...in fact, it's how the blog hop Carnival of the Cats got started (link is from 2015 but sums up a bit of history). 

So why mention this at all? 

I'm planning a pretty drastic change to my life. For it to work, it requires a return to blogging, and the addition of video blogging/vlogging as well.

Before I gave up my own brand in 2004 ("life, liberty, and the pursuit of loose cats!") and took on the voice of the other businesses I worked for, I used to be a bit of a rebel.  

When I jumped from the corporate ship after about 14 years, I envisioned a return of my rebel voice. That hasn't happened. 

However -- damn! -- I DO have rebel feelings. There are some new trends in the world of cat sheltering that are really pissing me off. Instead of seeing more and better services for cats that take some of the load off of individual rescuers, I'm seeing trends that dumps every single cat rescuing responsibility -- with the exception perhaps of scheduling spay neuter -- into the lap of unfunded cat loving individuals, and small poorly funded rescue groups.

I plan to go right to shelters (big and small), cat rescues, and individual cat rescuers across the US, tell their story -- and raise money for them at the same time.

I'm going to stop there. All of this means nothing if I can't get back into the habit of blogging -- and get the equipment and skill to start vlogging. I need to rebuild my email list, and I need to wrap up a lot of loose ends.

So hopefully you'll be seeing more me...and more of this silly guy. His name is Wiki. He's fearless, and I hope some of that rubs off on me.

So, old blogging friends, how have you reinvented yourselves?

Some of you are still blogging away, doing amazing things.

If you stopped blogging, are you doing different amazing things? Or are you looking for a new goal to grab onto, as I am?

My apologies to subscribers

For some reason, Blogger is sending messages to subscribers about past posts, anytime I log in and touch anything -- even if I'm just creating a draft for a new post.

I will be suspending notifications completely (Google is getting rid of this option next month anyway) and I'll send an email manually in June to see if anyone wants to sign up for manual notifications once a month. Again, I'm really sorry for the spam. :(  

Here's a pic of adoptable Finn to make reading this message somewhat worthwhile: 

Love you all!

Susan

My four-cat clan was actually visible all at once, thanks to a chilly evening where they all wanted to hang by the one window that has electric heat under it. Buster took the basket, Raven (still pretty feral) cuddled up next to Buster, whom he adores. Coraline and Oliver took over the marimba -- which really, really should not be near the heat at all. I need to take some thoughtful steps toward finding it a new home where it will be cared for properly.

Blogger is going to get rid of Feedburner, which means it will no longer send email alerts to my blog subscribers when I post a blog -- which is a good thing, as lately they've been emailing people about blog posts I published years ago.  Perhaps Google decided to scrap the function rather than fix it?

That means I'm going to have to put my big girl pants on and start a real newsletter for the rescue, with real blog posts and real content that the newsletter links to. I do this for work all the time, but don't seem to be able to muster up the energy to do it for myself.

It's a sunny Saturday, which always stirs up optimism. After a cup of coffee, it's time to get started on mowing the lawn, cleaning the cat rooms, and packaging up some stuff for work to mail out. Maybe by the time Sunday dawns, I'll be looking at a less-cluttered house and an open day.

We can hope!

 

My old sideboard...someone's new sideboard

 So I mentioned I'd sold my huge old sideboard that had been given me by a good hearted neighbor years back.

A local couple who buys and repaints furniture bought and repainted it. Here it is three days later:

It'll sell for hundreds of dollars, I'm sure, down in Chandler's Market in Sayre. I knew when I sold it for $35 that it would ultimately be sold for a lot more because this type of furniture, chalk painted, is all the rage now in modern "farmhouses." It takes a lot of paint and skill to change a piece of furniture like this (for example, the refurbisher painted the inside, not just the outside as I did), and this took three coats of paint in different colors to get this effect, and I'd just slapped one coat on when I had it. I just don't have the energy or flair to complete re-do furniture for other people. I only do the minimum possible to make it acceptable in my own.

Anyway, it's on to a new life and it was fun to watch it's transformation on the new owner's Facebook page. And I have a TON more room in my house.

More projects done...more restlessness put behind me

 I've talked to a couple of friends who are experiencing the same ailment. Here we are at home, so you'd think we'd get more done. But due to...what? Angst over the elections? Tons of snow? Isolation doldrums? Who knows. It's not getting done. It helps to know I'm not alone, but it's been dragging us all down.

I've finally taken some steps to get my butt in gear. I hope I can keep the momentum going. 

Since the screen door on the stairs was added years ago, the screen has been getting more and more shabby. I sort of tacked a piece of wood at the left because the door was too small for the opening and I needed to attach a hook-and-eye. Of course, one hook-and-eye wasn't enough for cats intent on getting downstairs, so I added two. Plus one on the inside. It looked like hell (IMO) to visitors, and of course was difficult to explain how to latch as I led people upstairs and they were left to secure the door behind them.  Two years ago I bought a new door and a door knob, but the bears destroyed my porch, and I used that door to replace the one they'd smashed to bits.  

So a few nights ago I pulled down the old door, ripped off the screen, attached plastic hardware cloth that I'd purchased on Amazon, and installed the sitting-in-a-closet-for-two-years door knob kit. I also purchased some wooden ornamentation for the corners, to keep me from splurging on a fancy new door (the bones on this one were just fine). I got a new piece of wood for the door frame instead of the mismatched thing I'd had tacked up. Now people can go up and downstairs without wondering how the heck to open and secure the door. And it doesn't look a total mess. I can't begin to tell you how much joy I get out of opening and closing this door with a simple knob instead of messing with hooks on both sides.

Before:

After:

I had some help from Mocha who didn't seem to understand that he was doing an "if it fits, it sits" in a contraption meant to cut things in half.

Then the front storm door blew off the hinges in a gust of wind earlier this winter, so I ordered a new one from Home Depot (the cheapest brown one available, because I was damned if I'd be scrubbing dirty fingerprints off a white door before every visitor arrived again). It barely fit in the car, and it was a pain to put up (thank you, YouTube!), but now that's done as well. There was quite a bit of swearing involved, and I really hope no one was enjoying a country walk at the same time as I was exercising my vocabulary.

A few years back, a neighbor renovated their kitchen and gave me the vintage furniture they'd been using as a pseudo-kitchen until then. I chalk-painted it up and it's been hugely helpful. But one of the sideboards is absolutely huge (72" long) and the amount of storage it provided in return for the space it took up was insubstantial. For about a year the room it's been in has seemed more like a repository of extra furniture than an actual room I could hang out in.  I put the sideboard up on Facebook Marketplace for the cost of the paint and knobs I put on it ($30) (since it had been given to me for free) and quickly got a taker.

To replace it, I picked up a beat-up but sturdy dresser at the Re-Use Center in Ithaca, and threw some chalk paint, wallpaper, and Mod Podge at it. I already had the supplies. So I have as much room, but I can put the dresser along a small wall instead of it taking up the entire length of the room.

Before (well...during)

After:

Now the couch, which was literally sitting diagonally in the middle of the room before, can be along the wall. The sideboard is waiting to be picked up tomorrow -- you can see how huge it is, at the right. And now all the furniture that was pretty much just thrown in there is an actual room.

I've been getting some professional coaching, and I really haven't been able to explain to her how much all these undone projects have been preying on me. Every time I see something that I've started and just haven't finished, it ties up my brain so that I can't even think about the things I ought to -- and really want to -- do. Take photos of the cats, paint the art walls I have planned for the cat rooms, make videos to help with adoption processes...  So I've just decided these projects HAVE to get done so I can be mentally free to work with the cats.

The two biggest things remaining projects are the backsplash wall in the kitchen, and the last of the flooring.  Then I won't be tripping over the boxes of flooring that sit in the great room, or the box with the new kitchen light that's on the floor in the pantry. I'm already thrilled that the boxes of doorknobs are on the doors and not in a pile in the closet, and that the stair door is actually pretty instead of a wreck. And that I have a storm door again so cats are less likely to zip outside.

I'm getting there.

Cat stretch in three movements, performed by Daphne

 Daphne's (formerly Goggles) mom, sent these photos over, titled "A demonstration of the evolution of the the streeeeetch (with bonus teefs)" The teefs are the cutest:

Teefs:

I'll always remember finding Daphne as a kitten, stuffed in a crate I had left on my porch. I had been at the store, and could hear a kitten squalling as I walked up my steps. I had a grand old rant about irresponsible people dumping cats on me and not even being polite enough to leave a note, and then the neighbors pulled up in the driveway.

They had found the kitten while walking their dog, had brought her to me and left her in the crate because I wasn't home. They had her loose in their arms along with their huge German Shepherd on a leash, so they really couldn't carry her all the way back a half-mile to their house. They left the kitten, walk-ran back home, and then immediately drove back with a note for me, in case I hadn't yet returned. 

Oops. Rant retracted. Here's her story from that week over 5 years ago.

Sadly, people like to dump kittens between my neighbor's house and mine because cars can't be seen from either of our houses when they do the dirty deed. I periodically see tracks in the snow for kittens we never find. Daphne was a lucky one though. She had a set of lungs and used them, so the neighbors noticed her off in the woods on their walk.

And then she got an incredible home. Lucky girl!

Princess Peach and her escaped-being-feral kittens

This was a summer for Elmira area cats, when COVID first shut down all of the shelters. Cats who really couldn't be left to fend for themselves had to go somewhere. Princess Peach (who was nameless when she came our way) was seen by the homeowner nursing her kittens just outside his window, as a storm was due to arrive. He was a friend of our friend Gina, so we made an exception. She drove over to Elmira, nabbed the kittens, set a trap for Peach, poured a glass of wine, and waited. 

They didn't wait long. Peach was quickly trapped, and turned out to be a wary but friendly young mom. We checked her for a microchip, left a found cat report with the shelter, got her FeLV/FIV tested and vaccinated, and sent her back to Gina's sunroom to be fostered. There was plenty of room, because most of her plans were enjoying the early autumn sun.

 At first the little family was a bit shy, but they soon came around. Gina moved her remote work desk into the sunroom to socialize them, until the weather grew so chilly her plants had to come back inside. Some of the plants weren't the safest for cats to munch on, and by then the kittens were old enough to be adopted, so over to the Owl House they came.

Princess Peach and family in the sunroom at Gina's

The kittens were of course insanely cute, and were adopted within a few weeks. 

Now it's Peach's turn to get a home. While she tolerates the other cats in the room she shares with three others, she's not particularly thrilled with them, so she would probably prefer to be queen of her realm. I need to get some video of her. In the meantime she's a joy to have here, and it's so wonderful to look at her rounded-out well-fed form compared to her slim seat-of-her-fuzzy-pants-survival look with her batch of soon-to-be-feral kittens.

But nobody's feral. A guy looked out his window and cared.