Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
In case you missed it, we have a new pet charity this year – Athenspets.
Looks like a family affair.
Boo-le-Bark on the Boulevard and Athenspets Last SundayPost + Comments (126)
John is recuperating from the Dreaded Homecoming Weekend, and he asked me to put this together.
I thought about titling this: You Need a Kitten! And You Need a Kitten! And You Need a Kitten!
The note below is from wonkie. Her email address is in the text below.
Let us know in the comments and/or via email if you think you might be interested.
John was kind enough to let me have some space on his blog for some kittens that need homes.
This is a picture is of Ashley, the runt. She’s tiny. She has a sibling that is almost identical but a little bigger. I want them to be adopted together. She is eating solid food now, but she is so small that she can’t be spayed yet. She and her sib need to go to a quiet, secure home because they are going to be small, gentle cats. They both are socialized and purr.
I am a volunteer at a sanctuary for unadoptable cats. Though I am not formally associated with any official rescue, I have been part of several large scale rescues of feral cats around Mason Co. Washington where I live. We are Appalachia West out here and overrun with cats.
I got an email about a lady in town who had upwards of forty cats on her property. She’s not a hoarder; she’s a kind-hearted lady who started out feeding strays—and trying to get them fixed—but she couldn’t keep up with their reproduction. She went from two to forty plus in one year.
Most are feral. A friend and I have gotten twenty-two off the property so far. I am driving them into Tacoma to NW Spay and Neuter, and my friend is placing the cats in barns and outbuildings through BarnCats. She has vouchers that are helping with costs.
Of the cats rescued so far, ten are kittens. Five I snatched up because they were visibly sick, small, and outdoors—at risk of being killed by a raccoon or owl. I call them the Fab Five, and I think they are the survivors of three litters. I had them in my bathroom for a while, nursing them back to health, Kitten Rescue of Mason Co, was a HUGE help to me since I’ve never cared for such young kittens before. They gave me food, medicine, and lots of advice! Kitten Rescue has around one hundred kittens in their care, so they can’t help me place the Fab Five in homes.
The other five kittens are with their mom at the cat sanctuary. Their mom, Sunny, is a beautiful Siamese mix with lovely blue eyes, but feral. She will stay at the sanctuary, but her babies will need homes in six weeks or so.
All the kittens are socialized. All are healthy, though some are small for their age and will probably be small adults. None are ready to go to homes yet, but all can be placed before Christmas and three can be place very soon. It is going to be very hard to find homes, given how many cats are in need. I will drive kittens to anywhere in Western Wa. or Portland. If you want, anyone can come visit me on Hartstene Island and meet the kittens. While you are here, I can get you a tour of the Wild Felid Center, since it is located on the grounds of the cat sanctuary. I can give you lunch, too!. Wild Felid Advocacy Center (wildfelids.org)
Wally the Whale, the biggest kitten. He’s a wild one! He is only partially socialized. Sammy is part Siamese, very friendly and playful. He was nearly dead when I got him but has made a great recovery.
Muffet is Sammy’s best friend and they need to be adopted together. She has medium length soft fluffy fur and little white toes. She is a very sweet kitty, a bit shy, but has a wonderful purr.
This picture shows Sunny’s babies playing.
This picture shows her two runts. Two of her kittens are cream colored, two are dove gray and one is a very dark tabby. The smallest runt is tiny and has fluffy gray fur. They are just beginning to play outside the nest.
This last picture is Sunny, Miss Hissy Fit, the mother who started the whole mess.
So anyway if you can find room in your home and your heart for some kittens, please let me know! I’ prefer placing them in pairs and placing them after they are fixed, but will work with people who have good access to a low cost vet. I am serious about the invitation to come visit for an afternoon to meet the kittens—and take in the Wild Felid Center. I can be reached at Lkoerber889 @ aol.com (no spaces, of course)
Thank you, John, for posting this.
Laura, aka wonkie
If you have any questions, ask away!
Hello all- we spent two years with our last charity and decided it was time to move on and give a shot to the arm to a new team, and I am proud to introduce Athenspets!
I’ve spoken at length with their point of contact, Lisa, and let me tell you, the pets are in good hands and under solid leadership with a dedicated volunteer pool. We think that our calendar money (which does not get there until February or March, remember), will provide a nice bit of money for them to expand their operations and to have an emergency fund, much like what was needed for Artie.
At any rate, please read the post below and help welcome Athenspets to Balloon Juice. Baud, keep your pants on, we have company.
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Athenspets is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping the neediest animals in the Athens (GA) area and the people who love them.
Athenspets started as an informal website in 2001 to promote the animals at Athens-Clarke County Animal Services, then a municipal shelter that euthanized approximately 70% of the dogs that were impounded. The publicity greatly improved things, so that with little else changing, approximately 80% or more of the shelter dogs were being reclaimed, adopted, or transferred to rescue groups by the 2010s. The cat situation, though, remained dire; from the time the county began running a cat shelter in 2011, more than 50% of the impounded cats did not make it out alive.
In 2015, Athenspets was incorporated and became a public charity. Volunteers raised funds to start a medical program for the shelter, treating animals with injuries and illnesses rather than leaving them to be euthanized. We also developed a spay/neuter program that both strategically altered shelter animals to improve the outcomes of all of the shelter animals (for example, selecting female animals that were in heat to reduce the associated behavioral problems in all of the animals) and narrowly targeted the owned animals in the community that were at highest risk of adding to pet overpopulation in our area.
Despite the incredibly high poverty rate in Athens, where more than 30% of permanent residents live below the poverty line, the community responded to these efforts. By 2019, the last year in which all medical treatment for the shelter animals was overseen by volunteers and funded by donations, the live release rates for the shelter animals had put the shelter on the verge of “no kill” status (which recognizes that open admission municipal shelters will always euthanize some animals since they are legally required to impound whether or not the animal is vicious or terminally ill or injured, and regardless of whether there is space available).
In late 2019, Athenspets led an effort to overhaul the shelter: to bring in new, progressive management and see that the county funded the shelter at an appropriate level. This effort was successful, and many of the programs Athenspets had set up and taken responsibility for running and funding were transferred to the county. The shelter is now considered a model for Southern open-admission municipal shelters thanks to these efforts.
Because of these changes, Athenspets was able to move to focusing on keeping animals in good, even if impoverished, homes, reducing future pet overpopulation, and simply being volunteers, while still funding the extraordinary medical expenses of shelter animals, like Raven’s dog, Artie.
Each year, we cover the cost of spaying/neutering, vaccinating, and microchipping more than 500 owned and community animals. We designed and ran an innovative Community Innovations program in 2020-2021, working to change pet care norms in the neighborhood in Athens that most disproportionately produces dogs that are euthanized at the shelter because of prior physical and social neglect.
Funds donated to Athenspets go 100% towards our programs; we have no office space, paid employees, or other overhead costs.
One of the Spousal Unit’s coworkers sent this around, and the tag line I used in the title convinced me y’all needed to see it, too:
Not long before sunset Monday [June 13], from our bedroom window in Cambridgeport, I saw our neighbor Dana and her daughter Etta looking at and discussing something in the tree in the lot between ours and theirs.
Me: “Couldn’t help but overhear, is there an animal in the tree?”
Dana: “Yeah, but we’re not sure what. might just be a big cat.”
Etta: “It’s a coati, mom. i’m positive!”
I hustled down and sure enough, it was a good sized adult coatimundi. (Raccoon relative but diurnal, they live in Mexico and points south, also the southwest US.) We agreed it must be somebody’s escaped pet and that Dana would call Animal Control in the morning.
In the event i guess Etta posted it on the web right away (because that’s what you do if you’re not old and out of it) and this is what alerted Animal Control.
Tuesday morning Maja (at home) informs me (at work) there is a coati SWAT team at the house. All very amusing. At top is a pic she took from our bedroom window.
So i get home at 5.15 and the first thing I see is a knot of Mass Environmental Police on the sidewalk.
Me: “Did you get him?”
They: Sheepish looks and a muttered “nah”.
There was also Pat the Cheery Cambridge Animal Control Lady — who was packing watermelon bait and said the whole thing was under (regular) police investigation so she could say no more — plus two guys in aloha shirts.
Mr. C, who I guess appropriated a crows’ nest and ate their eggs (angry cawing from the crows was a constant and not entirely pleasant accompaniment to all of this), had apparently come down to get the eggs and watermelon the team laid out but scooted right back up again. Subsequently the fire department stopped by and tried to destroy the nest (without Mr. C in it of course) but failed (although they left pieces of the tree all over our walkway).
An older guy with a tranq dart gun everyone called “Doc” (again, not making this up) was waiting to get a clear shot. One of the EP officers was a retired first gulf war/Afghanistan/Iraq vet with a goat farm… When he asked for my ladder to go up the tree (which abuts the fence on the other side) and shake the nest, I said “Sure, when some jerk who’s illegally transporting animals loses one I’m happy to help” and one of the aloha guys cheerfully said “I’m the jerk”.
He was not offended by my remark — “It’s legal in West Virginia, just not here.”
Some of you know that Norm Ornstein is a senior mentor and friend. He just tweeted out that his dog Henry escaped at 18th and Church in the Dupont Circle in Kalorama area of DC. SO KEEP EYES OUT FOR HIM!!!!!
If you are in the Dupont Circle in Kalorama area, our dog Henry escaped at 18th and Church. Please let me know if you see him pic.twitter.com/wyQ20XKcqc
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) April 20, 2022
Update!!!
We have not found Henry yet, He was in a van on his way to being boarded for a couple of days when he jumped out at 18th and Church sts. Sighted by a work crew at Connecticut and Q over 30 minutes ago, no sightings since. Please keep a lookout!
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) April 20, 2022
If you see this good boy, you know what to do!!!!
Thanks in advance.
Open thread!
Shaun has sent across a second Tado pupdate!
Good morning,
I hope you are doing well. Ken just told me that they are home. Tado is also experiencing snow for the first time. I really appreciate everything you did to help us.
Shaun
First off, Shaun, you and Tado are quite welcome. I know I speak for everyone here when I write that we were happy to help and wish you and Tado nothing but the best!
And now for the pictures!
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Can we stop for fries? PLEASE????? (I’m guessing this is PapDad Jr. PapSon? They’ll figure it out)
SNOW!!!! I was bred for this!!!!
Open thread!
I’ll be back later with updates on Ukraine.
Shaun just emailed me and M4 with a pupdate on Tado:
PapDad and his son picked Tado up about 1pm today. He’s on his way to his new life in Boston now.
These types of good things happen when you get an A+ in deportment from the groomers…
I’m not really sure if we’re supposed to leave a yelp review for the groomer or Tado.
So some good news for a change!
Look at that face!!!!!
That face is now on its way to floof all over PapDad’s neatly folded laundry!
With a floof floof here and a floof floof there,
Here a floof, there a floof, everywhere a floof floof.
Old MacFloofy floofed a floof, floof-ey, floof-ey, o!
Everyone remember to keep good thoughts for Shaun as he gets himself back to right, for Tado, and for PapDad’s clean laundry!
Open thread!
