Pets!

[Aria]

@Snackness said in Pets!:

@Aria this might be a shitty and irresponsible thing I am about to tell you but you seem like you will use it for good so…find a poor rural shelter. Not a rescue. No hoops, no questions besides ‘are you allowed to have a cat.’ Walk out with cat.

I do appreciate this suggestion! We’re going with the group we picked because Philly’s animal control had a painfully low survival rate for years and though they’ve gotten much better, it’s not great and they’re currently full. (Yo, @Tez or literally anyone - you want a cat? Come to Philly.) I could very easily walk in the door and say, “Hey, I want a cat” and they’d shove three in my arms before I made it back to my car. The problem is that I don’t have the heart to walk into that building again. Even when I was doing transport for rescues and pulling seven cats at a time to redistribute to fosters and much needed medical care facilities, I’d end up leaving in tears because I’d have to watch other pets getting surrendered while I was in the waiting room. It felt like a losing battle, no matter how much good I was doing.

Fortunately, the shelter we’re going with is their biggest no-kill partner. So literally the space we free up will result in another kitty getting sprung from animal control within 48 hours to take that spot.

I’m just deep in my feels about because one of the cats we were considering looked like the little guy we lost to pancreatic cancer in early 2022. I spent about 2.5 seconds thinking their Instagram photo for him was me somehow stumbling onto my own feed by accident, then being confused about this pic I didn’t remember taking of Kolya. It’s dumb and life doesn’t work this way, but for just a little bit it was like the universe was giving me my cat back.

I am very happy he has a home and the kitty they’ve recommended to us badly needs one, but I’m still having a hard time feeling excited about it instead of feeling like I’m losing Kolya all over again.

[Tez]

@Aria That all sounds so fucking hard. I’m sorry. It sounds like he was really loved, and I’m sure whatever kitty you get will be too.

[sao]

All of that is so hard. My heart hurts around animal rescue. I had to represent a defendant who stole thousands of dollars from a local rescue once. I ended up donating a thousand dollars after the case was over and it wasn’t a conflict anymore because I knew they were never going to see that restitution – not because the now clean former defendant wouldn’t try to pay but because a vet tech who went off the deep end like that will probably never work again.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to wander into a local shelter and adopt the first face I looked at and her big dumb brother and I feel deep empathy for you guys who JUST. WANT. KITTY. I see these adoption events locally all the time where the shelters around here are desperate for adopting families and I hear about east coast people who can’t get a cat and I am like AAAAAH. I WISH we could mash together. Fkn geography.

[Aria]

On condition of his FeLV test coming back negative tomorrow…

We adopted the kitty they recommended to us - a ten year old little man currently named Steely Daniel, which is absolutely fantastic as a name but we’re generally not jamming out to “Reelin’ in the Years”.

I am trying to convince insomniac that his name should be Sir Catrick Stewart, instead.

He has a snaggle toofs and a wonky eye that we’re hoping is just some glaucoma and will be taking him to our regular vet ASAP to confirm.

[junipersky]

@Aria

I’m crossing my fingers for you!!! He looks like a DELIGHT!!!

[kalakh]

Life giveth, life taketh.

It’s taken me a while to post this, but I did share a billion pictures of her, so I figured. We lost my dog back at the beginning of August. She was thirteen, so she had a very good run (and run, and run, and run…), and she’d started getting a bit blind and probably a little deaf, but she was otherwise quite healthy. Then what we thought was a bad UTI turned out to be bladder cancer, and it was pretty clear she already had a partial blockage. Hardest fucking decision I’ve ever had to make, but she went quick and peaceful and on a good day.

There’ll be another dog, hopefully sooner rather than later, maybe even much sooner, but there’ll never be another Riley. She was with me and my family through our hardest times. She was, genuinely, my best friend.

I like to think she’s being a little shit to my brother right now.

[helvetica]

+1

[kalakh]