7-14-10 – The bad, bad Bookworms.

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From the Challenger’s House update email:

Here at Challenger’s House it’s been hard to keep up with all the calls & requests for us to take cats & kittens. It was a late “kitten season” but even with an adoption center (at Petsmart) full of kittens, and foster homes full of kittens, and kittens here at the shelter, adoptions have been slower in 2010. In the first quarter of this year, we took in 37 and adopted 47 but in the second quarter we took in 57 and only adopted out 27. We still keep a population of 120-140 at any given time.

What a lot of people don’t understand is that being a no time limit (no-kill) shelter, we can’t take every cat or kitten that comes along. If we did, we would be overcrowded, disease would set in, and money would run out quickly. And since we keep the cats until they are adopted or die of old age we end up with cats that are middle aged & older, some of whom will probably live with us the rest of their lives.

At the current time, donations are down & our funds have dwindled. We are asking that everyone who is able, send a donation to help us defray the cost of vet bills, medications/vaccines, flea control, food, litter, utilities, and all the other expenses associated with operating a shelter that provides a comfortable place for the cats & kittens to stay until they are adopted. You can make such a difference by supporting Challenger’s House in its quest to help as many homeless and unwanted cats & kittens as possible.

We take the animals we can but when our foster homes are full and the shelter is full, and when money is tight, we have to turn people away. It’s heartbreaking to tell them we don’t have room for the litter of kittens they found in the ditch or the cat that their neighbor moved off & left.

If you’d like to donate to Challenger’s House, you can do so by mail, phone, or Paypal – all the information is at the bottom of their Petfinder page, here.

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The other day, in my comments, Sarah asked:

Speaking of explorers, how’s your escape artist doing these days?

Glad you asked, Sarah! Would you believe the utter gall of these cheeky little brats?

Tommy’s all appalled – “THEY aren’t supposed to be out here, are they??”

Loony Jake approves.

Rhyme and Corbett are the worst offenders when it comes to going outside, but they all do it. I’ve fought them on it – first I’d give them time outs in the guest bedroom every time I caught one of them outside. Then I left the back door closed (which just isn’t fair to the permanent residents, who love to be outside). I put all four of the Bookworms in the guest bedroom during the day while the permanent residents got the run of the house and the outside (THAT went over like a lead balloon with the Bookworms, let me tell you). We talked about putting collars on them, but we don’t have enough extra collars, and the collars are kind of big for little kittens. I mean, they’re not tiny kittens any more, but they’re still smallish.

Finally, I threw up my hands. Fred made the back yard fence even more escape-proof (he put fencing around the top of the fence posts so the kittens couldn’t climb over). When I see them outside, I go out and wrangle them back inside, and if I’m leaving the house for longer than twenty minutes or so, I make sure all four of them are inside, and shut the back door until I get back. And they KNOW when they see me coming outside that they’d better get their butts inside. One day before I went on vacation, I had an appointment, so I went out to make sure there were no kittens out back. Rhyme and Corbett must have been feeling particularly rebellious, because they went under the shrubbery near the pecan tree and hid there, and when I went to grab them, they’d go further into the shrubbery where I couldn’t reach them.

OH was I livid!

I stomped around and waved my arms and told them what bad boys they were. They just sat there and looked at me, all smug and safe in their shrubbery fortress. Finally, I grabbed the hose and I sprayed a jet of water at the shrubbery.

They weren’t smug THEN, believe me. They ran out and into the house, and for once I was the victor.

Take THAT, bad boys!

Speaking of the brats, the Bookworms are going for their retest tomorrow, and – assuming they’re negative – will be neutered. They’ll be with me for a while longer, I imagine, due to how slow adoptions are this year, but this is the first step toward their Forever Home.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if someone stumbled across pictures of these guys and fell in love and adopted them the way it happened with Gus and Mike? ::Puppydog eyes at the internet::

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Previously
2009: No entry.
2008: All in all, a very good weekend.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.

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