Thankful Thursday

We is thankful for da nice ladies and gentlemen beans dat won't let homeless kitties freeze and starve...and dat we don't live wif da one dat owns dez woofies! She's a hoot (dat's what mom sez). All of deze woofies was rescued and she haf 5 kitties but dey is camera shy. All dis stuff started almost 3 weeks ago when a friend of mom's called one lovely Saturday morning, would mom be interested in helping her TNR a colony dat a school and restaurant had been feeding. Of course mom sed yes. The first step, get permission to trap. Da restaurant had concerns about trapping on der property, mostly dey was worried about some crazy driver accidently running over a kitty but da school said okay. One of da ladies dat was involved in dis, her husband is a retired vet so he gots his old partner to do all da serjerees, health checks, tests and vaccinations for cost as long as he helped out. Da restaurant put da word out to der regular customers and raised a lot of money, da school held a bake sale and did some door to door collecting and raised a lot of money! So, now da TNR group goes to da school, da principap wants to use dis as a teaching opportunity! Wow, mom sez, dis is great. Dey show da kids where to feed da kitties to get dem used to dat area, den how to feed inside unset traps, den DEY SET TRAPS! At first, mom thawt dat would be it for da kids and started getting ready to build feeding and shelter stations. But no, da teachers wanted da kids to learn how to do dat too and how to take care of dem and what to watch for and...well, it was fun for mom. Dey gots a local hardware store to donate most of da pvc, cement board, glue and screws and another one to donate plastic horse buckets and large bins. Da horse buckets work very well on da feeding stations cuz dey is flat on one side and since dey is made to be hung on fences dey can be attached to da top of da feeding station easily. Da large bins (think Rubbermaid storage) are easy to insulate and da tops, tho weather proof, can be removed for easy cleaning. So, mom is out der every morning teaching 11, 12 and 13 year olds how to build dis stuff, how to clean feed buckets and shelters and best of all, dey is gonna make dis part of da school. Dey trapped 32 cats and returned 24, 8 kitties gots new homes with either teachers, students famblies or restaurant employees. None of dem kitties was sick, dey all gots vaccinated and will every year fur as long as dey live at da school and every one of dem had der piksher taken and posted to a big board da school put up so dat dey can keep track of any new ones dat show up. What is very odd is not one of dem cats was very feral, dey all seemed to have been handled by people at some point in der lives, if not to have been house pets. Mom sez dis was one great experience even if it did leave her exhausted every day, and it made her aware dat der are still great kids out der. She forgets about dat when all yoo ever hear about is da few bad ones dat get into da news. We are glad she's going to be home fur awhile now, as long as da Sister-in-Law will leave her alone. Now, she is kinda upset wif dad for some reason. I mean, really, she did tell him a long time ago to leave her washer alone cuz he broke it a couple times so we don't know why she's mad dat no laundry gots done. Or dishes. Or dat he never got da sucky monster out and ate up our hair. And he was really nice and bawt her a brand new shovel to replace da one she broke last winter while trying to clear ice blocks from the bottom of da driveway where da snow plow left dem. Sheesh, just because he stayed in bed while she got up and went cat trapping and den sat around in his unnerpants until she came home and cooked, fed us, snuggled us and cleaned our litter box and shoveled snow (once, big deal) is dat any reason to tell him she's gonna kick his butt. Hey, she wasn't around to take care of da house and keep dad moving so she shouldn't complain, right? Well, now she haf huge piles of laundry and stacks of dishes to wash so dat should keep her around and busy fur awhile.