I am terribly sorry (to like, what, all two of you who read this?) for sucking at keeping this sucker updated. But my time and energy had been drained, leaving no inspiration for blog posts. I will try to cover all that I have missed without dragging on and putting you to sleep.

Holidays with the Shelter

So Christmas has come and gone, but I’ll fill you in real quick on how things went. Our shelter has a “pet pics with Santa” type fundraiser at Petsmart. Pretty self-explanatory. You bring your pet in, we take its picture with our volunteer Santa, and some of the money from your picture purchase goes to charity. Woohoo. I volunteered to be one of Santa’s elves for many of these days. I was often the one taking the pictures and printing them. I can’t say it was a bad experience, but you can only try to get a dog with ADD or a contempt-filled kitty to look at a camera so many times before you’re ready to call it quits.

One person brought in their ferret. They sat next to Santa, holding their ferret and posing nicely, and I snapped the picture. Upon review, I saw that I had taken the picture while the ferret had reached over and grabbed a mouthful of Santa’s costume. It was incredibly amusing, and I was delighted that that was the shot they chose.

Of course there were picky owners who needed their Fluffykins to look JUST right before I was allowed to move on to the next customer. Everyone knows God will smite those who doth not have a perfect Santa pet photo, complete with cheesy sweater. There was also the lady with the ~*IMPORTED PUREBREDS*~ because she refused to buy from FILTHY American breeders! I understand this; they have stricter breeding requirements over in Europe. But there are still PLENTY of puppy mills over there absolutely willing to ship to America. Your precious Wire-haired Dachshund from Germany looked pretty damn neurotic and anti-social to me, lady.  And your French Bulldog from Russia (which you just LOVED to shout, “He’s a Russian!” to anyone who even breathed in its general direction) was just delightful with his little bald spot on his forehead from where he’d gotten into some glue. And thanks for reminding me for the 47th time you have some purebred champion thing by telling me he might look sideways when he sees the camera flash because he’s used to stacking (he didn’t, by the way). Sorry, these sorts of people irritate me. I had to rant and rabble a bit there.

I also got to help decorate our (new and totally awesome) shelter, Animal House, and developed and irrational rage toward Christmas lights. We mastered this electricity thing long ago, why the hell can we still not come up with Christmas lights that work right? Anyway. Our new shelter has an awesome cat room (Pussycat Lounge) that looks, to me, like a futuristic Japanese hotel. There are also two large cat rooms complete with cat trees and such. We have a small critter room for rodents and the like, but it’s not much. There are some nice glass dog kennels, a small dog/puppy room, groom room, laundry room (Laundromutt – oho!), kitchen, and a huuuuuge side yard for exercising doggies. But since I last checked it still is not completely fenced in… sigh, some day. Anyway, check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xJHPZSFNI4

Okay! Enough about that. On to the…

DRAMA!

Now, the first I heard of this drama bullcrap was when word got out that one of the employees over at Metro got fed up with something and threatened to euthanize all the dogs in the 100 building (the building containing all our adoptable dogs). I heard from others it was a misunderstanding and blown out of proportion. I can’t ever tell you for sure what happened because I wasn’t there, but I personally believe that (like most stories) it was blown out of proportion.

Then many of the employees came to the media to talk about the horrible conditions (a case or two of abuse, heating not working in the cat room, etc.). I hear they had been complaining to the higher-ups for years, but nothing was being done and they had to resort to the media. I believe it. I’ve met many of the employees there and they’re great people – it’s the management with the issues. Sadly, despite trying to remain anonymous, one of said workers was fired for speaking out and trying to shed some light on the shelter’s issues.

Here’s a video on some of the drama (including our interim director also running an escort service): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LMFYn0Tcsk And that’s enough drama crap because drama isn’t needed. Metro has a bad rap because of all this now. So why do I stick with them instead of going to one of the “better” shelters? Because if people don’t stick around and work with them, how are we supposed to expect anything to change? This is why I have mad respect for the folks at No Kill Louisville, including Jessica Reid. She and NKL have been awesome to us and I am thrilled they have gathered so much support when the organization’s not even a year old.

OTHER UPDATES

It’s past midnight and I’m starting to forget what other updates I had.  Uh. Hm. Well, one of the things I started doing was cleaning the cat room at Petsmart on Tuesday nights. I’m there for around 3 hours scooping poop and wiping down cages. I let some of the cats (particularly the kittens) out so they can bounce off the walls and expend some of their energy, which is always good times. I get to know some of the cats’ personalities and write a bit about them on their kennel cards in hopes it will help them get adopted.

Almost a year ago I adopted our 3rd cat, Chaplin, from that very cat room. His shelter name was Night. He is a black and white ball of doofus. Not a day goes by that that cat doesn’t make me smile. Seriously, adopt a shelter pet. It may be the best thing you ever do for your mental health.

And now I need to go crash. I will hopefully update this sucker in a more timely manner from now on. If by some chance you have some spare time that I have somehow not killed, go read the blog Hyperbole and a Half:  http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/ It is so amazingly awesome and funny (especially the entry about her dogs’ reactions to them moving to a new house).