be kind to animals – Better Living Through Literature

Cat Lady Hand-Wringing

September 27, 2017September 27, 2017 Karen

Right after I posted about Oliver loving his new house, I put his bed heater in it because temps were going to drop. Well, the cord coming out of the house scared him off, and then it started to rain Thursday night.

He didn’t get in his house at all while it was raining over the weekend and I just kept kicking myself for messing with his bed and scaring him–until I realized the bedding in there was getting soaked from the rain hitting the deck and splashing back up through the doorway. Then I was kicking myself for not figuring out a way to keep his only warm and dry place DRY. (There was a lot of pacing at the door and hand-wringing during the rain on Sunday.)

Getting things dried out meant I was messing with his house even MORE after the weekend, so he still didn’t get in there. He was sleeping in his tarp-covered chair Monday night, and as much as I wanted to put his bed warmer in there and hide the scary cord, I resisted. This morning as I type he’s finally back in his house, after nearly a week, and I’m tiptoeing around inside like he’s a very shy unicorn.

So after all that, we’re trying to figure out how to keep his house and food dry as we move into even worse weather. Do we cover the pergola top with a tarp? That will keep a big area dry but not do much about blowing snow. Do we buy him an extra large doghouse that will fit his cat house and have space for food and water in it? Do we do BOTH? Do we just capture him and force him to live in the basement all winter?

Sheesh. They don’t tell you about all this hand-wringing that comes with the cat lady merit badge.

Earning My Cat Lady Merit Badge

September 21, 2017 Karen

Our stray Oliver has been getting more and more tame and enjoying the little blanket we put out for him on the chair. So when I saw it was going to rain all last weekend, I thought I’d try making him a tent. I wasn’t even sure he’d go in it, but it was a big success (even if it looked like a kitty hobo camp, which I guess it is).

It’s hard to take pictures through the glass, but he was having a morning bath.

Well, I sent the tent photo to my mom–the original cat lady–and she came back with an unused small doghouse that my dad had weatherized with one-inch insulation, a raised floor, a pillow, and a fleece pillowcase. (One of her old cats was mostly an outside cat.)

I still wasn’t sure if Oliver would get in something so enclosed, but clearly Oliver is no fool. I put it out at lunch and he was in there by 5:00 that afternoon.

He’s been in it every morning and evening since and most of the day, too. Here he is so relaxed he’s falling out of bed:

I’m so glad he has the smarts to stay warm. There’s going to be a cold snap this weekend so I’ll put in the heated bed warmer (!) my mom also supplied. Next up is figuring out how to keep his food dry and water unfrozen as it gets colder. And, you know, moving him into the house. (Don’t tell Toby.)

Friday Links

April 28, 2017April 28, 2017 Karen

1. Doc named the stray we’re feeding Oliver because “he asks for more” by gradually creeping closer and closer to the house. So I guess we have an outside cat now?

2. This is an article about answering emails but also smashing the patriarchy, and I am here for it (emphasis mine):

Patriarchy (and institutional bigotry) conditions us to operate as if we are constantly working at a deficit. In some ways, this is true. You have to work twice as hard to get half the credit. I have spent most of my life trying to be perfect… I wanted to be good, as if by being good I might prove that I deserved more than the ephemeral esteem of sexist asshats.

Listen to me: Being good is a terrible handicap to making good work. Stop it right now. Just pick a few secondary categories, like good friend, or good at karaoke.

3. I’m going to start using “sexist asshats” a lot more in conversation.

Feeding Creatures

April 20, 2017April 20, 2017 Karen

Taking the advice of this Neil Gaiman poem, we’ve started feeding a stray cat. He was in pretty pitiful shape–thin and raggedy and beat up–and Toby wasn’t too bothered by him on the other side of the glass. So Doc and I looked at each other and said, “What’s the worst that can happen? We get an outside cat. Let’s do it.”

He shows up pretty regularly for his breakfast and dinner, but he still disappears under the deck when we go outside with food. We’ve made him a little feral house, too, but so far he’s not going in to it.

The twelve-year-old girl in me wants desperately to make this wild creature my special friend and have him trust me, but we’ll see. Just making sure he’s fed and warm is enough, too.

Zen Like The Fox

September 30, 2015 Karen

For Wednesday, here’s an interview with photographer Roeselien Raimond that shows recent work from her series Zen Foxes, which is exactly what it says on the tin.

The photos are charming but I also endorse Raimond’s reason for her fox portraits:

For me animals are not necessarily less than human beings, they’re just different and not even that different. I’d like people to see that animals are beings with individual characters, a personality, with their own specific desires, fears, oddities, pros and cons, just like we have. And if my photos can make one person realize that an animal is not a coat to wear, not an object to lock up in a cage, nor something you thoughtlessly cut in slices to eat…that mission would be accomplished.

Wednesday Weepies

March 18, 2015 Karen

Oh man, they are happy tears, but the chickens touching the ground for the first time and the chimps hugging really get me. Some more information and links here.

https://youtu.be/kwCrJ6OZnuY

Friday Unrelated Information

February 21, 2014 Karen

1. How about some heartwarming animal stories to end the week? An animal rescue organization in Pennsylvania lets kids volunteer to read to cats at the shelter. Kids get reading time, cats get people time, and the internet gets some really cute pictures (many more at this link):

2. And here is a series of photos of dogs on the drive to their forever homes, after being saved from a Chicago shelter.

3. Is your heart melted yet? Mine is.

Friday Unrelated Information

March 30, 2012 Karen

1. As a work field trip, the creative team went to The Leonardo museum yesterday afternoon. Did you know they have a huge collection of photos from the civil rights era? It was really moving to read about something that changed so monumentally less than 50 years ago.

2. Another thing that moved me (to tears) yesterday was this video, the title of which sums it up: “Blind Dog Rescued from Trash, Regains Sight.”

You may also be moved to donate to the rescue organization.

Science, Can You Give Us Vat-Grown Meat Already?

November 18, 2010 Karen

I had a post all written last week about factory-farmed eggs and chickens, and I ended up not posting it. Because I don’t want to be Angry Vegetarian Girl, and because it was too sad. (An anonymous animal rights group in Israel put a hidden camera in a battery farming operation so you can see chickens stuffed three to cage without enough space to stand up straight, let alone stretch out their wings–on a live feed. It is, needless to say, DEEPLY DISTURBING.)

Battery cages are what the vast majority of chickens producing eggs and meat live in–the hidden camera shows the norm for chicken farming, not some horrifying violation. I find it deeply disturbing, yes–which is why I don’t eat chicken and buy “beyond cage free” eggs–but I find it really depressing, too: I may care about chicken welfare, but most of the world either likes $1 chicken sandwiches too much or really believes that food animals are too stupid to notice how they’re raised.

Obviously, I disagree. (I’ve always liked the Jeremy Benthem quote,”The question is not, ‘Can they reason?’ nor, ‘Can they talk?’ but rather, ‘Can they suffer?’ “) So I was pretty happy to read an article in Time yesterday about animal intelligence. In a nice, non-Angry Vegetarian way it pointed out that yes, animals should probably be treated better because they’re actually not too stupid to feel things:

If animals can reason — even if it’s in a way we’d consider crude — the unavoidable question becomes, Can they feel?…And what does it say about how we treat them?

[…]No matter what any one scientist thinks of animal cognition, nearly all agree that the way we treat domesticated animals is indefensible — though in certain parts of the world, improvements are being made . The European Union’s official animal-welfare policies begin with the premise that animals are sentient beings and must be treated accordingly.

Ultimately, a mainstream article like this is going to change more opinions than radical hidden cameras in chicken farms or earnest blog posts from vegetarians. But I dare you to read up on chicken farming anyway.

Ratty!

September 9, 2010 Karen3 Comments

My suspicions of an r-a-t visiting the spilled food underneath the bird feeder were confirmed last night. I spent about fifteen minutes thinking I had to get rid of the rat, now, because…it’s a RAT! But then I realized a few things:

1. Quail, doves, a blue jay, a family of raccoons, and a family of squirrels that live under the neighbor’s garage all visit the yard. None of those bother me.

2. I know I don’t have rats inside my house. Toby is probably a good guarantee that I never will.

3. The rat sat up bravely and watched me with its little face and it looked JUST LIKE THIS:

So enjoy the sunflower seeds, Ratty. But stay out of sight of sight of the landlord because I doubt he has a laissez-faire policy for rats.