"You don't really believe that, do you?"

...is what one of my co-workers said when I announced that I thought that Little Miss was possessed.

Well, no, I don't really truly deep-down believe it, but she's been showing a couple of weird Littlefoot behaviors over the past few days, like raiding the stash of cotton balls and chewing them up before spitting them out on the living room floor, and licking the kitchen floor.

Oh well, at least she wasn't possessed by Bigfoot, and therefore able to open the refrigerator door!

No more rubber ducks

A few years ago, I read and enjoyed A Year Without Made in China by Sara Bongiorni, and it made me realize how pervasive Chinese-made items were in the US. Then a good friend almost lost a cat due to tainted pet food made in China. Recently, I read Swindled, a very good and very scary book about how food has historically been adulterated and continues to be. The saddest and scariest parts were the New York swill milk scandals of the mid-1800s and the two Chinese milk scandals in the last ten years. Then came the revelation that MAC Cosmetics, which wants to sell to the growing Chinese middle class, will in fact be testing on animals, something which is required by Chinese law.

So the Chinese government does not care about food quality for either pets or babies, but requires makeup to be tested on animals? It won't make much, if any difference to the big picture, but unless it's something I need instead of something I want, I will not be buying anything Chinese-made.

I will be going through my cosmetics to see what has been made in China, and no, I won't discard anything I already have, but I won't buy more from that company. I already know that most, if not all, rubber ducks are made in China, so no more of those. For everything else, I'll look to see where it's made, and only buy it if A. I need it and B. I can't find an American-made alternative.

My condolences to Sherri and Jay

who lost their beautiful black and white kitty Ophelia today. I had the pleasure of hosting Ophelia twice, and she was as sweet as she was pretty.

*hugs Sherri and Jay*

Oh. My. Dog.

I got a phone call today to set up a meeting with the Summit County Executive about my letter and that horrible shelter! Now I have two weeks to get ready, worry about what I'm going to say and what I'm going to wear...

Letter #2

(Letter #1, if you missed it)

June 7, 2010


Mr. Russell Pry
Summit County Executive
175 S. Main St.
Akron, OH 44308-1314

Dear Mr. Pry:

Enclosed is a copy of a letter I sent to the Summit County Animal Control facility director over six weeks ago. Even though the former Executive Director of Heaven Can Wait ‘shelter’ has been convicted of cruelty to animals and the current Executive Director was also charged, the Summit County Animal Control facility still allows this organization to ‘adopt’ animals from them. I have received no reply to my letter, and as this concerns potential animal neglect and abuse, I am now looking to you for answers.

Since the taxpayers of Summit County are supporting the Animal Control facility, I believe we have the right to ask for accountability on the part of its staff, especially where the welfare of individual animals is concerned.

Ideally, the County would stop allowing Heaven Can Wait to remove animals from its facility owing to the owner’s conviction and jail term for animal cruelty. A much less satisfactory alternative would be the monitoring of any animals so removed on a weekly basis until such time as they are adopted.

Thank you for your anticipated attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you soon.


Very truly yours,

Anyone who wants to copy and send this letter above his or her name and signature has my promise that I will reimburse you for the cost of postage. Please help.

Thanks,

Jammies

Letter #1

Animal Control
Attn: [Facily Manager's Name Redacted]
460 E. North St.
Akron, OH 44304

Dear Ms. Manager:

Enclosed is a copy of a flyer which was posted on my home mailbox earlier this week. Please note that the flyer specifies that all animals come from the Summit County Animal Control Facility and that the new Executive Director is XX. As I’m sure you remember, the only reason cruelty charges were dropped against XX was that her daughter agreed to plead guilty to the charges against her.

The day after I received the flyer, I called your office, but the young man with whom I spoke dismissed my concerns quite casually. I would very much appreciate some reassurance that Summit County will stop allowing Heaven Can Wait to take animals from your facility or that you are monitoring the health and safety of any animals so removed.

Thank you for your anticipated attention to this matter

Very truly yours,

An Akron woman was just sentenced to house arrest for animal abuse and neglect. Here is a lovely picture of her mother, Patricia, at her daughter's sentencing.

So tonight, I get home from work, and find a flyer stuffed between the mailbox and the flag. I open it up to fold it neatly and put it into the recycling, and discover that Heaven Can Wait is holding a big party to reopen this Saturday. The flyer invites the reader to adopt one of the dogs or cats rescued from the Summit County Animal Shelter, and to meet the new Executive Director, Patricia Mihaly.

When I came home from water-walking, I left a voice mail for the reporter who wrote the story I linked to, telling him about the reopening and asking if he knew how this "shelter" is getting more animals from the county shelter. Tomorrow, I will look into finding out how to get the papers necessary to qualify as a 501c and seeing if there are sponsors who might not want to have their names associated with an animal abuse case.

Tonight, I shall fantasize about picketing the shelter open house on Saturday, carrying a blown-up version of Patricia's lovely picture.

My brother, Billy Chapman

I promised I would write this story up, so here goes:

A decade or so ago, my middle brother and his wife had bought and moved into their first house. At the time, they had no kids, a cute little grey tiger cat and a cute big yellow Lab. The house was in a brand new development, so they had very few neighbors.

It was December, and cold. The big cute yellow Lab hadn't adjusted to the move very well and had had a number of accidents in the house (shut up Scott, lol). My sister-in-law left the Friday before Christmas to spend some time in New York with her family, and my brother remained in Columbus because he had to work.

On December 23rd, Billy came home from work, parked the car in the garage, opened the door to the kitchen and was immediately confronted with the results of the loss of canine self-control. He threw his keys on the kitchen table, grabbed the dog and hauled him outside. He was fairly upset at this point, but he really got mad when he discovered that he'd just locked himself out of the house.

So it's near Christmas, what few houses exist in their development are empty, and Billy is outside in the freezing December weather with an incontinent dog and no cell phone. He looks around the garage, grabs his wood axe, winds up and smashes it into the door frame so hard that he can hear the strike plate crash into the sliding glass doors on the other side of the kitchen. The door pops open, he goes in, cleans up the floor, calms down and has a quiet evening.

Around bedtime, he realizes he hasn't seen the cat all evening, and goes looking. He finds the poor thing wedged in the bathroom corner behind the toilet, trembling like mad. Little brother figures that Kitty was probably in the kitchen when he killed the doorframe, and spends a fair amount of time petting and soothing the poor little guy.

On Christmas Eve, Billy drives up to my folks' house, Annabel comes in from New York, we have a lovely Christmas and they leave a day or so later. A week after they get home, they wake up one morning to find giant clumps of fur everywhere, and a cat who is one-half to three-quarters bald.

So they rush Kitty to the vet, and three doctors, two techs and a student intern all rush around looking things up in books, doing blood tests, asking questions until finally my brother says, in a very very small voice,

"Erm, if something scared him really badly, could that cause this?"

"Oh, of course, stress-related alopecia" says the vet. "Why, did something scare him?"

"Maybe." says little brother, still in that small voice.

So that is the story of how my younger brother literally scared the fur off his cat (who did go on to live a pretty long and full life).

Oh, and the name Billy Chapman is from Silent Night, Deadly Night

Separated at birth...

My Littlefoot and Mallie's Ophelia. Nevermind that one is a brown dog and the other is a tuxedo cat. They both have the ability to transform ordinary pet food into fumes which violate the Geneva Convention, they both have too much fur, and both of them get to sleep after keeping their owners up all night.

Whatever made Bigfoot sick last week, he got better (no, he wasn't a newt). Littlefoot is the sick one this week, and last night, he woke me up every ninety minutes wanting to go out. Because there's a certain amount of adrenalin involved in having a dog bark in your ear in the middle of the night and knowing it's going to be a race to make it to the back door before said dog explodes, every time it happened I lost about 30 minutes of sleep.

Like his spiritual twin, Littlefoot slept all day. I had to wrestle with civil jury instructions and coding of same.

Really funny

A blog entry about cat butt from Johnny Virgil.

Not Thunder

I caught lilbittyblackkitty tonight in the humane trap and called the other Pamela. Any worries I'd had about psychos looking to collect black kitties for Halloween ended when she sat down in the driveway in front of the trap for 20 minutes and talked to the kitty to reassure him. Her husband came over from work, and we locked the dogs in the house and took the trap into the breezeway. We let the kitty out, and he ran all over, trying to find a way out. After a few minutes, when he'd wedged himself onto the plant stand next to the window, he let Tim pet him and eventually pick him up. That was when we saw the white blaze on his tummy, which meant that he wasn't Thunder. However, he relaxed in Pamela's arms, and clung to her shirt with his front paws. After a few words and a lot of looks, the way you get with married couples, Tim told me they were adopting this little sweetie pie, even if it wasn't Thunder. They left, having promised to keep me posted via e-mail, and I went out to the garage, and picked up the empty plate.

I am going to miss talking to lilbittyblackkitty. *sigh*

Thunder

Evidently, lilblackkitty is quite the adventurer. I responded to an ad in the local paper, and a very sweet young couple came out to the house today to see the kitty. They live south of Akron, but they both work at the tv station up the street, and they're pretty sure it's their kitty who's been living in my yard since August. They think he hitched a ride in the bed of their pickup one day when they went to work, then hopped out and wandered off.

Unfortunately, he's a skittish little booger. Apparently, he was to start with, but after over a month in my yard, with dogs, groundhogs, traffic, Josh on the lawnmower and deer to startle him, he's exceptionally nervous now. So at the moment, there's an unset humane trap in the driveway, with a dish of food in it. Every day, I'm going to push the food a little farther back in the trap, and the minute I have the fugitive caught, I'm going to call his owner and send his little butt home. Well, not so little after a month of eating Kitten Chow. ;)

There are two odd things--first is that Thunder's name is so close to Bigfoot's real name, Thunderstorm. The second is that Thunder's owner and I have the same first name. Maybe he was meant to wind up here, I don't know. I just know I'm glad he'll be going home safely before Halloween and before the snow flies. :)

I'm being played

This said with a wry grin and a roll of the eyes.

After feeding the dogs, I went out to the garage and put some cat food on the plate in the driveway. Because I've been overdoing it, I was a bit sore, so I sat down on a lawn chair to rest for a few minutes. Lilblackkitty ate dinner, but instead of running away, decided to settle down in the driveway for a bit. I stayed to talk and see if perhaps I could approach close enough to see if lilblackkitty is black or does have some brown patches.

I talked, the cat watched me, then sat up and looked into the garage where I leave the bag of food. Just then, a mouse scuttled past where the garage floor meets the driveway. The kitty ignored the mouse, looked at me, and walked over to the bag of food and meowed.

My guess is that kitty has a house somewhere, but is an outdoor kitty. He or she certainly wasn't feral enough to kill a mouse running two inches in front of it, or even to make a try at it.

*laughing at myself*

Once more, the big softie gets taken in.

In Loving Memory of Lexus Arizona, "Lexi-Dog"

As I mentioned, my friend Amy had to have her adored Lexi-Dog put to sleep on Monday. Today, I received a two-page memorial from Amy, containing The Rainbow Bridge, A Dog's Prayer, and three beautiful pictures of Lexi.

I have never liked small dogs, but Lexi looked like a mini version of the younger of my two dogs, and was just the sweetest, smartest little thing. She was not even remotely yappy, was very smart and a total cuddle bunny.

Nothing but a very long time will ease the ache that comes from the loss of a pet. They're here for such a short time, but give and receive so much love in their little time that a part of us dies when they do. I'm not much for prayer, but I do pray that the rainbow bridge really exists, and that there will be many joyful reunions.

Until that time, Lexi, may you run free.