Petfinder Post: Days When It Hardly Pays to Get Out of Bed

Yesterday was definitely not a nice day. 

Sleep-deprived and reacting to New Roundup, I rushed into town to call a client. I had not heard from the client during the previous week; this was not a good sign for the advance payment I needed. Building up to a thunderstorm, the air was so humid it would have been hard to breathe even without the toxic vapors in the air. The first store I came to that had a phone has lovely air conditioning. Faint from relief, I looked around for something to buy. The store had chairs! How nice! I sat on a chair and looked at a video game machine. It was not the simple kind of video game machine a few school friends used to waste money on, where kids threw away their quarters just to play a simple puzzle game and compare their time with others'. I saved my quarters for the school laundry machines, which were more of a gamble. But I had done pretty well at video games when kids started loading them onto school computers so we could play free of charge. I watched the display on this video game machine, trying to figure out what the game was and whether it was worth wasting a quarter, because I hadn't seen anything I really wanted to take home. The first thing I figured out was that the game cost a dollar, not a quarter. The game promised payouts to those who "won." So what did it take to "win"? I watched the distracting display. It crossed my mind that a video game that offered payouts might be considered gambling. I started to rationalize that if I was wasting a dollar with the intention of buying something for Miss Manners, that wasn't gambling, and if I was playing a game with the intention of testing and building my reflexes...

"Are you all right?" asked the storekeeper.

"Fine," I said, "just hot and tired is all." I must have been wheezing. I tried to stop.

"You can sit outside," said the storekeeper.

I went outside, and just kept walking until a friend stopped and gave me a lift the rest of the way home. I figured Miss Manners didn't need anything from that store. 

Then I came inside, followed by Serena the Queen Cat, and restarted the computer. Immediately Chrome crashed and lost all the tabs. Serena sat down near the desk and sniffed at her kitten, then came over to me. "I'm tired of feeding that big ugly thickwitted kitten," she nonverbally said.

"Is it ill?" I stroked Serena's coat. She licked my arm.

"No, but it looks like its father. I miss the tomcat from down the road who gave me pretty, nice, clever little kittens like Silver."

"The people who adopted that Tar Baby to replace him certainly have a grievance against our cat-poisoning Bad Neighbor," I said. "But you can't feed a kitten for two weeks and then stop. It's a dear little thing. Its ears are still folded, but it's listening to us. It only ignores most sounds because they don't mean anything to the kitten yet. It's precious, because it's half yours, whatever the other half of it is."

"It's a giant freak," Serena nonverbally said. "Are you sure you want me to feed it?"

"Its body is the size of a normal kitten who's a whole month old," I observed. "Its legs and feet aren't quite keeping up the pace, but it's trying to walk and even climb. You're not having any difficulty lactating, are you?"

"Seriously? Does that kitten look as if I weren't feeding it?" 

"It looks very well fed," I said. "It's adorable, Serena. You should be licking it instead of me."

"Psych! You needed something to distract you from yelling at the computer," Serena nonverbally said, cuddling down around the kitten. 

The client came out. "Can you wait another day?" The client had had some heavy expenses, which I'd suspected when the client hadn't come out for more than a week. 

I trudged back into the office. A nice steady soaking rain began to fall. No need to sit up playing nightwatchman. I started the computer playing the Oppenheimer Ranch weather report, leaned back to hear what weather disasters this rain was the Edge of, and woke up six hours later. 

"Why is the office so dark? APCo really shouldn't have turned off the lights yet. They got a substantial overpayment in April. I've not picked up the bill yet but it can hardly be even $50, and it can't be overdue...." I was thinking, not talking.

"I let you sleep six whole hours! What a good cat I am! Now let me out, please, that itsy-bitsy litter box is no drier than it was the night before last!" Serena nonverbally said. She was not actually dancing on her hind legs around the door, like the cats in that litter box commercial. 

I opened the door for Serena. Everything outdoors was lush and green and wet. The ground was mushy. Traffic noise sounded loud and close up in the humid air.

Well, some of it really was close up. As I set out kibble for the cats, the man who comes around looking for five-dollar jobs came by. "Four or five trees are lying across your power line below the house, more above. The tree trimmers have just started at the bottom of the hill." So I let him bring me to McDonald's.

I had noticed three dead trees leaning ominously when I came in from town the night before. I hadn't thought that another tree was likely to go down in the rain; it had looked healthy. One of the dead trees had taken a living tree with it. And evidently a lot of people had similar complaints, because emergency calls had been made; one of the two trucks that brought in four tree trimmers had come from Indiana. A lot of tree trimmers' and linemen's trucks were on the road.

I went into the post office to collect the mail before the box was closed. No advance payment for me meant no full payment of that bill. No, the post office couldn't take a partial payment and wait till tomorrow to close the box. The one person for whom I've been doing odd jobs, in real life, had to make special arrangements to pay me this evening. I sent out a few e-mails asking if anyone had $95 to lend overnight. No one had. Paying it tomorrow means the post office can tack on a $25 late fee. Is a mail drop worth all thaaaat much money? some asked.

Well...if and when we get that physical store, I can close the P.O. Box and get mail through the store.

Some days it hardly pays to get out of bed.

But it is cheering to know I have someone to come home to, someone who cares about me in some unimaginably alien way. 

Do you, Gentle Readers, know someone who needs someone to come home to? The following selection of adorable animal photos is only a suggestion. If you actually visit a shelter to meet these animals you might meet other animals you found even more adorable. Please share the photos with anyone who might know anyone who can give an animal a good home. (Petfinder.com is for the US only. If there's not a similar service in your country, you might want to talk to a pet supply company about starting one.)

In honor of the end of most school terms and the number of children who are old enough to go to a shelter with a parent and choose a pet to adopt, today's theme is Animals Known to Behave Well with Children. Obviously I'm thinking of school-aged children, but shelter staff try to identify animals who are patient and gentle even with toddlers.

Zipcode 10101: Jovie from Newark by way of Bloomfield 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/jovie-playful-and-petite-calico-74872236/ny/new-york/daps-animals-nj694/

The Petfinder page was playing up today. It wanted to stick on the row of photos that began with Jovie's. Though her story sounds as if humans abandoned her in a rough neighborhood, this kittenish calico holds no grudges. She likes to play and snuggle, and has a best buddy cat who, unfortunately, is not especially nice with children. In fact he sounds grumpy, though he has reasons and they emphasize that his purrsonality is improving--perhaps due in part to Jovie. 

Purr-haps the best home for Jovie and Bronny would be one where he could live mostly outdoors, or under the porch, and she could spend at least some time indoors with her humans. So we have an Alternate Selection:

Sandy and Dennys from NYC

Their web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/sandy-dennys-76597408/ny/new-york/big-apple-cats-ny1700/

Their web page doesn't mention whether the tabby brothers originally had siblings called Meg and Charles Wallace. Anyway they were named by somebody who liked A Wrinkle in Time. Four months old when their web page was set up, they're apparently well brought up, gentle buddies who have learned to snuggle beside humans and play-fight with each other. They must be adopted together.

Zipcode 20202: Sharpie from DC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/sharpie-76766218/dc/washington/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-dc20/

They don't really know much about her but, as far as the shelter staff have been able to tell, she's friendly with other cats, dogs, and children. ("Sharpie" was baby-boomer slang for one who was "sharp," meaning intelligent, and/or mean-mouthed, and/or a shrewd trader, and/or interesting, and/or attractive, and/or stylish or popular. Hence the brand of writing instruments. Some people who described someone as "a real sharpie" liked and admired the person; some detested the person.) 

Zipcode 30303: Floren from Atlanta 

Her web page: 

Floren may have left a good home to give birth to kittens in a crawl space under a house, or been dumped by people who made it an affectionate but not really good home. She's described as the sort of cat who "flips, flops, chirps, and snuggles her way to your heart." Shelter staff want to let her keep her smallest kitten, Little My, because they're especially close. Little My and the other "Moomin" kittens are also said to behave well with children. The other kittens are thought to be more typical cats who won't mind leaving their family as they grow up.

The Moomin books, which seemed childish when originally published in English as chapter books for middle grades, have been reprinted in more cartoonish formats to appeal to younger readers. They are children's stories that contain no overt sex, but author Tove Jansson spent her last years in an apparently happy lesbian relationship and wrote some characters' relationships in ways that would allow adults to explain same-sex couples by analogy with Moomin characters. Floren and her kittens were named after Moomin characters. 

Bonus Cat: Ryan from Johnson City, Tennessee 

His web page: https://www.petfinder.com/cat/ryan-76554494/tn/johnson-city/operation-johnson-kitty-tn904/

Oh...my...dog! Talk about a "coon cat"...Ryan's not known to have any Maine Coon ancestors, but what does that face look like? Most of his coat is only "medium," softer and fluffier than a regular short-haired cat's coat, but he has quite an impressive half-mane of long hair on his leonine chest. He has had some medical problems, including the loss of his right eye, but they don't seem to be highly contagious or to affect his energy. He likes to play! He's described as "athletic."

Zipcode 10101: Mia from NYC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/mia-76016685/ny/new-york/stray-from-the-heart-ny245/

She weighed in at ten pounds when she was eight months old. Unfortunately Petfinder doesn't tell when these web pages were set up. Anyway Mia is a Chihuahua and dachshund mix. She will grow bigger than this, but not much bigger. As a very small dog, she has a long life expectancy, and as apparently an extra-lovable dog, she should give some lucky family a lot of happiness. She could be a child's companion from preschool to college.

Zipcode 20202: Minnie from DC 

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/minnie-76447084/dc/washington/gracies-project-tx2503/

Minnie had parvovirus. Many dogs don't survive that disease, but Minnie did. She's now described as happy, healthy, and sweet as can be, a young energetic dog who likes to run and play.

Zipcode 30303: Daisy from Atlanta

Her web page: https://www.petfinder.com/dog/daphne-76610365/ga/atlanta/joyful-pets-animal-rescue-ma499/

Daisy has some issues. She has food allergies, has been ill, and has become a clinger who really needs a home where at least one of the humans is in the house all the time. She behaves well with people she trusts but is apt to panic when none of those people is nearby. Daisy might actually do better in a family with children.