|
I work 20 hours a week plus a bunch of volunteer time at an animal shelter. I've had pets before but this is a whole new world to me. I started in November and I have no veterinary training at all and I am learning a lot of things very quickly. Today I learned about pee. I have never seen so much pee in all my life. We have five dogs, and one of them is a puppy, somewhere around three months, maybe. I was really tired from driving to another town four hours or so away to pick them up and missing a ferry coming back, then getting up balls early for work the next morning. I let the puppy out back first and mopped out the kennel for the first time while pup had a bathroom break outside. I let the big bull mastiff out next, carefully closing all the doors and putting the gate up on the corridor, opening the outside door first. Alpha walked with me to the door, sniffed the outside and immediately slung all of his 100 pounds back up the corridor, wiggled out of his collar and sauntered up and cocked his leg on the hose we have in the kennel hallway. Goddamnit Alpha. Alpha goes outside and I set to cleaning up that pee but meanwhile pup has just lost her poo poo from all the excitement of that and peed in her kennel again, but also the other three dogs have to go out and they're all just in within the last couple of days and none of them have been behaviour tested so they each have to go out into the yard alone on rotation. I scrubbed out the kennel four times today for lil pup and put down a bunch of puppy pads but i can't stay overnight and spend enough time with him to make sure he knows what they're for. Tomorrow morning will also be a lesson in pee. Also five dogs means SO MUCH POOP. And spending a good half hour finding all the clever spots they put that poop in the rain with a shovel and pusher thingy and a lined rubbermaid bin thing that you put out with the mounds of cat poop and rabbit pellets and litter that you scoop every day cause you are a critter housekeeper. Cause we also have cats, kittens, rabbits and guinea pigs that all constantly pee and poo. In between dealing with the humans that come in and want to tell you their life story while you stand there with a bucket of soapy water in your hand knowing poo poo really has to be done right now and ain't nobody else gonna do it. It is totally awesome no matter how much poop i have to shovel and I love it because i have so many rad critter friends that find awesome people to live with but some days I also feel totally helpless. Tell me your shelter life stories, please.
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2015 08:50
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:07 |
|
|
Yeah, we get a lot of dogs in from Manitoba in winter. We're a small shelter in a small town and we have three actual kennels, which is why five dogs is pretty lol. We have a geriatric that is probably going into palliative foster (poor ol thing, she'd be a euth if the boss hadn't seen the guy who had to give her up sobbing), in what was designed as our volunteer room and converted, the bonded puppy-and-adult pair in in the first kennel - swapped with Gerri the geriatric because the adult can open the door! - and then the other two have these big lively mastiff crosses in who were both tethered res dogs. We can only have one (or the bonded pair sharing a kennel) out in the exercise yard at a time and it's heartbreaking hearing everyone else crying out for company when I've got all the cleaning to do and there's only one of me on. Afternoons are better cause walker volunteers come in and I get a bit of time to hang out with my animal buddies. For the first few days, Alpha would only eat his breakfast outside. He was stoked to have an inside bed and a big stuffy friend and a bone to chew, but I guess he had no idea that you could eat inside without being yelled at. He'd look at his bowl, then turn around and look at you and be like "uuuuuhhhhh, can I go out now?". He might be at a shelter near you soon, because we need to transfer him out of town for adoption. We're too small and isolated to adopt him here and risk him being seen around town and retrieved. We had phone calls and complaints about him at his old home for months and we couldn't do anything about it without getting in an animal welfare constable and the RCMP agreeing to come with, plus a good month of red tape legal poo poo to work with, but he broke his tether and got out on the highway and that's when we picked him up. We have the support of the band office, but his owner is unhappy and not a nice person in general so it's all less likely to cause trouble down the line if he is somewhere else. Next time I will post pics of shelter friends! I was just way too busy this weekend to take any.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 20, 2015 05:39
|
|
|
Our shelter is pretty small compared to city shelters, and the building is only 18 months old so everything is pretty new and clean still. We clean every kennel, cage and enclosure every single day, and most animals will eat their wet food straight away, so there's not too much crud lying around. We have 3 kennels and 3 cat rooms each with two cat cages, plus a puppy room and a kitten room. The cages are standard two-compartment things where the cat's hidey box and food is in one compartment and the litterbox in the other. The cat rooms have sliding doors to a courtyard fenced in with chainlink, and the dog rooms have dog doors to their outdoor areas. We also have one more cage in our medical room/intake area. With the cats, if we have two that don't get along, we rotate them so they each have time to enjoy the whole room, or if they're bonded cats we just let them hang out together. Same with dogs - some we can let outside in the exercise yard together, but we're constantly rotating dogs out during the day. We don't have any cockroaches (yet!). The number of animals at any given time fluctuates, but right now we have seven dogs (two of them are in foster at my house and one more is in foster at another girl's house), seven cats and four kittens, plus four rabbits and a lamb that comes in with one of our senior animal care people, who has a farm at home. It does get a bit barky, depending on the individual dogs we have. It is a stressful environment for a lot of animals and we do our best to make everyone calm and happy, but we can't change the fact that they're in a building with a zillion other critters and people coming in and out all day. Today a lady stopped by to make a donation and she had a Quaker parrot in her jacket! It just rides around with her all day and comes out to poop. We've had everything from ducks to raccoons since the building was built! Volunteers are a huuuuuge help to us. Some of the jobs are a bit gross and involve scooping litterboxes or picking up poo in the exercise yard, but we also have volunteers that walk dogs and socialise cats. Some shelters insist you do a gross job so you can do a fun job, but we're pretty relaxed and we have a couple of really great animal companions and socialisers that do laundry and dishes, but don't have to do the poo stuff. I often just do the gross things myself so the volunteers can do what they're best at. I don't mind poo, I'd much rather deal with that than say, finances. Pictures time! These two are my foster dogs until tomorrow. The blonde guy is Rex and the black and white is Bella. They're shih tzu crosses, so they have all the cute without the smushy faces! I'm lucky they're adopted already, otherwise I would probably keep them. The pic is taken at my house - excuse the dirty floor!  This is Basil the lamb hanging out with his bun buddies, Igor and Skip  And this is one of our feral kittens (unnamed thus far) chillin next to her litterbox like a weirdo. The ferals are always the most anxious and fearful when they come in. Some warm up reallyy quickly, like this one but others can take months of our cat wizard (a lovely retired lady) visiting them every day with treats and brushes. 
Shithouse Dave fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Feb 5, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2015 04:01
|
|
|
Oh god, the way people will bitch about you is incredible. I spent hours and hours not getting shelter poo poo done with one lady who adopted a GSD mix transferred in jfrom the prairies while she wavered about wanting a vaccine so the dog could go to daycare and not wanting to vaccinate her dog, talking her through why it will give the dog diarrhea if you suddenly give her huge amounts of wet food, and having her come back the next day and go "oh she still has diarrhea. I was going to feed her less but she looked really sad", explaining that no we cannot tell her who owned her in manitoba; only to have her send a complaint in about the shelter saying we wouldn't give her the dog's records and that it was really easy to google the previous owner from the vet records (THAT WE GAVE HER, only with the name blacked out) so why wouldn't we just tell her (because uh, we have privacy policies). I'm going to cruelty call training next week, and I just can't wait to make a bunch of enemies in my small town where I will see people I investigated at the supermarket. I get a few scratches most weeks, and I have a huge healed gash on my arm from a six month old feral kitten who was making really good progress and letting me pet her, but I needed to crate her and I thought I could put my arms around her while she was on my knee and NOPE. It's going to make a cool scar. No cat scratch fever, it was immediately washed, alcohol swabbed and wrapped. Shortly before our shelter was built, when it was all volunteers fostering, a cat hoarder died and his estate wouldn't let anyone on the property. I haven't had a hoarder case, and I hope I never do, cause it sounds awful.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2015 08:38
|
|
|
We're pretty accommodating for that sort of thing. We have one lady who loves cats and doesn't dig dogs at all, a guy who loves dogs and cats, but freaks out at rodents, and a few dog walkers who don't want anything to do with cats. We're stoked to have every kind of help!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 6, 2015 03:57
|
|
|
Drawbacks of a small town shelter: today we ran fresh out of dogs! This is actually awesome; in the last week we've found forever homes for eight dogs and now we have room to take more from overcrowded shelters in other places. It was a little bit weird this afternoon though, when I went to get dog dinner ready and prepare kongs, and then remembered there's nobody to eat the dinner or enjoy a nice peanut butter kong with some goodnight pets. This gal was the last to leave today, and her forever people took her home under a huge fuckoff rainbow that stretched right over the shelter.  It's going to be super quiet tomorrow with only five cats and four rabbits in the joint.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2015 04:26
|
|
|
Suspect Bucket posted:You have the weirdest problems. I have the weirdest happy moments too. Today I was very pleased to see a cat poo and congratulated the artisan that produced it with pets and treats. She hadn't been eating very much, and I hadn't seen a turd in her litter box for three days. Good kitty, excellent poo, keep up the good work!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2015 03:50
|
|
|
Psycho Society posted:Ran out of dogs, huh? Congratulations, that doesn't sound like it happens often. How long do you think it will take for your shelter to fill up again? It's about to be kitten season again, so the cat side will start filling right up in a month or so, and we should have some dogs transferred in in the next week or so. Some chinchillas are arriving tomorrow also, but I have cruelty investigation training for the next two days in another town, so I won't get to meet them until the weekend. It can be hard to predict when animals will come in as strays or surrenders though, they're often very short notice to us. Cruelty investigations are the part of my job I'm most worried about. Even in my quiet, isolated town I'm likely to see some horrible poo poo and meet some awful people, who I will then see at the supermarket and the doctor's office. We currently have two people trained to do them and I'll be the third, taking the pressure off my very burnt-out workmates. Tomorrow and Friday I'll be riding along with some experienced people and I am not sure what to expect. I've done two investigations here so far. One was a report of a skinny horse, and we went out there and the owner was very co-operative and explained that she is 32 years old, and he knows this is likely going to be her last winter, but he wanted to try and put some weight back on her before he has her put down. The farrier is out there every six weeks and his other horses are healthy, so it wasn't so bad. The other report was a tethered dog on the reserve and we were working through the process to seize him when he broke tether and got out on the highway. There's a lot of red tape and paperwork involved in seizing an animal, but we are allowed to pick up a roaming one if they're on public property. The elders on the res agreed that it wasn't a good situation for the dog and we found him a great new home with a trail runner, and they're very happy. I'm not looking forward to my first unhappy ending, but I think I will feel good about being an animal hero anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2015 03:57
|
|
|
I did day one of my two days of ride-alongs with cruelty investigators today. I met a man who performed a home euth (badly, but he was genuinely trying to do the right thing and I felt bad for him) and a lady who couldn't afford a vet so allowed her cat to die slowly of a urinary blockage. Charges will be recommended for both. The investigators are much harsher than I think I would be, but they each have three years of it behind them and I think they're a little jaded. There was a big difference between the way they treated people and the way we treat people back in my town. I know it's because they've seen some awful things, but I still think I would have worded things a little differently than "your cat is DEAD and you let it DIE HORRIBLY". Even poor and/or stupid people really love their pets, and I think I'd rather have people not be afraid to come to us for help. These people are never going to call our organization for anything ever again, and much worse poo poo goes down when people are afraid to ask for help. I hope tomorrow is better.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2015 06:54
|
|
|
I assisted in my first euth today. Last Sunday I got a call from a lady from a nearby town that is on an island. Her friend has gone to jail and he might be there a while, and he has a dog that the neighbours are feeding, but nobody wants to take him on in their home, because he is a human aggressive rottweiler who bit his owner last Wednesday. I had the day off Monday, and while the shelter is staffed, we're not open to the public and we do not have excess staff, so off I went with the truck, a selection of party hats (muzzles), a catch pole, a Y-pole, water bowl, leash and treats. I got the ferry over and met up with the caller at the local gas station, who was in the back of a sedan smoking with two burly guys in the front seat. I'd been in touch with the local police and they were fine with me doing this and offered their assistance should things get rough, but these guys looked like I shouldn't need any extra help. We rocketed up some tiny backroads and pulled in at this tiny trailer in the woods. It's a truck bed camper thing without the truck that the guy was living in, and that's where the dog is overnight. The lady told me that he was pretty jazzy that morning, when the neighbours let him out, but he sauntered up and sniffed my hand and didn't react at all. He was 80 pounds of rottweiler cross wearing a shiny choke chain and he looked pretty boss. He hopped right in the back of the truck and into a crate, because obviously car rides are awesome! When we got back to the shelter and went out for a pee (him) and to drink a coffee (me), I noticed that he walked kinda funny. We booked him an appointment at the vet the next day, and he was sweet on the way there, but once we got in, he snapped at the vet and was immediately muzzled. Sure enough, he has hip dysplasia and is probably in pain. The next day, he started getting aggressive at being back in his kennel after being outside. He showed teeth at me, and barked aggressively at any man who came up to his door. He was on pain management meds, but he got more aggressive in the next two days while I was off (and managing to be the Neighbourhood Cat Lady when a neighbour found a cat at his house and panicked that somebody had abandoned this cute as hell cat - turns out no, cat lives two houses away, duh). He doesn't know what toys are, doesn't want to eat or lick a peanut butter kong, doesn't want a milk bone. He's scared as hell and he will fight you if you make him do the scary thing. Our shelter does not have the budget for a multi thousand dollar surgery on a dog we can't adopt in good faith to anyone. We cannot send a human-aggressive dog out into the community. His owner is probably going down for ten years, and this guy is already 8 or 9 years old. Guy looks at me with his big brown eyes and says "I don't wanna go back in there, I want my dad and my truck bed camper in the woods". I offer him a donated frozen weiner. He raises his lips in a snarl and I toss it in the kennel, hoping I won't have to fight with him. He goes. He likes those sausages. He hates the dry food we have. It's all vet-prescribed and not what he knows. I know we have to do this. I'm just done tempting him back in with a weiner after scrubbing the kennels this morning when Sylvie comes in like a hurricane with a coffee for each of us and a fast paced rundown of her life for the two days since I last saw her. As she puts it, "I'm crazy and French, I can't help it!". She's talking a mile a minute, smoking and drinking coffee. She's not scheduled on, but she's often here anyway because the shelter is her life, like I'm discovering the shelter is my life, so it's not a surprise. She is second to my boss, and is the most experienced and knowledgeable with animal health. She's talking about the rotti and checking his file, and I ask her, "What are we going to do with him? We can't let people in to see him" and she says "We've got to put him down". I kind of know this already, but then it hit me, this is right now. She's got her euth ticket and that's why she's in right now. That's what we're doing this morning. Scooping cat boxes is gonna have to wait. We lead him into the medical room and he knows something's up. I give him another bit of weiner, tell him he's a good dog and we put his party hat on. I pet him and straddle him while Sylvie injects the sedative into his hind leg. I sit down on the floor and tell him he's a good boy. We lay a blanket down, turn the lights off and let him settle down. We go outside for a cigarette. Fifteen minutes later, he's conscious, but laid down on the blanket. I put a towel over his neck and shoulders and he relaxes. Sylvie shaves part of his hind leg, to see where the femoral vein is. I hold him in a tight hug with the towel as she slowly pushes the euthasol. He's breathing heavily. He is a good boy. Sylvie slowly pushes and he breathes, in, out, out, in, out, in. out. in. out. in........ out. He breathes a huge sigh and he is gone. Sylvie bandages his leg where she shaved it, and we wrap him. He is heavy and loose, not yet in rigour mortis. We close his eyes and wrap him tightly in a warm blanket, as though that will stave off the inevitable cold. We wrap him in black plastic, attach his cremation tag and lower him into the morgue, which is a big chest freezer. Two teardrops fall off my face and hit the black plastic. Maybe they'll freeze, or maybe they're too salty. Then the rest of the day happened. Volunteers, other staff and members of the public came looking to me for answers, and I gave them. I went and picked up a roaming elderly dog, scooped cat boxes, got volunteers to scoop litter and pick up poo, skipped lunch, went on a wild goose chase for chinchilla food in town. I know this won't be my last euth, but it is sort of bewildering that life just carries on and so do I. I think I'm gonna drink now.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2015 05:42
|
|
|
That was super depressing, and to remedy that I offer you A STRAY CAT THAT LOOKS LIKE SALEM 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2015 06:01
|
|
|
Error 404 posted:Also, to those sharing euth stories, y'all are doing heart sticks before dumping the animals in the freezer, right? omg yes.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 22, 2015 06:42
|
|
|
Well today was weird. I was kinda running on fumes because funnily enough, I didn't sleep that well last night. I didn't have any volunteers in until 2pm, which is odd. Usually there's a couple of girls and their mom who come in and do the litterboxes and vacuum the cat rooms for me, as well as a very quiet but sweet autistic guy who does dishes and laundry. I let our jazzy pit/lab cross out and then roused an old girl who came in yesterday, a sheltie cross approximately a million years old who'd been left to roam the streets until she wandered into a seniors' village where some nice ladies fed her and let her sleep in the garage on some blankets. No collar, no ID. I think I know who owns her, but I left that off the paperwork. She's not going back to be turfed outside again. She's totally deaf, almost blind and she doesn't move well. She'll get up and walk very quietly and stiffly on a leash in the back yard to do her business, but other than that she just wants to sleep. A couple of times I went in to check on her and had to put my hand on her to make sure she was breathing. She stinks, her teeth are totally hosed and she's covered in mats. She can't eat dry food so I went and found the tastiest and best looking donated can of wet food for her. We have a palliative foster lined up for her, I just hope she makes it into foster. She is so old and sad and stiff and sweet. I got a call about a dog wandering in a different part of town, and I took a quick Facebook break to see if anyone had reported a lost dog, and that's when I found out that one of my best friends' dog died in the night last night. He was about 6 years old, big healthy friendly lab/malamute mix who loved everyone, and everyone loved him right back. He started vomiting in the night and my friend called the vet (we don't have a 24hr hospital here, the nearest one is a ferry ride away and the ferries don't run in the night), and he said to keep him calm and warm, it would probably stop on its own. I guess it didn't. He must have eaten something strange in his new neighbourhood - they just moved house last week. I took ten minutes to have a wee cry into my coffee before starting on the cat rooms. I started in the intake room, like I always do. We just have one cat cage in there, and all our medical stuff is stored in the fridges and cupboards. Salem is in there for now, she'll graduate to a cage in one of the larger rooms tomorrow. I let her out to have free run of the room since all the med stuff is stored away and we sanitize the counters before and after every intake anyway. That was a mistake. Turns out Salem doesn't know about litterboxes, so she found a nice pile of clean towels someone had stacked on top of the cage in there yesterday and went hog wild. We already had Mount Laundry piling up because we have a single domestic washer and a single domestic dryer and they do not handle the abuse we throw at them. Every towel in that stack had to be washed. Goddamn it, Salem! She's lucky she's so drat cute, even with her scabby head. I couldn't help but laugh though. When I came in she was just finishing up and she sheepishly tried to pull the towel over to cover it, while looking at me like "uuuuuh, I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, can't prove anything". While it was weird and lonely to be sad by myself (animal company excepted, several kitty and doggy hugs were had), it was kind of a blessing in a way. The work takes your mind off things, and there are many definitely-alive critters with needs that must be met. We also have a couple of young volunteers on Saturdays who kinda create more work than they do (sometimes I feel like a fuckin daycare for school-aged kids) so I just threw myself into getting the shelter ship-shape until the cat lady Beverley came in the afternoon. She's a sprightly retired lady in her early seventies who comes in every day for a couple of hours to brush and pet all the cats, and especially to socialize our feral cats, and she is an absolute godsend. She is a total wizard with the ferals and less sociable cats, and she even wrangles other, less cluey volunteers. She doesn't much care for dogs, but she'll walk a nice small one. She's so cheerful and nice, she brightens my day every single day I'm in there. I get a couple of days off now, so I'm going to bake and go cry with my friend over her dog, and the rotti, and the sheltie who's owner doesn't give a gently caress and I'm gonna hug my cats and plant some things for the fresh new growing season and gear up for Rabbitocalypse 2015. Oh yeah, did I mention we have a feral rabbit problem? They breed like uh....
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2015 04:45
|
|
|
Awwwww Western. I hate when they start so promising and end up crossing the bridge. We had another one this week and Sylvie just couldn't. I took her to the vet. Fun fact: I've not had any temperament testing training at all so far. I am really feeling my lack of dog knowledge beyond my childhood dogs - a yeller mutt and a springer spaniel - and my three months of shelter work. I've always been a cat lady and I can cat like a mofo, but I just don't have much experience in the world of dogs as an adult. I'm absorbing everything I can like a sponge, but it'll be summer before I can go do our organization's dog workshop in the city. I'm bouncing between wanting to be the magic worker that takes the pressure off my boss (Brenda) and Sylvie who go above and beyond every single day, and really really needing them for guidance, especially on the days that they have things going on and can't be there. If you guys have any resources I can learn from, please post them! I went in for a volunteer shift today and OH GOD OUR DRYER IS BROKEN. I have two garbage bags of laundry to dry at my house and there's a small himalayan peak of laundry still to go at the shelter, and also we have a facility inspection on saturday with a real stickler inspector. Someone come and euth me please.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 27, 2015 08:35
|
|
|
We have one cat socialization lady who is a total matchmaker. She really enjoys talking to people about what they want in a kitty, and what their home life is like and hooking them up with a cat that matches their needs (and hooking the cat up with people that match their needs too!). Dealing with people will always have its bad times, but successfully adopting an animal is a really happy and rewarding experience. I've had it go wrong with dogs a few times, where I've done home checks and found an unsuitable environment, either for the individual dog or for any dog. People do get pretty upset when you say no. I had one guy come in on his brother's behalf and swear at us for half an hour, then refused to leave when asked. We had to call the cops, and then we got a slew of abusive voicemails, and at one stage he was spotted outside the gate writing down my license plate number. Basically people with unstable or unsafe home environments are likely to take the "no" very personally. Some are willing to make changes, but others will just yell at you about lawyers or going to the media. On a different note, last week we had a stray rooster come in! He was beautiful, one of those breeds with fiery red and orange feathers on his body and a big green/blue/black shiny tail. He was found wandering one of the trails around here, so we took him in and for lack of anywhere else to put him, housed him in our puppy/kitten room. Turned out he was a huge jerk and when I went in to open the window the next morning he took exception and jump-kicked me right in the guts. That afternoon I had to shave down a cat due to huge mats on her (always fun). That night I got to go home and tell my husband I got cock punched and then shaved a pussy.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 30, 2015 02:16
|
|
|
Eugh, that's hella gross. Kittens are loving gross, man. Are you sure it's maggots and not worms? I'd vet them, but if that's not an option if you have some clavamox on hand I'd give them .5cc of that twice daily for any gross maggot bacteria rocking round their systems. Also treat the whole litter, even if not all of them show symptoms. Kitten season rules. I've got kittens with inflamed third eyelids, kittens with the shits, kittens that need bottle fed, kittens that can climb the ex-pen now, kittens that can jump a baby gate and want to explore the building and kittens in my spare room at home that have already worked out how to get over the ex-pen and play with the modem and server plugs and wires. The modem is safe under an upturned fish tank for now, but this climbing victory also means they can get to the second floor windowsills from the table our server box is on. Welp. Hope you guys weren't enjoying that fresh air in midsummer cause now we gotta close the windows. I should post things in this thread more but for now it is wall to wall kittens and mastitis watch.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 7, 2015 06:58
|
|
|
I'm dead. I died of cats. My shelter is a little small town shelter. My shelter has four cat rooms. The first is an open room, which is ostensibly the kitten room, but is occupied by a seven month old semi-social brother and sister pair who have been with us for like six months and they need to gtfo into a nice laid back home. Then we have a couple of regular cat rooms, each with two cages, floor space and an enclosed courtyard. Depending on individual cat dynamics we can have maybe five on the floor if the cages are unoccupied and like three if they both are. The last room is the isolation room with two cages and floor space, no courtyard. Then there's one cage in the medical room. We also have three dog kennels and a storage room that is usually emergency overflow space. Sounds pretty low key and manageable, yeah? Currently we have forty cats and kittens in the shelter itself. 40. Four zero. We have a litter of 4 sick kittens in the medical room, one very pregnant cat and one feral cat in iso in cages and nine kittens on the floor from 3 litters. 11 adults over the three real rooms, one very chill guy recovering from a hind leg amputation chilling with two rabbits in the kitchen, a mama and seven kittens in the overflow room and six more kittens in the first dog kennel cause our cat space plum give out. Fortunately we don't have any dogs. It is hosed up. I was the only one there today. Oh and some chinchillas in reception. so many litterboxes and medications to jam down cats and so much stuff to scrub and sanitise for cats to immediately poo poo up because they are cats I died, I'm dead of cats. I'm not scheduled on tomorrow but my former arch nemesis is and it's her first day back from vacation and I can't let her go through that alone.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2015 08:39
|
|
|
Otter, come and live at my house. I'll provide cats and booze, you make lasagne. It'll be loving awesome. Or maybe I'll just run away and come squat at yours. I'm glad I went in today cause former arch-nemesis was literally in tears before she even walked in because she is dating a giant stupid manbabby and he is super mad that she went to see her girlfriends in another province for a couple of days. Someone brought in another loving skinny crusty eyed kitten and a lady called about a severely undernourished dog. Boss and FA-N went to check it out and the dog had just died of it. Some lady with really godawful baby feet tattoos all over her thighs came in to report a feral cat crossing the road with a kitten, so I rolled out on a wild cat chase and saw no cats or kittens. I brought a trap with me mostly for show cause we don't have room for a feral cat or any more kittens and the concerned bystanders hosed right off pretty quickly, so I didn't bother setting the trap. Our cat vaccine stash plum give out with like 25 kittens still to stab caus e we have a bunch in foster. Please avenge my death by adopting a kitten or twelve.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2015 02:51
|
|
|
Oh yeah, and some very senile old lady left five messages in a row about a bird with a broken wing. None of them contained a number to call her back on and most of them went "hello? Hello? Is somebody there? There is a bird on my porch. Hello? Im going to phone back, please answer this time. Hello?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2015 02:54
|
|
|
Well gently caress my life. A very pregnant cat just jumped over the fence into my yard.like, vaginal discharge already pregnant. I already have two cats and five foster kittens at home but I've set up a crate on the porch with blankets and food. I thought the drop kicks next door had fixed her (one of her previous kittens is in the shelter right now and is neutered. They haven't noticed he is even gone). Cats. Stop it. Stop.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2015 03:59
|
|
|
Jesus H Macy, tower time, that's hosed up. I don't blame you. Burnout is a huge problem in our organization and they pay a lot of lip service to it at staff survey time, but there's never enough budget to DO anything about it. We are chronically understaffed and do not have the budget to have two people on each day. We get two person afternoons three times a week if we are lucky, and we have all racked up hundreds of volunteer hours between not being able to get everything done by 5pm and recognizing that poo poo can't get done if we don't come in for extra shifts to help. I'm paid for 20 hours per week but do at least 30 every week. The full time girl (former arch-nemesis) works her arse off for like 55 hours a week and also has children, dogs and livestock at home. The manager is a single mother of three who doesn't have time to do shelter cleaning and the like and is hugely stressed and on the point of quitting because she can't afford to do all the work she does for the salary she gets. We do at least have a working (domestic, lol) dryer. And the people. Dear god, the people. "Isn't it cruel not to let her have at least one litter?" "my friend gave me this cat and I love her so much but I'm on disability, can you give me a big bag of expensive food and pay for her vet treatments?" "I saw a cat crossing the road and the shelter wouldn't even help me!" "I started feeding this stray cat and it has fleas and now I have fleas, can you come and get it?" "I beat my dog because it's bad! It's my loving dog, I'll do what I want!" "I can't believe you assholes won't give me a dog to put on a chain in my bare front yard!" ... And my favourite of all time, from a perma-drunk leathery bag of anger on the do not adopt list that frequently leaves cuss-filled voicemails, "you're going to give me a dog and you're going to do it for free or I'm calling the media! I've got a lawyer!".
|
|
#
¿
Jul 15, 2015 04:22
|
|
|
Highlights of the weekend: boss and F-AN took me to the pub on Friday night, tried to organize cover for me for Saturday at like 11, couldn't get hold of the one casual girl. Boss stole a fedora from some exchange student and talked the 7-11 guy into giving her his name tag that she wore to the dive bar where everyone washes up after midnight. Rolled up brutally hung over but ON TIME (!!) the next morning and Lo and behold the other casual girl was there even though she was scheduled for 1pm. I went home and napped. Good thing I did because... Bylaw dropped off a dead cat. This isn't unusual in itself, cats get hit by cars and we ID them if possible, take pics and stick'm in the freezer to be picked up by the cremation dude when he comes. This particular dead cat had been sitting in the sun for a few days and was helpfully bagged up by some member of the public I guess and it was absolutely crawling with maggots and stunk to high heaven. It was horrible. The maggots were all on the outside of the bag and when I cut the bag open it was just loving crawling with the fuckers. I traded my surgical mask for a loving respirator and managed not to hurl, even when I discovered that I couldn't check for an ear tattoo because the carcass lacked a head. Didn't get a real good photo but welp. I consider just not hurling a total loving victory. Part of me wonders if I should try to get a better pic now that it's frozen? I have also just this weekend become proficient at using a rectal thermometer. Nine months of never having to stick anything up a critter's butt and all of a sudden everyone needs a butt reading. Cats love it. On the upside, the kitten who I was sure was just going to be a failure to thrive started eating on his own and his temperature rose to normal, and the amputee who hadn't shat in four days has a normal temperature and took a big ol dump for me this afternoon. My foster kittens went back into work today and I stabbed each of them twice and they totally forgave me (a couple of them didn't even notice, which makes me feel awesome because one of those stabs is a microchip and those needles are big), but I already miss them in my house. I want to adopt this adorable lil chocolate brown guy that my year old cat decided was his best friend, but I think my husband might divorce me if I do. Still tempted. Oh yeah, and we took in a little chihuahua/terrier cross with no jawbone (cancer, eats soft food ok, looks kinda derpy as you might expect) found wandering the streets on Wednesday and on Sunday his owner struts in and goes "so you guys just go and steal dogs so you can charge fees eh?". That was cool. Guy doesn't even have a phone so it's not like we could have called him even if we knew where the gently caress the dog came from.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 20, 2015 07:11
|
|
|
So today was really busy with loads of people during open hours and I was busy trying to juggle three or four things all afternoon. I got all the cleaning done in the morning and put the rabbits outside (we join 3 x-pens together on the shady side of the building on a really good patch of clover so they can hop around and graze instead of being stuck in 3-hop pens in the kitchen all day) just before the onslaught at noon, and at about 2pm the boss goes outside and comes rushing back in to tell us we need to form an underbrush searchparty because one of the rabbits has got out. We have blackberries and horsetail around the perimeter of the property that we can't keep under control with five overworked staff and no budget so we all grabbed broom handles and caught thorns to all our extremities for an increasingly panicked hour to no avail. We'd all about given up and were resigned to setting a trap and the general shame of having to admit losing an animal to head office when I walked into the kitchen for some water and realized i hadn't put the second rabbit out yet. She was sitting there in her crate because I'd got caught up in doing adoptions and generally dealing with every motherfucker in town. We are winning at this week for sure.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 22, 2015 07:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 13, 2024 23:07 |
|
|
Some guy brought in a cat with a litter yesterday, which isn't unusual, being kitten season and all. I took all his details and the cat's information and when I asked what her name was the guy said "her name is Dave". She is my new favourite and I can't explain why I am so tickled that the kitty is named Dave because I don't talk about SA in real life ever. Other than that, this weekend was mostly puke and kitten poo in new and surprising places.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2015 04:09
|
|