An Aries (Who Knows Some Stuff)
Current Photo Friday theme: Dramatic
Gizmo as Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle: You talkin to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well I’m the only one here. Who the f**k do you think you’re talkin’ to? Oh yeah? Huh? Okay. Huh?
“What? What do you mean, ‘Becky’s not here.’ Who’s going to take my pic–oh hai, Timothy.”
Yes, I’m at it again. I’ve created a team to help with our rescue group’s current fundraising campaign as part of the Newman’s Own challenge. You can help by clicking this link [link has been redacted because the campaign was completed]
You may wonder why I usually post only dog photos. It’s hard to get good photos of cats on transport day. They MUST stay in their temporary carriers with the doors shut–an escaped cat is a gone cat, so the only time the carriers are opened is inside the vans, with all the doors and windows firmly shut, while they are transferred to their better travel accommodations (the travel carriers include food, water, and litter boxes for them).
So I struggle with poor lighting, a wire door that grabs my camera’s focus because it’s in front of the cats, and the cats themselves. They DO NOT LIKE the camera, its flash, or me, the wielder of camera and flash.
Nonetheless, here are a few feline photos.
Fae and Felix
Garnett and her kittens
Inky and Clyde
Our rescue group is currently part of the Macy’s Shop for a Cause Charity Challenge that I talked about earlier on my blog. This time, I’m not asking you to contribute to my fundraising page.
What? Why not? I’ll explain.
First, I’m telling you that an amazing donor has offered to contribute up to $50,000 to the rescue’s main fundraiser page if that donation will move us into first place at the end of the challenge.
Why is our group so competitive?
Because Macy’s will award a $100,000 grant to the top fundraiser!
Why is our group so greedy?
It’s not greed. It’s the means for dogs like my foster Omar and cats like those you see writing Pet Prose on this blog to be pulled from Houston’s kill shelters and get into traveling shape. It takes a lot of time, energy, and yes, MONEY, to make this happen. Our board members are unpaid. Our paid staff is kept lean and efficient so that donations can go to animal care and transport.
THANK YOU from Omar and me. And by the way, Maddie was adopted. Hermosa was adopted. Every dog I’ve fostered who you met on my blog was adopted into forever homes after they traveled. It’s why I foster even when my heart breaks to say goodbye. It’s why I believe in our rescue group. Thank you for every time you’ve shown support for us and the work Tom and I do. You are magnificent friends to us and to animals.
“I don’t know why I have the dreams I do. Once for two weeks in a row I dreamed about actor Eric Roberts every night. I’ve honestly never given much thought to actor Eric Roberts, but there he was anyway. Each night the dream was a variation on a falling out we’d had and how he no longer wanted to have anything to do with me. I searched my brain for anyone in my life who looked like actor Eric Roberts or was named Eric or Robert or Rob or Robby or even Bob with whom I might have unresolved issues, but there was no one. Just as quickly as he arrived, actor Eric Roberts left my dreams without ever explaining his anger. To this day, I still can’t see him on TV or in a movie without feeling a little bitter. Couldn’t he at least have said goodbye?
There were more dream series of that nature, but recently, my dreams had been about Rocky, the squirrel from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, only he spoke French and I was his English-speaking nanny who didn’t understand a word he said. I woke up every morning exhausted by the frustrations of my job.
‘Now, Gail,’ my friend Darla said, ‘I know you’re not a believer in better living through pharmaceuticals, but these dreams you have sound like Vicodin dreams. Are you hiding a little opioid problem?’
‘I don’t even take aspirin!’ I protested.
Darla cackled and said, ‘At least it’s the squirrel. Imagine if you were a moose nanny.’
‘It would be fine if the moose and I spoke the same language,’ I said with a sniff.”
I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.
Pollywag named her characters Darla and Gail in tribute to a dog and her wonderful person who contributed to my Saving Pets fundraiser.
“Some days it felt like she had to work hard not to be cynical. It could be that she was tired to the bone. It could be that she never felt surprised by people any more. She’d had many years to see the best and worst of them, but it was their predictability, finally, that had worn her down.
Still, every night around dusk, she took the tools of her profession to the same spot outside the fenced park where the vendors gathered to wait for the tourists. She set up her table and covered it with the beautiful cloth a friend had brought from her travels in India decades before. The colors had dimmed, but in the light cast by the period street lamps and her candles, that didn’t matter. The fabric was just exotic enough to lend authenticity to the service she offered.
She placed her crystals and wands strategically on the table and took her cards from their scrap of silk. A stick of nag champa and a cleansing ritual, and she was ready for business. Until the first clients came, she could observe at leisure. She noticed the skateboarder, whose name she didn’t know, and his dog Milly. Some of the others didn’t like the skateboarders, but she’d long ago stopped being quite so precious about the marketplace. Skateboarders, musicians, beggars, shamans, or charlatans–there was room for all of them. Besides, Milly was a beautifully behaved dog and her young man was always polite. His eyes were intelligent and had a bit of mischief. As far as she was concerned, the world needed a little less meanness and a little more mischief.
Behind her, on the other side of the little park, she heard the cellist and the violinist begin. She closed her eyes for just a moment, breathing in whatever good energy there was, and then heard a sound she’d never thought to hear again, certainly not in the middle of the city. She tried to process the clamor of people’s reactions to what they’d heard, then opened her eyes just as the skateboarder and Milly hurried by. He tossed her a pouch and said, ‘Hold on to that until I find you again.’
She felt a moment of confusion and then, magnificently, wonder. The night was suddenly full of surprise.”
I take photos. I write. My volunteer job is taking photos of rescued dogs and cats transported by the rescue group whose records I manage. Since working and volunteering don’t leave me a lot of time to write, I’m spending 2017 borrowing from what these dogs and cats are writing. They said it’s okay.
I can’t stop myself when these little eyes look up at me. Every one of them is a rescue dog, so they take this very seriously.
Our rescue group is taking part in the Macy’s Shop for a Cause Charity Challenge. I’ve created a team that you can find [link redacted because fundraiser has ended]. If you have five bucks, ten, any amount at all you can donate, please do. And if you can’t, feel free to share my link.
Thank you!
Current Photo Friday theme: Animal
But those eyes.
Antonio, 2017
These three showed up at transport.
I absolutely did not name them. I don’t name our rescue’s cats.
But I’m pretty sure I know the staffer who did name them. This is the back of her car.
She’s one of my kind.