Tag: cats

Button Sunday

Last year when our rescue group participated in Best Friends Animal Society’s Strut Your Mutt fundraiser, our rescue raised $108,000, the most money ever raised by a single group in a strut event since its inception. This year our goal is to raise $125,000. Every cent of the money that our team raises during this competition will be used to save dogs and cats who are unwanted in Houston and to transport them to forever homes in areas of the country who want to adopt them.

My job in rescue consumes my time and my passion, and I’m so proud to be affiliated with the group. Some of you wanted me to let you know when we had another fundraiser so you could donate, and this is one of my favorites of the year. I love Best Friends Animal Society (I first became familiar with them because of the Vicktory Dogs). Strut Your Mutt is an event that engages animal rescue groups all over the country to help save the animals in their own communities. I’ve decided instead of doing my own fundraising page, I’d like to give my support to our group’s co-founder and board member Timothy J. Lambert (I’ll provide the link to donate at the end of this post).

Some of my friends and family have already pledged to donate if I’ll fulfill certain bizarre requests of theirs. This will be torment for me (that’s what friends are for, right?), but I’ll do what I can for Houston’s dogs and cats. Maybe you have a request of your own that I can indulge–within reason. My willingness to humiliate myself has limits!

You’ll be seeing more about the campaign on my blog through October. And as promised, here’s the link for you to donate to Tim’s fundraising page:

[link redacted because campaign has ended]


Recently our friend and TJB writing partner Jim was in town and helped us on transport day. Here he is with Ashley, Foster Coordinator Extraordinaire, Timothy, and sweet beautiful Farah, whose picture I just saw with her new forever mom!

THANK YOU!


This is Freida. You’ll see a few more photos of her before she leaves for Colorado on Thursday. Freida is terrified of noisy places, crates, and cages, so she was really happy that Flint made his trip to Colorado last week so she could have a place to be her happy self for a few days at Houndstooth Hall before she travels, too. She has been SO MUCH FUN, playing with Anime and Lynne’s dogs Minute and Paco. She’s a really good girl, and thanks to a transporter, she got her ride out of BARC so we could foster her just hours before she was scheduled to be euthanized.

Freida reminds me of why so many people are working tirelessly to improve the save rate of Houston’s homeless pets. She also reminds me that I need to say thank you because at this moment, I’m at 101% of my fundraising goal for the 2015 Savings Pets Challenge. The challenge [link redacted after campaign ended] continues until Friday, June 5th at 1:59:59 pm ET, and believe me when I say that ANY amount is welcome, so don’t feel shy if you want to give five dollars or five thousand (heh!). (Freida says $5 buys FOOD and she LOVES FOOD!)

Help a fundraiser out

I never do these things because I’m convinced that I will raise zero dollars. But how can I not at least try to help this organization that has saved around 7000 who have no voice?

Well, FLINT has a voice, trust me, but he mostly uses it to say, “Let me in!” “Let me out!” “Let me eat!” “Let me eat more!” “Play with me!” Even though he’s loud and persistent, thanks to our rescue group, his voice wasn’t silenced forever a couple of weeks ago.

So I joined the team of fundraisers to try to make sure there are more Flints, more of all the dogs it’s been my pleasure to foster, and another 7000 dogs and cats, too.

Is that worth $5 to you? $10? Matching my starting donation of $50? I can promise you, NO AMOUNT IS TOO SMALL. I’ve seen what this group can turn even five dollars into. It looks like a LOT of this.

You can donate to my fundraising page by clicking here [link redacted because campaign has ended]. Thank you!

Whimsy and the spin cycle

Over the last year, I’ve done a LOT of laundry. So when we moved into Houndstooth Hall and I began unpacking boxes and finding things I hadn’t seen in a while, I decided to create a fun wall in the new laundry room. (Well, I thought of it. Tom made it happen.) This is the first time Tom and I have ever had a laundry room inside any home we’ve lived in during our marriage. In our apartments, they were in exterior rooms; in our houses, in the garages. It’s kind of awesome.

The wooden paper towel holder was a gift from my brother back in the 1980s and has been in all my kitchens since. But because of the tiled backsplash in the new place, I couldn’t hang it. It’s perfect here, though! The cross-stitched pig is from my mother, and probably the pig couple and the Welcome pig are, too. The pigs with bells were finds at an antique store and are made from 1800s quilts. And the other pigs pictured here are probably all from Lynne.

Most people think pigs and dirt go together. But let me tell you, precious dogs and cats can create a LOT of dirty linen. I’ve been their laundress for over a year because I love them all.


A week’s worth of transport laundry. Now it will be done at the rescue clinic by kennel techs and volunteers and I LOVE THEM as much as dogs and cats! =)

Photo Friday, No. 445

Current Photo Friday theme: Moving

Last week on the day of the rescue’s ribbon cutting for their new clinic, we received an early visit from Clutch the bear, the Houston Rockets’ mascot. He was SO MUCH FUN! Along with his other antics, he danced with Tim. I love this organization, my job, Clutch, and the Rockets. More than 6600 dogs’ and cats’ lives have been saved thanks to the efforts of so many supporters–that is mind-boggling. This movement is helping rewrite the story for Houston’s homeless pet population.

100 Happy Days: 76

Today I caught up on even more stuff, ran a bunch of errands, and ended up not doing something I really wanted to do because sometimes things just don’t work out. And that’s okay.

In the midst of it all, I opened an email from our rescue group sharing their decision, inspired in part by the 100 Happy Days meme, to do a 100 Thankful Days project expressing what they’re grateful for. On this day, they said they are grateful for my transport photos! They shared photos from the first officially documented transport on October 19 of last year. Since they’ve transported more than 3400 dogs and cats, I believe I’ve shot a few photos with my trusty old Nikon.

I began last September taking some shots of the first few transports at BARC. In fact, here is the very first photo I took–of Bernie and Bailee as they waited to get on board the van.

After those initial transports, two things struck me. Every single animal deserves for his or her face and name to be recognized and celebrated. And every single foster who unselfishly provides love and care to a dog or cat who is promised to someone else should have a photo to remember them by. That’s when I began doing the photo collages that the group posts to their blog.

I know that I’ve missed a photo here and there–it is NOT easy to photograph cats, by the way!–but often the drivers (especially Cowboy Jon) will help me out by taking photos en route or in Colorado and sending them to add to the collages. Sometimes fosters have shared their personal photos or I’ve been able to take pictures prior to transport day and include them. And when I missed a transport while I was out of the state for my nephew’s wedding, Tim stepped in and took the photos–and didn’t miss a single little traveler.

While the rescue group and the fosters think I’m doing a good thing for them, they return it many, many times over. Every transport day I am awed again by all the time, energy, and passion so many people put into making the difference between life and death to these dogs and cats. In the few seconds I point my camera at them, I’m laughing with them, sometimes crying with them, and mostly I’m having my faith in all good things restored by them.

I eagerly look forward to the next 3400-plus dogs and cats to photograph–and I’m grateful to everyone who’s part of our group for giving me the opportunity to document this.

100 Happy Days: 54

There are some days full of such disturbing or sad news that an attempt to post about something happy seems like folly, or at the very least, insensitive. News stories from the Middle East, and closer to home, from St. Louis–and then to hear that someone else lost an argument with the lying bastard that is depression and ended his life…

I remind myself that yes, bad things, terrible things happen every day–and so do wondrous things. There’s a line from the musical Rent that always rang true for me: “The opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation!”

So today, what made me happy is this. Murder By The Book put together an event for mystery writer Spencer Quinn’s new book Paw and Order, making the rescue I volunteer with the beneficiary of a percentage of the night’s sales. Quinn’s series features PI Bernie Little and his partner, Chet, who happens to be a dog. It’s the dog angle that makes the matchup between Spencer Quinn and the rescue group a good one. And as I talked with some of our volunteers and met new book fans and a new-to-me author, I was reminded that these are ways we affirm ourselves: gathering, sharing, talking, creating, laughing with one another. Turning to community. We’re all in this together, and I’m glad I share the planet with so many people who create–a true act of hope–and who do for and give to others, including our voiceless friends: homeless, neglected, and abused dogs and cats.

Spencer Quinn entertains a full house.