{"id":616,"date":"2016-06-04T22:36:16","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T22:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/?p=616"},"modified":"2016-06-04T22:36:16","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T22:36:16","slug":"finally-the-kittens-appear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/04\/finally-the-kittens-appear\/","title":{"rendered":"Finally… the kittens appear!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I keep thinking someone is going to call the Sheriff on me someday, as I lurk around the backs of buildings, or trespass into side yards, seeking the elusive stray.<\/p>\n

In the last few days especially, as I’ve anxiously tried to locate the kittens I discovered a few weeks ago (see last blog post), I’ve been a class-A lurker behind a local Mexican restaurant, peering over fences and through the slats of gates. After that first sighting, the kittens had disappeared, and I feared the worst. But A) I didn’t want to give up on them, and B) I knew that Maya, the mama kitty, might be keeping her babies away by moving them around. I felt both frustrated and frantic. Finally, I realized I needed to give myself TIME – time to watch and observe, time to be quiet and watch for signs.<\/p>\n

It proved a good strategy.<\/p>\n

A couple of days ago I fed Maya her breakfast, then sat in my car, stalker-like, and watched her. She ambled off, and I followed her. This time, she ducked under a fenced gate behind the building, and I tiptoed in behind her when she was out of sight. Looking through two sheds, I saw all three of the babies, greeting her playfully, squealing for milk. Suddenly the weight of the last couple of weeks lifted\u00a0and I was left with pure joy.<\/p>\n

I should note that it’s been a tough couple of months on the personal level, with attempts to refinance my mortgage rejected by\u00a0major banks. Nothing can kill one’s joie de vivre<\/em>\u00a0more than the phrase “debt to income ratio.” It’s been a wake-up call about the\u00a0price I paid – quite literally – for pursuing my passion of cat rescue, paying for it all out of pocket, before I finally got smart and created the\u00a0Coastside Feral Care<\/a>\u00a0nonprofit last year.<\/p>\n

That said, because I’m basically a happy person, there are coins\u00a0of\u00a0joy\u00a0in every day that no amount of financial woe can tarnish. Finding the kittens was a shiny coin indeed.<\/p>\n

This was from this morning: the first time they came out without Maya being there.\"FullSizeRender\"<\/a>
\nI plan to use the drop trap on Monday to get all three at once.<\/p>\n

Other moments of joy were provided today by seeing all six of the Higgins Farm cats together, looking happy and well.
\n\"IMG_5387\"<\/a>
\n(Only a few months ago they were eating leftover beans and rice that well-meaning farm hands left out, while their 16 kittens – now all adopted out – ran amok.)<\/p>\n

And closer to home, I’ve had some wonderful laughs today seeing Big Mike, my resident Buddha, interacting so kindly and gently with the volatile geriatric, Ginger.
\n\"IMG_5388\"
\n<\/a>Ginger is once again\u00a0in heat,\u00a0<\/em>thanks to the fact that her original negligent owner never had her fixed, and now at 14-15, and diagnosed with terminal mouth cancer when I brought her home from the parking lot, that surgery seemed unimportant. (If she has only a few months to live, <\/em>I thought, why put her through that?<\/em>) If I’d known 18 months ago that she would not only live this long, but go into heat every other damn month, I’d have had it done for sure.<\/p>\n

Her plaintive yowling and prowling around is disruptive; everyone is freaked out by her but Mike, who allows her to sidle up to him a like the trashy girl in high school who has a thing for the quarterback. He is curious, but disinterested and nonjudgemental. \u00a0\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Anyway, all these things fill my heart and tell me I’m doing something right with my life, even if the bean-counters disagree. Saint Francis, thanks for the daily reminders that happy IS what\u00a0happy DOES.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep thinking someone is going to call the Sheriff on me someday, as I lurk around the backs of buildings, or trespass into side yards, seeking the elusive stray. In the last few days especially, as I’ve anxiously tried … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/janeganahl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}