The Sunny Spot

My "gringo" kitty Sammy Beckett who made the trip south with me.

Starlight

If you read my blog regularly you know that my family has an affection for cats. My sister - who was living in Egypt at the time of the revolution - was recently able to return and bring back Starlight, one of the street kitties she was feeding while living there. My mom has decided to adopt him! So now Cheezecake (aka Noot), Moo, and Starlight have all found forever homes in America. Don't you love his fuzzy black tail?

Egypt's Cats

My friend Ahmad has just returned from a visit to Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine. I've written before about Egypt's feline population. These cats are wild, but not feral. It's not unusual for cats to enter restaurants and wait for scraps. They will eat anything. I was sitting at a similar restaurant and ordered a nicoise salad. After giving my attending cat all of my tuna, I gave her my green beans and lettuce. The mama cat ate it all. This is the life that Moo and Cheezecake escaped. If you'd like to adopt an Egyptian kitty, please let me know.

Moo - another Egyptian Kitty

Moo currently lives the good life in upstate New York with Chuck and Angie.

Cheezecake in America!

This is Cheezecake right after going through customs in the Washington Dulles Airport. As regular readers know, my sister lives in Egypt. There are huge numbers of street kitties in Cairo and most of them die young and don't do well. My sister has been feeding an entire posse of yard cats and is now finding homes for them in America. Cheezecake had an impressive 18-hour flight but arrived safely and this *fantastic* man above handed her over to Kevin who has agreed to adopt her.

And here she is settling in and telling us all about the long journey.

Boat Yard Cat

This is Byc the boat yard cat (pronounced Bick). During the week, when Kim is in the office, Byc sleeps in a card board box and enjoys air conditioning. On the weekends and at night, she spends her time stretched out on the porch visiting the small group of people who temporarily have their boats on the hard.

Byc is too calm and friendly to have been a feral cat, but she definitely has the skills necessary to fight as is evidenced by the minor cuts and scrapes around her ears. Maybe Byc jumped ship or was accidentally left behind, or maybe she just found her way to the boat yard and decided she liked it.

Neighborhood Raccoons (Alexandria)

Every night when it gets dark, raccoons come up the back steps and eat peanuts on Eric's dad's deck. They are about the size of cats, a little skittish, but very comfortable around humans. They have long slender front paws and their sense of touch is predominant. When they seek out their food, they locate it more with their hands than they do with their sense of sight. Tonight we watched five neighborhood raccoons eat, interact, and this one was the cutest.

Oscar

Today is Oscar's 12th birthday. These photos were taken yesterday when the afternoon sun was pouring into the apartment and Oscar was purring like mad. He's a big Bengal-looking cat, friendly, affectionate, and easy going. In the third pic, I think he resembles one of those blue aliens in the movie avatar. He's scary intelligent and I'm sure has cause-and-effect awareness. Around this time last year, when Eric first moved in, there was an alpha-male war going on. Oscar eventually accepted compromise but even now he'll push the limits whenever he can and look up as if to say, "go ahead, humanoid, make my day." To see his cohort in action, click here.

Office Kitty

Robyn's kitty Whiskers is spending the day in Graphics. Photo by Kevin.

American Independence

Pic by Kevin who has a new blog you can find here. And, by the way, I've been blogging for a year now. My first post was last July 3, 2008.

Save the Tigers

If you would like to purchase kid-designed wrapping paper for the Christmas season, please e-mail me at leslieinadamsmorgan (at) gmail (dot) com.

All proceeds will be sent to help save the tigers. Wrapping paper is $1 per sheet (size = 70 x 48 centimeters).

For more information about the efforts being made to protect tigers, go here.

Moulin Rouge

Jen's dogs, Rose and Violet, ready for some holiday trick or treating ... Halloween is said to originate in Ireland and is known as Oíche Shamhna. Pagans held an autumn festival Samhain (End of Summer) and lit large communal bonfires to protect against evil spirits.

Sammy Beckett

Because he's cute and today's his birthday.

When I came back from New Orleans, I thought I would never feel right again. I had been taken outside of my comfort zone like never before. We stayed in the deserted city even though we weren't supposed to on the second floor of the house with a generator. It was like the wild wild west. People were driving around after dark – even though there was a curfew – with guns looking to rob houses. Food was scarce. We couldn't bathe. Everyone's possessions were being pulled out into the street for trash pick up. Dogs ran wild in packs throughout the city and reminders of animal suffering were everywhere.

I did the most I could but I hurt. I came home and everyone sat outside my Adams Morgan Starbucks and walked their dogs and I wanted to tell them, your life is not secure. This could be gone tomorrow. All of it.

And then, 10 days later, while sitting in my office, I heard a sound like a bird's and looked outside my window. It was that day I found Sammy, a small orange and white 2-pound deserted kitten. He was wailing and it took me two hours to catch him, but I finally brought him inside. Over the next three weeks, I nursed him. He had coccidia, worms, fleas, ear mites and needed all kinds of medicine. He's now a happy healthy full grown cat. The vet estimated he was was born on August 29, the day New Orleans flooded.

I am an existentialist intellectually and I think we are all pagans emotionally, but I know God gave me this cat. It is through him I was able to heal.

Support your local animal shelter, the Humane Society or the SPCA. They continue to do good work and animals everywhere need you.

Just One Block

xx

These photos were taken within a one block radius. Later that day, Paul and I went in search of an open grocery store and discovered an entire neighborhood of forgotten pets … cats sitting on porch fronts, dogs hysterical and missing all of their hair. Maybe some of them were strays. I still suffer for these animals while I write this post. I gave them all of our canned tuna, wrote down the address, and became obsessed with helping them.

xx

From my cell phone, I called the Friendship Animal Hospital in Washington, DC and Jennifer Trujillo called someone she knew with the Humane Society who went down the very next day to see about the dog. The owner had "been hit hard" but was coming back to take care of his pets. The dog would be okay.

xx

Eventually, I received confirmation that food and water stations had been set up for the cats. I don't know who came through for them, but thank you to everyone who listened to me. I emailed every organization, called anyone I thought might care, and talked to everyone I met while in the city.

Gone to Texas

When I got out of the truck to take this photo, I almost stepped on a dead cat. Big, like my cat Oscar, with his mouth wide open and his cat fangs gasping for air, I presume.

Animal Rescue

The woman who drove this van lives in New York. One week after the flood, when we were all watching the misery of the Superdome on TV, she got into her car and drove to New Orleans. She fed animals through windows until the water went down and then she set up feeding stations throughout the city. She said at first the stench was so bad even the birds evacuated. And she told me, the big dogs were eating the small dogs in order to survive. It wasn’t pretty but she was and I admire her proactivity to this day.

The Carrie of New Orleans

This woman stands proudly by her shoes. She took me upstairs to show me all of the matching dresses. Her husband was pulling down the dry wall inside their house. The black mold was everywhere and they didn’t have insurance.

They also showed me the roof top where his brother sat for three days while the water rose. He didn’t want to leave their dogs. Finally he had no drinking water and he had to get in the canoe that came to rescue him. He left the dogs upstairs with a lot of food. When they came back the small dog was okay. They don’t know what happened to the two big dogs.

Searching for ... Buttons

Three years ago this Friday, Katrina hit, the levee broke and New Orleans flooded. I went down to help with the clean up six weeks later. This photo looks like the 1930s depression era but it’s October 2005 and this woman is looking for her cat Buttons. She and her brother had to leave in a hurry when the city was evacuated and they couldn’t find their cat. As it turns out Buttons climbed up under the house and when the water rose, she couldn’t get down.