Tour Days

Hello everyone!

Since today is Sunday, I thought I'd talk about tours today. As you may or may not already know, CARE is only open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 11AM to 5PM. Each tour starts on the hour, so if you happen to get here at 10:55AM, great! You barely have to wait. But if you get here around 11:20 or so, then you have to wait until the next one at noon. We let you come into the front of our vet center where we have bathrooms, a water cooler, and some very comfy couches to hang out on. If it happens to be a nice day, people usually prefer to stay outside, and in that case we have a patio set near the vet center so we don't have people wandering near the enclosures.

People also have the option of hanging out with our two domestic cats that live in the vet center, Rikku and Bagheera. They met some very nice guests outside yesterday while waiting for their tour to start. The cats like to sit or sleep in the window so people can usually see them.

On tour days, I have to make sure that morning duties (giving meds, watering, feeding lemurs, feeding Bindi, and checking on everyone) is done pretty early so I can have enough time to straighten up the vet center if needed and be ready to give tours. The only real straightening up I have to do is folding the blankets on the couches to make it just a little neater. I try to keep everything as clean as possible anyway, because I really do not like living in a mess.

Yesterday, the weather reached up into the 80s and of course I did not remember sunblock and being quite fair of skin, a sunburn was clearly showing on my arms by the end of the tour hours. I backed up one of our volunteers on two and a half tours yesterday. I was backing up because it was her first day giving tours and Derek just wanted me there to make sure she was saying everything correctly and to confirm facts if she needed.

I think she did an excellent job on her first day of giving tours, and I was on a third one with her but I had to leave to be interviewed by a film student making a documentary about CARE. I gave her and her sound/camera person a tour around so they could get footage of all the cats. Unfortunately, they came pretty late in the day so by the time they were filming the cats, it had been really warm out all day so the kitties were just lying around, not really doing too much. But, I didn't think it was a bad thing because they documented what the cats do on warm days: lay in the shade and not move around too much. Simple.

Giving tours is pretty enjoyable, given you have a good group who is engaged and seems interested in what you're saying. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating if people are kind of listening to you talk about a cat, but they only really want to take pictures of them. Pictures are fine, encouraged even, but if you aren't even listening to the story behind the cat, it's kind of silly. Imagine you going home and showing family/friends the pictures you took here and having them ask about where they came from, why is that one cross-eyed, etc. You might not be able to answer them because you just wanted their picture so badly that you weren't listening. Excuse the rant. :)

Today, however, I don't believe we will have many tours, if any, because it is about 20 degrees and rainy/ hailing out. The last tour day we had like this, no one showed up and it was all snowy and pretty so we took pictures of the cats in the snow, which I blogged about in 'Snow at CARE'.

In other news, THE OTHER INTERN COMES TODAY! YAY. I will now be her trainer, in a sense, as Rachel was to me! SO excited.

Here are some recent pictures I've taken on my phone:

I checked on Arctic the night Derek and Heidi went to Furry Fiesta and I was left here all by my lonesome. He was doing fine and was happy to see the gator lights. 

Tabula

Here is Bindi, our elusive coati who lives in the back of the vet center. She rarely comes out of her carrier which is a nest of blankets, so who can really blame her. 

Luca

Savannah

Have a great day! I'll be trying to stay warm. :)