"My Three"

The time has finally come when I chose the three cats I would be able to form a closer bond with. I'll be sharing pictures of my babies over the next few posts, depending on when I get pictures with them. Today I happened to have some extra time at the end of the day so I got out my camera with the other intern Candice and we had some fun shooting in the setting sunlight.

Daylight Savings totally kicked my butt this morning because I woke up at 7 am with my phone alarm, but my clock said 6am. I was very sleepy and very confused. Then my brain registered that daylight savings was around this time of year and it made more sense. The entire day seemed to fly by because it was later than I was thinking it was and before I knew it, all the night chores were done and we could come out and take some pictures.

 This post will be focusing on my first pick, Raven, a very sweet black leopard. She recently lost Spotty who lived with her in the enclosure, so I've been keeping a close eye on her to make sure she has been adjusting well enough. She started coming up to say hi to me by the fence every time I walked by so I made the decision to pick her as one of my three. I think I made a good choice considering she comes over to me whenever I call to her and she rubs her face on the fence against my hand and also gives me kisses on my fingers. She's just all kinds of adorable.

Here are some of the pictures from this evening.

Flat-palming the fence so she can rub against my hand safely. No fingers through the fence, because they can get caught very easily if she moves suddenly. Would be a ouch situation.

 

I love that she's looking up at me in this one :)

 

 I know you can see teeth, but her tongue is licking. She just looks ferocious while licking. :P

 Tan face, Raven scratching her head on my hand.

 

I love her.

I'll most likely be taking lots more pictures that will be able to get closer to three of them. :) So there's that to look forward to! 

Have a good day/night!

It's all about the little things.

Hellooo everyone!

Tonight's post will be focusing on appreciating the little things. Literally, the SMALLEST things make my day lately.

When I first started my internship, we had Bindi the coati in one of the bathrooms because it was too cold for her to be outside so that bathroom was not usable for the time being. The shower in the available bathroom had a very clogged showerhead. Hard water buildup kept any real water from coming through and being someone with thick, pretty long hair...this was a nightmare. There was a dribble of water, no pressure at all, so washing my hair took longer than 45 minutes. Rachel and I went to Walmart and we happened to wander past the faucets, showerheads, etc section and it dawned on us to just buy a new showerhead. No brainer, right? We also moved Bindi back to the back of the vet center so her bathroom was available again, once we cleaned it of course. That showerhead was horrible in itself, but we couldn't remove it since there was hard water buildup and who knows what else built up around the connection. Eventually we got it off and attached the new showerhead, hoping we had good water pressure. Moment of truth came and voila! SO MUCH WATER PRESSURE. It was fantastic. We set up the other bathroom with its new showerhead as well but I still prefer the "Bindi bathroom". Having a proper shower is such a little thing but it can affect your whole day.

The next little thing that affected me was getting a new bucket to bleach the floor with. A new bucket...seems simple, right? Well, it had a handle (which the other one did not have) and it fit the broom perfectly and it was so nice. Now whenever we need to wash the vet center floor, it's so easy to load the bucket into the sink and taking it out. The same day we got the bucket, the volunteers who brought us that also got us a new rake for the lemur enclosure. It's awesome. Truly. It gets everything, from the poop to the food they have missed around the rocks and chairs in their enclosure. The other rakes we have work fine, but having this fancy new rake with a really long handle so tall people (like myself) don't have to stoop so much makes cleaning the outside enclosures so much easier.

The past few days have been atrociously cold in Bridgeport, thankfully it has warmed up but for two days we had to keep the faucet in the kitchen on a little so the pipes wouldn't freeze. This was not something I was used to doing. I don't know if it's because we're on a well-system or what, but I was nervous about losing water. The heat in the back of the vet center was also not working so Bindi was back in her bathroom, and Beauty the mountain lion had blankets surrounding her inside enclosure in the vet center to make sure she stayed as warm as possible. The front of the vet center wasn't much better because the thermostat was set at 68 degrees F or something but it was only around 54 degrees in the living room. Not comfy. The new intern and I were hunkered under blankets and still cold. Heidi called the heat and air vent place the next day once I mentioned we were ice cubes in the vet center, and now the back of the vet center is heated properly, Bindi and Beauty are happy, we get our second bathroom back, and the heat is currently blowing on me right now as I am writing this.

Heat is super important. Obviously. I've come to learn that trying to sleep while cold is never something you can really accomplish. You just spent the night trying to get warmer, but your brain isn't fully functioning so normal ideas won't come to you. I asked the new intern how she slept, after I had a horribly cold night, and she simply put the other comforter on her bed. SO SIMPLE. Yet, I never thought of doing such a thing. Didn't even occur to me. My brain hates me when it's cold apparently.

The last little thing was just installed yesterday, but I wasn't able to enjoy it until today. A brand-new dryer! Weeee! I've been without the ability to dry my clothes in the vet center for about a month. That's a long time. Especially when my work clothes get bloody almost everyday. Our washer is fine and working, but we'd have to dry them in Heidi's house, which was super nice of her to let us do so, but we had to trek over there...and by trek I mean walk less than 40 feet or so. But if I was doing laundry at night, it would be cold and windy and pitch black out. I'm a baby when it comes to weather, being from Massachusetts I know I should be used to it but I have gotten accustomed to being warm. Cold isn't something I ever really enjoyed. But it doesn't matter anymore, because we have the ability to do laundry whenever we need it!!!

*Sorry this is late, I had most of it done but I was very sleepy yesterday and decided to sleep instead of finishing it. :D

I hope you had a great day! If not, here's some happy pictures taken by Rachel!

 Raven

 Ace

Tabula

Acari

Serena

Okay, byeeeee.

For Spotty

 

This post is going to be all about our beloved spotted leopard, Spotty.

Spotty passed away on the morning of February 15th and while we had been aware of its impending occurrence, it still hit everyone at CARE very hard. 

Even though I didn't know him as well as some of the other people here, I still bonded with him for the two months I knew him.

Giving him meds every morning, watching him lick Rachel's hands while she flat-palmed the fence (who could touch him), and seeing him have enough energy to scuffle with Raven on occasion were all moments I loved. Pictures of a scuffle shown below. :D

The beginning of the Raven scuffle.

Spotty looking at her.

Observe 

Love that shifty look in his eye.

:)

We miss you bud.

Have a great day everyone and enjoy these pictures of this adorable leopard. This is not meant to be a sad post, but a happy memoriam type of post.

*The photos of the scuffle were captured by Rachel Malone who stole my camera...again.

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. :)

Birthday!

Hi everyone!!

I'm going to try to update this on a more regular basis so you guys can expect some fun pictures of kitties and information every couple of days. Sound good? Greeeeeat. I already wrote down some ideas for at least two weeks worth of posts, so here we go!

Today was a special day for one of our lions. Mwali (Wali for short) turned two years old today! 

 He and his lovely girlfriend, Noel, have been doing very well and they both got some chicken treats from Wali's adoptive father, Gary, today. He visited today just to show the birthday boy some extra love and affection, which was appreciated by all the cats that Gary visited. Sometimes we all get so busy during the day that we can't give each cat all the attention we wish we could.

Now here are some glamour shots of the lovely boy. :) 

*These following photos were from when Rachel stole my camera.

Isn't he cute?

I hope you all had a good day and if not, maybe looking at a ridiculously mature 2-year-old lion will make it better! Wali is unusual because he has a full mane. Most male lions only have a mohawk by the time they're three, yet he has a decently full mane. I'm sure it will continue to fill out for a few more years until he is full grown.

Getting Comfortable

Hey everyone!

I'm sorry I haven't updated in awhile, things have been a little crazy since Rachel left and I've been on my own. The past week and a half has been basically figuring out how to do everything I had been doing with Rachel, just making the decisions myself. For example, doing something simple like cleaning the back of the vet center took no time at all with two people...but when you're doing it by yourself it takes so much longer just because you're doing everything.

Cleaning the lemur enclosure has been almost impossible to do alone because it is very intensive work. I can get the outside pens cleaned in no time, but the inside has to be scrubbed with Clorox wipes because the lemurs are dirty little jerks who put their hands all over the walls and get them gross. :D Yesterday I was cleaning them, went out to clean some tiger pens, came back to the lemurs and the areas I had literally just cleaned were already covered in dirty smudged hand prints. They're so rude. I just can't get a large enough amount of time needed to fully clean their inside before I'm needed somewhere else. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to.

But the exciting part of being the only intern here right now is that I'm finally getting comfortable in everything. I have been doing morning and night duties each day and am confident in administering the medicine and watering. I have even butchered by myself. Terrifying? Yes. But there was no one available to help me, so Derek (my boss) told me how exactly to deal with butchering a very large cow. Which is what this was. Huge. But I did it! And when I was gutting it, Heidi (my boss) came up to see how I was doing, and gave me a couple tips to help me finish it. Then she said the cow was pregnant when it died, so I pulled a full-term calf from the uterus. Sad, yes. But really cool and the calf was a nice meal to one of our tigers.

 I've also been able to give tours! I have given three tours so far by myself and I actually don't mind them. Yes, sometimes it can be a pain to stop what you're doing in the day to go give a tour, but it's fun when you have a good group who are interested in what you're saying.

Basically, the point of this post is to say that I finally feel like I know what I'm doing in some aspects of this internship. Just in time for the new intern to come next week! Suddenly I will be in the position of a trainer.

Since this was a word-heavy post, here are some recent pictures.

What I drive around the compound. The Gator.

Zeus

Arctic

Archie

Mwali showing his nice teeth

Me and Cassie

Rachel stole my camera and took all of these pictures except for the one of me on the gator. Derek took that.

Have a nice day!

Snow at CARE

Hello hello!

I woke up this morning to a pitter patter on my windows, so I jumped up and saw it was raining! Not only was it raining, it was semi-hailing because of the cold weather. But that means we would mot likely not be cleaning today because of the ice building up. Rachel got the answer that we wouldn't be cleaning today so we had a bit of a sleep in :) 

We still had to do morning duties, so once we got up we got everything together and did those while taking some pictures.

 Outside my window

 

 Tiger footprints look so nice in the snow. This was JP.

JP saying hello

 Tess not appreciating our interruption

 Allie taking some shelter under her platform while Archie stayed in their house

Icicles on a fence

Cassie! 

Noel and Mwali in their little cave taking shelter from the wind

The weather has been fluctuating from snow, to hail, to just super windy so who knows how long it'll last. We have to start night duties soon, but since it has gotten even colder, I won't be taking pictures because I won't be exposing my bare hands to the wind. :D

I hope you enjoyed these lovely kitties in the snow! 

Feel free to comment your thoughts,  favorite cats, etc. 

-Steph