My Time Left

Hi everyone! :)

It has come to my realization that I have less than a month left here at CARE. It's going to be so strange to not get up and make meds, lemur and Bindi food, and water. My last day is May 15th. It's so crazy to think I have been here for three months already...I feel like I just got here, kind of. Obviously not in terms of experience and knowing what to do but it doesn't seem like I've been here for that long. It doesn't seem like it's April. I feel like it was just January, even though I have been in the 80-degree heat. Strange.

I have no idea what I am going to be doing once I'm done and home again. Everyone is seeming to ask me that when they hear I only have one month left and I have no good answer. All I know is that I need to find a job. Obviously. That's what everyone wants to do, but that it easier said than done of course. The one thing I want is a summer job at the very least in which I can be outside and perhaps be doing some kind of manual labor so I won't lose all the muscles I've been building these last few months. I've gotten pretty proud of my biceps now that I've been working them out, pulling cow and horse bodies from the freezer, rolling up hoses, raking, etc. I don't want them to just wither away into nothing just from being lazy.

I do have one solid plan for summer, and that is participating in a summer show musical. The Weymouth Alumni Theatre Company puts on a summer camp for kids all the way through high school, and the "counselors" are the people who graduated from high school already. We put the show together in about 5 weeks and it is a medley of Broadway musical songs. I have been in this show for the past three years, and it is always the highlight of my summer. Some of the best friends I have participate in it, and each summer it's a little different but always amazing.

It's going to be quite strange to go back to Weymouth when I'm used to upper 80 degree weather. Once I get home, it will probably be in the 60s, hopefully 70s. I'm going to be COLD. If I'm not doing super strenuous work like cleaning or tours, anything with a lot of work outside, I'm pretty comfortable in jeans. Methinks I will be a little chilly since I won't be working outside and sweating all the time. Ah well, I'll acclimate as I did down here.

On a happy note, my Mom has been visiting me these past few days, and it's been very nice to have her here. My Dad was supposed to come as well but he got injured a couple days before they were supposed to leave so my Mom made the trip solo. She's helped us on clean day, but unfortunately the sun was just a wee bit strong for her and she got quite a sunburn. So now we aren't really adventuring anywhere because we don't want the sun to bake her skin anymore. She says she's fine with just staying here and not doing anything, and I'm fine with just hanging out, but it would be nice to get out of here and do something. Heidi keeps telling me to go out and leave the compound since I haven't really gone anywhere. Anyway, she's gotten to see me butcher :D And she got to see me feed on the tractor...during a thunderstorm. Yeah. That was kind of terrifying. It was raining when I was butchering, but it didn't really start coming down until we were waiting for Derek to come to the freezer. It was POURING when we were loading the bucket, and when we started to feed. All was going fine until there was a huge crack of thunder and lightning right near us, me in particular since I was up in the air on the bucket, and Derek immediately lowered the bucket and told us to go inside. I had never fed in the rain, let alone in a thunderstorm, so that was an interesting thing for my Mom to see.

I'll definitely be trying to update this more now that my time is dwindling down. I'll be sure to share lots of pictures with you all. :) I apologize for not updating in a little while, it's been hard to find enough time sit down and write. If I do have time, I'm usually falling asleep pretty quick.

Anyway, here are some recent pictures to tide you over!

 

 Solano looking adorable

 

 More Solano

 Dahlia :)

Pretty sunrise the other morning

 

 Ace

Mwali showing his nice pretty teeth

Donya and Rascal 

Have a great day! :)

Texas Weather

Hi everyone! :)

I originally planned on writing this last night during a crazy thunderstorm we were having, but I went out to dinner instead. So now I'm writing this while there is some very strong gusts of wind rushing past. Still out of the ordinary, so there you go.

Texas has some of the most ridiculous weather I have ever experienced. Being from Massachusetts and going to college in Maine has given me quite the understanding of cold and snowy, but what I realized once down here, is that I never had to work outside in it. Sure, I walked to class in a blizzard or in negative degrees, but I was really never outside for a long period of time. Or if I was for a lab or something, I was adequately prepared to spend such time. Here in Bridgeport, it got cold. It may not have been as cold as Massachusetts or Maine, etc. but for Texas, it was COLD. Frozen water buckets, snow/hail, frozen water hoses, frozen pipes...you get it. Since I was from New England, everyone said to me, "Aren't you used to the cold?" Yes. But not being outside consistently in it and performing tasks that require my hands to be frozen even with the layers of gloves I had.

Now the cold lasted awhile, and it seemed reluctant to let go. There seemed to be a stretch of warm weather when it even hit the 80s! But literally the next day it was down in the high 20s. I was not impressed. I had gotten a sunburn the day before, and now was dealing with cold. My body was very confused.

Fast forward a few weeks, and it has been consistently in the 80s, which I have gotten used to in a way. This was mostly the weather I experience in the summers of Massachusetts. Humid grossness. Doing chores and working outside in the humidity is a whole different kind of torture than the cold bitterness. I have to make sure my sunblock isn't wearing off, or else my skin will be hurting later on and other stuff like that. If it happens to be a clean day, you have to be careful of cleaning up the bones because if you're wearing shorts, cuts and scrapes from bone can happen quite easily. I speak from experience. I was lifting a body into the gator and got a pretty bad scratch on my calf from some jagged ribs. Hydrogen Peroxide has basically been my friend lately.

*Quick side-note: at my last job working in a scenic shop in UMaine's theatre building, I was pretty well known for being accident prone so that when anyone saw me holding my hand and walking to the sink determinately, no one asked what happened anymore. I had probably just scraped some skin off, gotten a metal splinter, or that one time a screw gun bit went through my hand. Good times. Anyway, back to hydrogen peroxide, anytime I get a scrape, cut, anything that my skin gets ripped open in a way, I'm pouring that stuff on. Last clean day I tore a chunk of skin from my thumb knuckle when one of the pins that go through an enclosure door was stuck and finally slid through, and caught my thumb. Wasn't a big deal except that the pin was quite rusty, so I wanted that safe from infection.

Wearing shorts can be a hazard, sun-wise, and protection from bones and other icky-stuff-wise. But if you're working out in high 80 degrees, pants are really not an option. Butchering in the heat is also a time-sensitive activity. I haven't gotten to experience true Texas heat yet, but I heard from Rachel that you could be butchering, and have meat essentially go bad right as you're cutting. The heat makes the meat rancid if left out too long, so I am sure I'll experience it soon.

Okay, that's enough about Texas temperature. Now, onto storms. Yikes. Thunderstorms out here are nuts. Last night I was about to start evening waters and I heard thunder rumble off in the distance. As I begin watering, the thunder continues, slowly getting closer. I get the uppers done, and then the wind rolls in. It's the kind of wind that you can just tell is the foreshadowing to a storm. It got dark as the thunder got closer, and lighting strikes were visible. Thankfully, Derek helped me finish the lowers to get done quicker. It was starting to rain by the time I made it inside, and then I was invited to dinner. So all in all, it was fine :D A week or two ago, there were tornado warnings in our area which was a little terrifying since I had never had a tornado warning before...it just sounded like really intense wind outside, I didn't know any better. Something I realized is that the thunder hits first, then lightning, then rain. Back home, sometimes it rains first, then the thunderstorm rolls in. I kind of like this way better because it's like a warning. Pretty much saying, get what you're doing finished quickly, or you're gonna get wet.

As quickly as they can come in, the storms can exit just as quickly. The last storm lasted about an hour or so. It's really intense for a little while, and then it's over. It's exciting, but it's also scary to think about the animals. They all have their houses which is good, but if we have animals to butcher, it gets stressful.

Okay. So this was word heavy...so here are some recent pictures! :)

JP stretching

Allie :D

Fire 

I loved how the sunset softly back lit Tabula.

Oh hellooo Kannapalli

Mmm, that Texas sunset.

Okay, now it's time to go feed! Have a great day! :)

FRIENDS

Hello everyone!!

Today's post is about a visit I had almost a week ago now. A few of my friends were going to a Technical Theatre conference called USITT in Fort Worth, TX and I thought it would be quite silly for us to not see each other while they were down here, so on the day they flew down, they rented a car and came to visit me at CARE! It was a win-win for everyone really because we got to each other, and they got to see tigers and lemurs. Perfect. 

*All photos in this post were taken by Bryan Bouchard (guy in the plaid shirt). 

I made sure that the vet center was all cleaned up and looking spiffy for them once they arrived then I took them on a tour and they got to see all the kitties I've been talking about and sharing pictures of. It was a little strange giving a tour to people that I actually know because I went through the facts I always say, but it seemed kind of impersonal so I added little stories and instances I had with each of the kitties. We also went in with the lemurs and you'll see that Bryan got some amazing pictures of them.

 Chompers

 

 

 LOVE this one so much. Too bad it's very difficult to tell them apart.

Jess feeding through the fence

Some Levi and Bonnie love

 

My baby, Raven

 

Acari

 

The whole group in front of Solano :)

 

 In front of Ace.

Kaleigh, me, and Jess

Me and Jess

Seeing friends was so nice because we're so isolated out here, and I feel like I never see anyone I recognize. And the last time I saw them was in October. It was just happy. 

Have a great day :D

My cats

Hello everyone!!

Tonight's post is going to be a little different in that it won't be focusing on the big kitties, but rather my little kitties at home that I am missing dearly.  I'm not just a big cat person, I was a little cat person first. :D Now Tonks has already been shown because she was in my suitcase on top of all my clothes in one of my first posts. But I never showed the rest of the kitties, so here they are!

 Luna is Tonks' sister, and has the cutest little face.

 

:)

Felix is our newest addition, and it about to turn 1 so he's just a baby.

But he's huge. He's a mix of Siamese and Persian.

Here she is :) Tonks in a box, one of her favorite places.

Tonks and Felix have an odd relationship. He always wants to play, and she kind of hates him.

Back around Christmas, I took this photo since the lights looked so nice behind her.

This is Max, he's my sisters and her boyfriends kitty.  He's staying in our house until they move out.

Felix looks kind of psychotic occasionally.

Max under the Christmas tree.

Felix sleeps in this position ALL THE TIME. 

Mmmkay, so not my usual "this is what I'm up to" post, but I wanted to share some cute pictures. A bunch of the pictures were taken by my sister and sent to me, making me happy. Even though I have two domestic cats here, one who is very cuddly and always sleeps with me, I still miss the odds quirks of my own cats.

Tonks learned how to "knock" at my door when she wants to come in, she stands on the couch outside my door and jiggles the doorknob or scratches at my door. Once inside my room, she also scratches when she wants to leave. Although it isn't so cute at 4 am...

If you couldn't guess, Tonks and Luna were named for Harry Potter, and Luna is very aptly named. She is a little space-cadet at times, just like her namesake Luna Lovegood. However, she has the best instincts of all the cats in that she is always curled up near the heater in the winter because she knows that's where it's the warmest. Felix ties in with Harry Potter as well with the potion Felix Felicis. If you couldn't tell, we're Harry Potter fans.

That's all for tonight! Have a great day :)

Butchering

Hello everyone! :)

Now I know that most of you will be a little weary about reading this post from the title, but I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about what we do because I know that is something most people don't want to hear about. But I want to share my feelings on it and how I've grown as a person because of it.

We have to butcher every time a donated cow or horse, sometimes mule, comes into the facility. If the animal isn't dead already, we have corrals that we put it into with hay and water until Derek comes home from work or has a free moment. He is the one who puts down the animals and about a week ago, we had four horses that were donated from one man that were all in the corrals, and another was dropped off as we were out there. So in total, five animals that needed to be put down. These horses were old, had bad legs, etc. I usually am never near the area when Derek does this, but I happened to be out there helping unload the fifth horse that was dropped off. Since I was there, and I knew it was a lot of work, I decided to stay and ensure the other horses didn't spook and knock over the fences/gates as Derek led the others away. I think it was a good thing I was there because one of the horses was pretty worked up anyway, so I was able to shut the gate to keep that one in. Derek talked to me after to make sure I was okay, having witnessed all of it, and I really appreciated that he did that. It was a lot to take in at once and while I was doing it, I was fine. No emotion. But after the fact, while he was talking to me, it hit me and I got a little teary seeing all the horses. But they were all for the cats. Nothing wasted.

So that's part of the before butchering section of this process. Once the animal is dead, I hop on the tractor (pictures of me on the tractor below) and get it into position where I can chain it up. Either I do everything myself, or the other intern Candice helps with this part. She'll be butchering the next cow or horse we get so I hope she's been paying attention to everything I've been showing her. ;) Once we get the chains attached, the bucket is rotated and the animal is raised and I drive it over to the pit. The pit is exactly as it sounds. We butcher over there because it makes it easier when we gut the animal, for the guts to fall right into the pit. Believe me, you don't want that stuff just sitting in a pile on the ground. Just the smell is bad enough. Even when I misjudge the distance and I have to kind of kick the guts into the pit, it's nasty.

Casually driving the tractor. Don't mind the gloves, I thought a gut was going to explode on me so I had taken precautions. That smell will never leave you if it gets on you.

 I'm not going to go into detail about each step but you first start with cutting the legs and then you get the shoulder and chunks from those. Then you do the other side. Once we have the legs off and loaded into the gator and the guts out, we drive the tractor carefully back to the freezer where we take an axe and take the head off, so that the big cats like Chompers, Kanapalli, Solano, etc. can enjoy them. It's funny but different cats like different chunks of meat better than others. Some prefer legs or shoulders, others like heads. Some also prefer cow to horse, but I guess that's like how people prefer red meat to chicken. But some cats also don't like chicken. We're similar, is all I'm trying to say. Everyone has different tastes. 

Anyway, If we're feeding that night, we usually just leave everything in the gator and pull things from the freezer to get ready for feed. But if it is just a normal day and we just had a cow to butcher, we unload the gator of all the meat and load it all into the freezer, different parts go in different sections of the freezer. Shoulders with shoulders, legs with legs, etc. I'll go into more detail about feed day in another post.

 However, here is a picture of me up on the bucket about to push a body into the Babies' enclosure, while they hungrily wait below. Fun, huh?

 

It actually is quite fun. Feeding makes you use your "CARE muscles" like whoa. After each feed night, my entire body aches. Especially when I'm up in the bucket by myself. I am the one responsible for lifting each piece of meat out of the bucket, and over the fence. Let me tell you...horse heads are heavy. Like really heavy. I finally figured out a good method for getting them over, but man, did I struggle the first time I was up there.

At first when I watched Rachel butcher, I was terrified. I never thought I'd be able to do what she did, it looked so complicated and she was super awesome at it, so it looked really clean. When I started, it obviously was no where as clean as hers, so I got a bit discouraged. This made me hesitant to do what I knew was next and I constantly was looking for affirmation that I was doing it correctly. I have a tendency of over-thinking...a lot. This hinders butchering quite a bit and it was Derek who shook me of that. He called me out on it. He constantly said to me, "You're making this more complicated." or "You're over-thinking." etc. I knew I was, but hearing someone else say it made me just want to power through it and just do it. He also made me feel better about just going at it by asking me what I was doing. "Butchering." Then he said, "that's right. Butchering. You can't mess it up." Just realizing that, was SUPER helpful because yeah, it may not be the cleanest and the hip joint might not be perfectly separated from the meat but if you end up with four legs, two shoulders, and chunks, you did it correctly. Doesn't matter how pretty it is getting there.

Gutting, however, it a bit of a different story in that if you mess it up, you could and probably would be covered in poop, pee, and lots of other unpleasant things. Things that smell raunchy and that smell literally doesn't go away for hours. The key to gutting it to first cut slits in the ribs to let out the gases and to make everything descend into the ribcage so they fall out easier. Then once you get through the layer of fur and skin, little tiny cuts are your best friend. Thin cuts made with the middle of your knife is what you need to get through the layers of muscle and fat. You really do not want to rush gutting if you aren't familiar with it. Even now, I've gutted quite a few and I still take my time gutting. I take no chances with it. The two things that are most important when butchering are: tension and a sharp knife. If you cut the tension with your sharp knife, then a lot of your work is done for you. The weight of the animal will help you if you just cut that tension.

Another thing you have to be weary of while butchering and gutting is blood. If you nick an artery while cutting, you're getting a steady stream of blood shooting at you. While gutting, blood and sometimes other stuff drips from the mouth and the other day I got dripped on consistently while gutting. It wasn't the most pleasant sensation especially since I was wearing a tank top. Yum.


Okay, I hope it wasn't too gross for you! But this is an almost daily part of my life now. I have gotten pretty comfortable with it, in that I no longer feel a sense of dread when I know I need to butcher something. I think of it more like, 'Oh, there's some kitty food I need to go prepare.' If that makes sense. :)

Here are some happy pictures for you to enjoy!

I was stretching my sore hip and leg one morning during chores and Candice decided to document. 

Raven sunning herself.

Have a great night!

For Beauty

 Hello everybody! :)

Tonight is unfortunately another memoriam to one of our beloved cats. We said goodbye to Beauty the mountain lion on Friday, March 14th, three weeks shy of her 20th birthday. I had about two months of knowing this silly girl and I already miss her so much. Beauty lived in the back of the vet center in an inside/outside enclosure because of her old age so we could keep a close eye on her and give her the care she needed. She greeted me every morning with a little grunt/squeak while I started preparing the meds for the day and I prepared her dinner every two days. The back of the vet center feels empty without her.

I'm sad because I don't have many pictures of her, but the ones that I do have are of her outside, in the sunshine so that makes me happy. Please enjoy the few photos I have. 

RIP Beauty, we miss you.

Vine

Hello everyone!!

Tonight it's going to be all the app Vine, which I'm sure most of you know what it is but just in case you don't, it's a mobile device app that enables people to record and post short looping videos. The reason I'm writing a whole post about this is because Vine is a big part of advertising the CARE facility to people and letting those people see our cats through the eyes of the dedicated workers.

My boss, Derek, is BigCatDerek on Vine and he has almost 200,000 followers who get to experience many of our cats through how they act towards him. It's funny because some cats don't particularly like Derek and past interns and volunteers who come to visit and vine while here will get completely different reactions from the cats. Example: Ace and Eerie. They are both male black leopards who growl and snarl at Derek...but for Jade, a past intern and Jamie, one of the senior volunteers here, they are all love and cuteness. Just seeing how they act towards different people really shows how their personalities differ and how their moods can switch quite quickly.

If you're interested in the other vine accounts that showcase CARE cats and other animals, there is CARE Jamie and Jade Olivia. Jamie vines the big cats as well as the lemurs while Jade gets a lot of the big cats for the most part.

The good thing about having vine showcase the facility is that it brings in people from everywhere who already know some of the cats. Unfortunately, this can be a bad thing because the cats don't always want to "perform" for the people as they expect them to. Cassie the mountain lion is "vine famous" and she squeaks for Derek all the time but for others Cassie doesn't always want to squeak and say hi. We're doing Spring Break tours this week and next so every day at 1pm, I'm giving a tour. So far Cassie has not felt like squeaking for the people so I'm thinking in the early afternoon she just is a little tired, and just doesn't want to squeak. In the mornings and night she is full of happy squeaks for us, but on my tours, she isn't having any of it.

Another good quality of vine is how it can educate people. Derek can show people how the cats act during feeding, during cleaning, or just being lazy, etc. There was one vine of me dropping a horse leg into Serena's enclosure from the tractor bucket and there was such a discrepancy over whether it was a horse or cow leg and how it was such a bad thing for us to feed the tigers this way. But through the comments, Derek was able to explain to people that the only animals we use to feed are those that have been donated from farmers/ranches and the animals are old, sick, dying, and they need to be put down if they haven't died already. These big cats need red meat in their diet...it's what they eat. They can't survive off just chicken, it makes them go a little loopy. Through vines like this, it shows people what is necessary to keep these big cats healthy and happy.

It also helps us get out quick messages to a lot of people if necessary. That's how my current intern partner was found. Derek made a vine asking for interested parties to send their resume to so and so with a few parameters and that's how Candice came to be with us! So yay for that! It is in fact, quite useful.

Feel free to follow BigCatDerek, CARE Jamie, and Jade Olivia on Vine, they make awesome videos. Seriously.

Have a great day! Here are some phone pictures:

Archie

 

Noel in her tree

 

Bindi trying to nap before we cleaned her cage this morning