animal rescue | Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

Everyone who’s visited our shop or read Little Bookstore knows that I crochet items to support cat rescue. During the winter when we don’t have fosters in residence, we support PAWS of SWVA by getting feral cats neutered and spayed. In the spring Jack and I open our garage and mystery room to nursing mamas and their infants, getting them adopted to loving forever homes.

It gets expensive, but it’s worth it looking into those little whiskered faces.

Last fall I started making SPAY AND NEUTER afghans, based on a free pattern called Rows of Cats. “This is what you get if you don’t spay and neuter,” I declaimed via FB (and ok, it might have been slightly self-righteous, but what’s a little smugness between friends?) and sold 20 of those afghans. They were fun and quick and cheap to make because I burned through a lot of my stash, so it was easy to sell them for $67, the cost of a spay on the Margaret Mitchell van (a mobile animal clinic for low-income areas.) They’ve gone up since I depleted my stash and have to buy yarn.

And then the chickens came home to roost….

Somebody posted the Swanky Chicken Trivet by Sarah Moss, it went viral, and I bought it for $7 and sold about 96 chickens for $7.50 each, branching out into pigs and penguins somewhere along the way.

And the pigs were fun and the chickens were fun and lots of people bought them and we got lots of cats looked after and gave some money to another group, In His Hands Small Animal Rescue, because they’re trying to help get a feral cat colony down the way under control, and life was good. Except there were chickens and pigs everywhere.

One day about three weeks ago I started my 97th chicken and thought, “No.” My hands just stopped moving. There are limits. So the Great Chicken Crochet of 2014 ended with a whimper. And that was fine. Jack and I have eight fosters in the house and chickens have covered three of them, so we just needed to fundraise for five more, including three girls (which are double the cost of boys to render non-producing).

And then…..

a lady out East somewhere makes cat butt coasters, and somebody posted the photo from her Etsy store, and in the past 48 hours no fewer than nine people have posted them on my timeline with a note equating to “You should make these next! People would buy them!”

And yes, they have gone viral. The lady who makes them actually tracked their popularity: http://yesthisisshana.tumblr.com/post/85912403815/why-cat-butts-are-better-than-unicorn-poop-my

But here’s the thing: I saw the coasters weeks ago when I was browsing for something to replace those *&%^$# chickens, and thought “Nobody’d buy those” and went on looking for new items with which to raise money.

I ask you, can I spot a social media trend or what? No wonder my agent and her assistant are so proud of my Twitter feed! Marketing genius, me.

So now I’m making coasters, $20 per set and yes you can specify colors, up to one month to deliver. PM me on FB with your address if you want a set.

But wouldn’t anyone like a nice dignified SPAY AND NEUTER afghan?!

Annually at graduation time we take pleasure in re-blogging Zora’s advice on human puppy raising.

Every year at this time humans come in looking for graduation gifts. Apparently their puppies, or their sister’s puppies, or the puppies of a friend–humans have such odd kinship systems–are graduating. It is a time of great consternation for the whole human pack.

It all seems a bit artificial to me. Take that kinship system of who has to buy presents for whom: we canines have instincts for a reason, and we’re not much bothered about the rules beyond that. You either smell good or you don’t; you wag your tail and are friendly, or you’re a growler. Blood doesn’t matter–unless it’s about to get spilled.

But then, I’m a dog, not a human, so maybe I haven’t got enough of that “schooling” element.

That’s the other part of the “graduation” ritual that strikes me as odd. I understand that the human puppies have done something that took a lot of time and was quite expensive, but we canines know that it takes a whole lifetime to absorb the learning that goes with being alive. In my experience, those that don’t keep learning get run over on the highway. Or left behind in a move. You have to stay ahead of those noises you hear in the distance. Ears up, nose into the wind.

There’s another part of the ritual I don’t understand. We bitches love our babies all the time; they get licks and snuggles and we sing them lullabies when nobody’s around. I know humans love their puppies too, but they seem to wait for special occasions to say so. Every day alive is a special occasion for us. We call it “every dog has his day.”

Then there’s that weird thing humans do where they run around each other–or run away from each other–looking for love. In my experience, love comes when you’re sitting down minding your own business. Someone scratches you behind the ears, you look into each others’ eyes, and you got a home. Just don’t go messing it up by barking when a little kiss will do the trick.

And one last thing. There are no books that will stuff into a pup’s head in one sitting all the things they haven’t got by now. In our world, we say “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” The time to tell ’em what they need to hear is all those years you’ve got ’em around the food bowl – kitchen table, I think y’all call it. Those toss-off evenings that tick by one by one, racing past ’cause you’ve got places to go: THOSE are the nights that count. Once they get old enough to go out on their own, they aren’t gonna listen any more. So get their ears full while they’re still wet behind ’em.

That’s what I’d say if humans could hear me. But y’know, they usually can’t, so never mind. And to all you puppies out there leaving the school, here’s my advice: keep your ears up, scratch when it itches, stick with the love you find, and don’t get run over.

Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

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Category Archives: animal rescue

Zora’s Advice on Human Puppies Graduating