Journal of a Sabbatical

March 1, 2000

that sinking feeling

Adopt these cats at Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society

Visit Bonnie's site, Adopt Homeless Paws, for more pictures of MRFRS cats and other animals needing homes.

Today's Bird Sightings:
I495
2 red-tailed hawks
marsh behind cat shelter
10 redwing blackbirds
1 mourning dove

Plum Island
1 northern shrike
4 rough-legged hawks
1 northern harrier
numerous Canada geese
numerous black ducks
12 herring gulls
1 mourning dove

Today's Reading: Early Spring in Massachusetts: from the Journals of Henry David Thoreau edited by H. G. O. Blake

The sink flooded not once but twice. The cover thingie for the sink trap is now completely stripped. There is no way to tighten it. A plumber has allegedly gone off in search of a part to replace it. And of course, somebody was using the big galvanized bucket to collect dirty dishes, so only a small inadequate bucket remained under the trap. Meanwhile, the water reached even as far as the laundry room before it stopped flowing out. Grrr. What a mess!

And then there was the usual teasing about how this only happens when I wash the dishes so it must be something I do. That theory would have some validity if I hadn't given up the practice of filling the sink with water months ago. It's much more time consuming to put a little dish detergent and a little bleach in each litter box, add a little hot water, scrub, dump, and rinse with the sprayer, but it greatly reduces the volume of water that has to flow through the drain at any one time. For the dishes, I use a dish pan so I can fill it with hot water, detergent, and bleach and let them soak a little bit. Since there's not room for a separate rinse pan, I use the sprayer. When it comes time to dump the water out of the dish pan, I'm careful to do it a little at a time. The mass quantities of water that swamped the floor were coming back from the pipe, not draining straight from the sink, so all my careful management of how much I let into the drain at a time was foiled by the water's not making it all the way out the pipe. The backup creates so much pressure that the stripped cover pops off and water gushes out from the trap. Grrr. If this really does only happen to me, it's probably because I wash steadily for 2 hours rather than alternating with other tasks. When people alternate it with cleaning cages, the pipe probably has time to drain slowly downstream of the trap. Who knows? I've probably already put more thought into this than the plumber has.

Giggle Girl was in my face constantly, popping up from behind me making faces and trying to make me laugh or deliberately bumping into me on the way to the laundry room. And giggling constantly. Roy was telling his usual jokes, which for some reason seemed way funnier this week than they did last week. That had me laughing a lot, which got Giggle Girl going even more. I'm a little worried about the fact that she is really fascinated with me. She's a nice enough kid for a troubled teen, but I'm a little afraid she might get violent if I am too assertive about getting her out of my face. Anyway, she was driving me crazy with her unwanted attentions today. When I talked about this with Nancy tonight, she used social work speech to explain tom e that I was uncomfortable because the kid violated my boundaries. Despite years of therapy I've never understood what boundaries are, but I sure know I was uncomfortable.

I was about ready to throw in the towel on the whole organization this morning. I got off to a bad start when I ran into Betty at the Salisbury Dunkin' Donuts and instead of thanking me for rushing to get the newsletter out so more people would know she still needed help with the booth at the cat show this weekend, she complained that there were "a lot of mistakes" in the volunteer list. She could only cite one, and I asked her to leave me a note in my folder because I didn't have a pen to write it down on my coffee cup or bagel wrapper. This is the same woman who is convinced that I break all the plastic dishes we use to feed the cats wet food, either that or the foster homes steal them. The fact is they're cheap plastic and they develop cracks and then separate after they've been used awhile. Bob and I once contemplated finding a source of these dishes and sneaking them in a few at a time so it would look like the supply was increasing instead of decreasing, just to mess with her mind. Then we got distracted with the idea of making a hypnotic sleep tape to convince Roy's wife to let him have a cat and forgot about tweaking Betty about the dishes. It would blow her mind though.

So I was already feeling wicked under-appreciated when the Giggle Girl harassment and the overflowing sink. To top it off, a woman with a young child came in to look at cats about 10 minutes before we open. The place was a mess, we were still mopping up water. I blurted out "Come back in 10 minutes, we're still cleaning." Bonnie told her we don't open 'til 11:00. The woman got huffy and made some comment as she left. On one hand, I feel badly that messing up the cleaning might have scared off a potential adopter but on the other hand, if somebody is going to get bent out of shape about it maybe adopting a cat from us isn't right for them.

It was not a good day. There's more but I won't bore readers with it.

I grabbed lunch and went to look for birds. I was still steaming mad and ruminating about all the things I was angry about, and there weren't a whole lot of birds around. After the northern shrike near parking lot 2, I didn't see anything but Canada geese, and black ducks for the longest time. I got as far as Stage Island/Lot 6 when I decided to turn around and go back. On the way back I saw a hawk out over the dike near the north pool overlook. It was not acting like a harrier or a redtail so I pulled in there to check it out. It was a rough-legged hawk. Then another rough-legged joined it. Then another. Then another. In a few seconds I had 4 rough-leggeds and a harrier in a tight cluster over the dike. It was pretty cool. Two of the rough-leggeds were pale and two dark but all four were definitely rough-leggeds. I read recently that rough-legged hawks are an irruptive species and we are experiencing an irruption this winter. I don't know if 4 constitutes an irruption - I think of irruption as more like hundreds of evening grosbeaks or something - but it certainly felt special.

On the way home I realized I'd left my camera at the shelter, so went back to get it. Shanti was being really friendly. She likes Kendra a whole lot. After rubbing against Kendra's legs for a bit, she plunked down on the floor and rolled over. She rolled and stretched and looked just too cute, so I had to take pictures of her too. Someone has applied to adopt Shanti to be a barn cat. Since she has been indoors all winter she doesn't have a thick winter coat, so her barn duties won't start 'til April, but I think it will be a good gig for her. She can be around people but not have to be cuddly.

Think I can get a gig as a barn cat?