Unfortunately, I was unaware that the Tuesday visit to the animal shelter conflicted with my Tuesday bus ride home for Thanksgiving break. Due to this conflict, I ended up hopping in the car with the other group and going a week later.

One of the cats who’s been in the shelter since I started volunteering is named Queenie. On her door are a set of rules to follow to ensure that she doesn’t get angry with you. In fact, when I started in September, she was a staff only cat, but recently became open to the public. Vic, perhaps because the strict rules make this cat more enticing, always seems to want to play with her. I think he’s insane. This cat is crazy I can see it in her eyes.

One of the rules is that picking Queenie up is strictly off-limits. Despite this, Queenie remains very much a lap cat; if you so much as kneel in her presence, there’s a good chance she’ll hop onto your knees and lay down, trapping you in your awkward position for as long as she wants.

What was special about this visit is that it was the first one that I got to drive to. Julia and I are both drivers, but she is much better than I am about reserving the car, so she usually drives. This time around, however, she had a prelim and asked if I could drop her off close to where she was taking it once we were done. She must be crazy for still doing service on the day she has a prelim…

The Halloween decorations were gone, but the animal shelter had some sort of Harry Potter theme going on for the week. A lot of the adoption prices were cut and each of the cats were assigned a house.

The cat wing is composed of a single hallway that branches into 5 doors. The door directly at the end of the hallway is a cat room, but the other four doors lead to smaller “common areas”, each of which have more doors that lead to cat rooms. Within each of the common areas, the cats that live in that branch take turns having their doors open so they can roam the space. Recently, the back right common area has been closed off to everyone but staff (volunteers not included). I’m curious as to why, but there’s a large sheet of cardboard blocking the glass.

This was the first week that I went with my proper group. Due to a prelim on the first Tuesday that my group went, I had to reschedule and go with the other group last time. This means that is has been three weeks since my last visit to the animal shelter.

Unsurprisingly, since the last time I had been, Half-Stache was adopted. Considering how friendly of a cat he was, this was expected. Although I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to see him anymore, I am glad that he has found a home.

Interestingly, some of the cats had Halloween themed decorations in their rooms. One set of cats had a spooky box they could hide in, which they had taken an extreme liking too. The majority of the time I was in their room, they were on, in, or around the box.

The first day interacting with the cats was extremely enjoyable. At first, there were so many cats that I didn’t know who to visit with and for how long. Given that there are three or so volunteers that go at a time, we were able to split the cats pretty evenly, ensuring that everyone was able to interact.

I spent the majority of my time with a cat names “Half-Stache”. According to the sheet on his door, he had been found in the woods and was taken to the animal shelter. The fact that he was in the same wing as I was meant that he already been given vaccination and treated medically. At first, I wondered into his room and sat on the floor. He seemed apprehensive of me, so I got on my phone and chilled on the ground.

After a couple of minutes, he seemed to take an interest in what I thought was my phone. He wondered over and started headbutting my hand, at which point I realized that he was more interested in my hand than the screen. Whenever I held my hand out, he would rush over and headbutt it, which I would reward by petting him. I found this extremely entertaining.