According to my National Geographic Society “Bird Migration Map for the Western Hemisphere” the Yucatan Peninsula is a stopping point for birds that migrate from as far away as Baffin Island in Northeastern Canada and Uruguay in South America. I’m not sure how many of these birds actually bother to come through Cancun, but some certainly do get spotted here.

When we first bought our house the yard had no mature trees. Now, 5 years later, we have a monster of a ficus tree, 5 huge bugambilias, a chico zapote that’s almost 2 stories tall and a naranja (orange) tree which is full of (green) oranges at the moment. Needless to say we have lots of attractive branches for birds to land on.

And land they do. Each morning we are awakened by birds who sit in the ficus, just outside our bedroom window. Once they start their squawking the cats inevitably jump onto the windowsills and watch the bird show for a few hours. Some cats get more into this than others and a couple of the cats get a little carried away making imitative “bird” noises and periodically launching themselves up onto the window screen in a futile attempt to chase a bird.

The other day we were awakened by bird squawks. But this time they were not coming from the ficus tree, they were coming from the other side of the house, from the backyard. And this time it wasn’t the usual 10 or 20 birds having their normal pre-coffee discussion about how to torment our 8 cats. No. This time it was roughly 90 to 100 birds. And this time they were squawking like no one’s business. These birds were LOUD, they had a purpose, they were raising an alarm!

When we looked we saw birds perched along every edge of every roof and wall around our backyard. And ALL of them were squawking INTO our backyard!

We raced into the yard and found the problem. Several guilty-looking cats had a bird cornered in our backyard. They were close enough to the bird that it couldn’t take flight. We chased the cats into the house and then fended off the dog who had come to “help”. Once free of cat interference the bird flew halfway up the wall and landed on a vine in the corner. Then it was able to fly to the top of the wall. I couldn’t tell if it’s short flights were due to it being injured or whether they were due to space limitations coupled with being in shock. But the bird got away under its own power.

As soon as the bird topped the wall it’s squawking brethren quit their alarming and went about their business. But I have to say I was really, really impressed with how all those birds tried to help their fallen friend. If they had not woken us up that bird would have been cat food.

I’ve always thought I would like to feed birds and become a birdwatcher. But it may have to wait until another life, a life in which I don’t pull every starving cat I find off the street and bring it home.

The other day a woman stopped into my vet’s office and asked if the vet would take in 3 starving kittens that had eye infections. My vet said “no” but offered to treat their infections. The woman complained that none of the pet shops she’d been to would take the kittens either (obviously because they were sick).

Well, the woman walked outside the vet’s office and dumped the kittens in the bushes in front of the building and then she left. A little while later my husband, who was there helping the vet with some building maintenance, heard the mewing. The vet has been taking care of these kitties since then, she’s treated their eye infections, has successfully fattened them up and has neutered each of them. But now it’s time for them to find homes.

The two black ones are female and the orange tabby is male. If you know of anyone who might need a kitty (or 2 or 3) in their life please contact me asap.

This female was a skinny little thing when I first saw her, now she sports a belly.

This guy needs a bath but will be gorgeous when he’s cleaned up.

This girl is my favorite, she’s got a really sweet personality.

Here are the 3 of them together.

Please help save these kitties. My vet can’t keep them, she’s already got 6 six dogs that she adopted off the street (after nursing them back to health from various injuries).

I’m giving myself a full 4 minutes to write this blog entry, so as my daughter’s preschool teacher used to say “you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”. [Incidentally, she went to a preschool called Make a Mess and Make Believe, but the kids affectionately called it Make a Mess and Don’t Clean it Up.]

When I was walking Sam today we saw a dalmatian, it was a female. And it was hiding behind a tree as we walked by. She had a collar on. She was terrified of us but curious. She clearly needed someone. She was clearly lost. She had little boobies, which told me that she had been a mom, but is not currently lactating. Poor thing. Terrified. And Sam wanted to play with her, which scared her.

I just wanted to grab her and take her home. Someone misses her. But she’s so skittish that I wonder if her lost owners might have been abusive. But being a beautiful dalmatian she might be easily adoptable. Maybe I should go look for her (without Sam in tow). But then what if we don’t find a home for her? Or worse, what if we fall for her and can’t give her up (like I did with that dratted, lovely, perfect EmmaCat)?

Ok, time is up. More later.

I’m a bit frazzled. I’ve got several real estate buyers in town right now, and I’ve got several web design deadlines in the next two days. Not a good mix. Real estate is this open-ended, lengthy schmooze process. While web design takes total concentration with no distractions or other appointments. I’m seriously considering pulling an all-nighter, I feel like I’m 18 again (and I mean that only in the worst possible way).

My daughter called and said that her agnostic/atheist father had just given her a 40 year old Bible and “how cool is that?” (I’m wondering if he wanted to make space on the bookshelf). And I’m thinking that it’s cool that she thinks that’s cool, because she was not raised with a religion, she was raised to choose her own religion, if she wants to. One of my recent conversations with her involved me reading long passages from the Old Testament to her over the phone and providing my ribbing commentary along the way (there was quite a bit of giggling, especially about not coveting thy neighbor’s ass). Anyway, I think it’s great that she’s think her Bible is cool. Perhaps it’s time for her that grandmother who has a Ph.D in Religious Studies to give her grand daughter a call… Oh Mom?

Meanwhile the next book my Book Club is going to read will be The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever edited by Christopher Hitchens. One member of the Book Club stated that she “didn’t believe in Atheists”, I’m pretty sure she voted against this book, but she lost (we have a very democratic voting system). Regardless of viewpoint I’m sure that book will make for a great discussion. And a great discussion is the only possible excuse for all the wine we drink at those meetings.

Besides musings on God and his lack, and real estate and my lack of focus on web stuff my big thing right now is my cats. Surprised right? Flaco’s death has made me appreciate the living. So I’m trying to actually pet each of the living breathing 9 cats every day. This is harder than it sounds, since several of them hide under beds night and day and only come out for meals. I’m kind of forcing love on them, I feel a bit odd, “you will accept my love, like it or not”. But my eldest and fattest, and probably most frail, Grace, the 17 year old cat that I rescued back in Colorado, is appreciating all the attention. She’s even waking me up at night by purring in my ear. So I think I’m on the right track.

Scattered thoughts are all you will get from me right now. So sorry. Better luck next time.

+ I read with absolute trepidation Canuck in Cancun’s 5 things post. And sure enough she tagged me, so now I need to come up with no less than 20 bits of wisdom to impart to my kid (poor kid). That will take a few days, so be patient. I swear she owes me a double latte for this.

+ I spent much of last week in the presence of a pathological liar with schizophrenic tendencies and signs of an ongoing psychotic break. Something about that experience destroyed my ability to put up with other people’s bullshit. I’ve been on serious bullshit-avoidance since Saturday afternoon, so watch out if you are a bullshitter.

+ I’m having waking dreams about moving back to Colorado. I find myself walking the dog past piles of basura (garbage) and baches (potholes) and daydreaming of the miles and miles of dog-friendly open space trails in Boulder County. When dog-face and I run in the morning we always run through one small park with grass, and while we are crossing that 20 meters of grass it I have life-long daydreams about romping in hectare-wide meadows with my dog. I’m so sick of the lack of parks and green space here in Cancun.

+ My kid, apparently, according to the ex (but on the hush, so don’t squeal), has an almost maybe boyfriend. She told me about him already, but she described him as “a buddy” and “moodier” than she is. Can you say “parental turmoil”? Can you say “sex education”? Can you say get that damn HPV vaccine? Christ, to be 13 again. Maybe one of my points of wisdom to her will be “don’t date people who are moodier than you are”.

+ Life is emptier without that dead cat. You’d think with 10 cats that we wouldn’t miss one. But I’ve been living and breathing the cat-ness in this house since he left us. His mama misses him, his brother does too. His sister is unreadable. The other cats are irritable. And Ariel (one of my two 17 year old sister cats) is telling me that she’s next. Mortality is not for sissies! God damn.

+ My husband is on vacation again, the second two-week vacation in 6 weeks. Don’t ya love governement jobs, they have such sensible policies. It’s great for him, all that time off, but for me it’s hard to get anything done with Mr. Boredom in the house.

+ Yesterday I got some shit from someone who thinks it’s wrong that the people from the U.S.A. call themselves AMERICAN. His problem, obviously, is that the Americas run from northern Canada to the southern tip of Chile. But he’s young and moody (like some other people we know). And I told him that he couldn’t hold Americans to blame for the fact that our country has a really STUPID name! I mean Mexico is actually the United States of Mexico, and so everyone calls it Mexico (in English at least). What the fuck are you supposed to call people from the U.S.A.? United Statesians? I get the argument, but get over it. If you want to criticize the U.S. for it’s foreign policy or it’s war on “terrorism” or it’s poorly educated rednecks then be my guest. But it ain’t our fault that the country is named after the whole continent! The people to blame for that are dead, like my cat!

We are down to 9 cats now. We had one die last night. The poor guy had a tumor on his sternum which was inoperable.

We’d noticed that he’d recently gained a little weight, but we thought it was because about 4 months ago we stopped ever letting him out. So he wasn’t getting as much exercise as he had previously. But it turned out that he had a tumor which was growing pretty fast. And, in the end the tumor prevented him from being able to eat or breathe easily. Poor guy. I think he suffered during the last week or so of his life.

He was about 4 years old when he died. We took him (and his mama and 2 of his brethren) off the street when he was about 5 months old. I’m grateful that he did not die from something avoidable, like being flattened by a car or from a preventable disease.

I’m sad to see him go. But I’m especially sad for his mama, because she adored him. The two of them would each wrap his or her tail around the other’s so their tails were twisted up together. And then they would rub their faces together while their tails were entwined. It was pretty damn sweet. I’ll really miss seeing them do that.

My husband, who wishes he were Bart Simpson, says I should be forced to write over and over that:

Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes. Dogs do not eat grapes.

But someone should tell the dog this! Every time I eat grapes he follows me around until I give him one. Then he chews on the grape and ends up leaving mushy chewed up grape pulp on the floor somewhere.

At least it’s more pleasant to clean up than cat vomit.

Remember the other day how I posted about Helping Cancun’s Animals? Well, I went over to the RAP facility last week and took photos of some of the puppies they have up for adoption now.

I couldn’t talk to RAP’s director, Maria Alicia, because at the time of our visit she was out saving the life of a pregnant dog that had just been hit by a car.

The RAP animal shelter door, a more permanent sign is on the wishlist.

When I was there they had about 20 puppies in all sizes and colors. They also had something in the range of 45 to 50 adult dogs (and I didn’t meet a single one that I didn’t like).

These two are part of a litter of 9 pups that were dropped off while I was there helping out one day. They are beyond cute.

The sole purpose of this post is to nag my friends and readers to help find good homes for the puppies and dogs currently at RAP. RAP needs to get their dogs adopted so that they can free up space to rescue more of the starving and injured dogs we all see everyday in Cancun.

Here’s one of their brothers, another cute one.

This little guy almost came home with me, I just love those eyes. But I need more land before I get more dogs.

These guys were really hard to photograph because they wouldn’t stop playing! Most of my photos of them are just a blur of cute puppy fur.

Ok, have I pulled enough heart-strings yet? Please do what you can to help. You know you want a doggie!

This little guy was at the bottom of the pile of puppies, I finally got a photo of him when he managed to get out from under his siblings.

You can contact Maria Alicia to make an appointment to meet all the dogs and puppies she has up for adoption. Her number is (998) 206-0056 and she is fluent in both English and Spanish.

Visit the RAP Web Site
Visit the CANDi Web Site

I want to spread the word a bit about two charities that are working together here in Cancun to rescue animals and help animals find good adoptive homes. The first is Respeta, Ayuda y Protege, which in English means respect, help and protect (it’s called RAP for short). And the second is called CANDi, which stands for Cats and Dogs International.

The two groups have teamed up recently on a campaign called Project Cancun under which they will be starting a spay and neuter clinic among other things. In the mean time the two groups are busy getting their new facility up and running. And they are also caring for more than 60 dogs they have rescued from the streets of Cancun.

Here are their web sites:

• Respeta, Ayuda y Protege
• Cats and Dogs International
• CANDi Blog: Project Cancun

I will be writing more about these groups and this project in the future. In the mean time please send them lots and lots of money and volunteer to help them if you can.

I just got an email from a blogger who is collecting photographs of people’s favorite places on earth. I think it’s a great project. I submitted a photo of my favorite spot in the Yucatan, but I’m not sure that I have a favorite place on earth. If I do it’s probably my bed on a lazy Saturday morning when the bed is full of cats, but I didn’t want to submit that since no one else would care. Take a look at Your Lovely Places and be sure to send a photo of your favorite spot.