Lately, though, I've been wanting to say more about my life with and opinions about animals than you can write in a Facebook status update or a 140 character tweet. Then, a confluence of events happened over the past few weeks: I started doing more animal rescue work. My best friend sent me a link to this blog that I love written by an animal rescuer. There were several days in a row when family members and friends mentioned to me how much they enjoyed seeing my pictures of and stories about animals, and I started realizing how often I'd heard that over the years.
So, I started this blog.
Do you need to introduce yourself in your first blog post? Maybe I should do that in case someone comes along and finds my blog after I've been at it for a while and he or she reads back to the first entry to find out more about me.
Well, my name is Katie. I live with a lot of animals. I've cared for animals for most of my life, about thirty years. My maternal grandmother is an animal person too. I don't know if she taught me to be an animal person or if I just inherited it from her. (She is also an artist and I got that too.) Thanks to her, I can't remember a time when animals weren't in my life in a big way. It wasn't just like we had a cat or a dog. We had cats, dogs, and herds of livestock. But it wasn't a big farm, either--we didn't have giant barns full of cattle and poultry and hired hands to take care of them. My grandparents took care of every animal on their little bit of land with their own hands and knew all of them well. Each one was known by name and personality, and a big part of every morning and evening was spent tending to them.
Here's a picture of me taken on my grandparents' property a few weeks before I turned three:
My first word was "dog."
My first job was working as a veterinary assistant. When I graduated from high school I received a number of books about animal anatomy as graduation presents from people who assumed I was going to vet school. (I went to art school instead because I wasn't good at math, but I still use and appreciate the books.)
In college, I lived in dorms, and I wasn't supposed to have pets. That did not work for me. I started off with a quarter-sized red eared slider turtle named Polly who is now a dinner plate-sized behemoth who has her own pond in my backyard. I also had a series of pet rats, the most notable of which were Simon and Ricky, who were absolutely terrific. They were litterbox-trained and would run around the room loose, which really freaked some people out. A large rat running at full sprint toward a person will often drive them out of a room faster than a snarling rottweiler, even though the rats just wanted to be held and cuddled.
Then I acquired The Best Dog In The World, Mary Jane Robertson-Shaddix, aka Poopers Stinky Booper Boo.
I also acquired a wonderful husband who loves me and is great with animals.
Together we have a beautiful family.
And we do animal rescue.We foster homeless animals, care for them, and find them homes. Here's where I'll write about that.
