Author: Stacy Horn

My section at the ASPCA’s Kitten Nursery has fewer kittens than any other, and I’ve been begging for more kittens. I’ve been warned to be careful for what you wish for, and even as I cry for more kittens I know what they mean. If I walk into an explosion of kittens I’ll be running without stop cleaning their enclosures and feeding them, and I’ll miss the days when I could take care of the ones I had relatively easily.

I’m always trying to come up with new toys for Bleecker (Finney is a laze-about cat now). This was made from cut up pieces of the cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels. I bunched pieces together and spaced them out along a piece of string. It was a medium success. He likes it, but does not love it.

I don’t watch the news anymore. When I read the Times I immediately scroll down past the main stories. The news is relentlessly bad and I can’t take it anymore. He demeans the office on a daily basis. In the window the Sex and the City building on Bleecker Street.

Is Gadget eating and gaining weight? Is the new batch okay at all? Two of them looked really terrible. They were found outside, soaked from the rain, filthy and with eye infections, and they are some of the rattiest little puff balls you will have ever seen. So of course we love them. It’s been two days since I’ve seen the teeny guys. What will I be coming back to?

Signs of spring. I love forsythia. I suppose this is a sad little shrub, but it makes me happy to see it. Huntington, Long Island, where I grew up, was always covered in forsythia.

This is at Grace Church, heading into choir practice. Usually the magnolia tree is the star of the spring show, but this year it was the cherry blossom tree.

I’ve decided to risk it and buy Finney’s insulin from C****a. I probably shouldn’t be blogging about this, but the price here is absolutely insane and egregious. I’m going to try a pharmacy people were blogging about on a cat site, but if anyone has one to recommend I’d love to consider other sources. Thank you in advance!

For me, meat markets and butchers—butchers—are horror movies come to life.

Those are the names of the first batch of kittens in my “Q”. I’ve been assigned to Quarantine 1 (during the morning shift). (Earlier I said I was in charge and I realized that was WAY over-stating it!) All kittens are quarantined for 14 days while they make sure they don’t have any terrible or less terrible diseases or viruses. I have another cat Cupid, and two neonates named Michael and Jordon, but I have less to do with the neonates. The night crew is coming in during the day right now to learn bottle feeding. They have to learn first because that’s what they will be doing all night long, going from Q to Q, feeding the bottle babies.

I half watch them with envy as they get to feed the teeniest ones, but it also makes me nervous because it looks hard.

A row of backyards in Brooklyn. I love City backyards.