Stacy Horn

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.

My cats missed me so much they agreed to share my lap! Normally the old guy on the right, Finney, is so annoyed by the young guy on the left, Bleeck, they can’t occupy the same space. (That said, Bleeck will always sleep as close as he can to Finn.) Yesterday morning they put their differences aside and slept together while I had my morning coffee. It was heaven.

I think I’m going to love my job. The only reason I say think is because I still don’t see how it’s humanly possible to do it! Right now there are three kittens in the section I’ve been assigned to. When we really get going there will could be over 100. Every day I have to do what they call a “deep cleaning” of each cage, while feeding the kittens every three or five hours, depending on their age. Based on my current rate of “deep cleaning” I should be able to complete my entire section in ten hours. Then there’s 100 kittens to feed every three or five hours. How on earth?? They swear it’s do-able.

One nice coincidental thing happens every day. I eat my lunch while sitting in Carl Schurz Park, by Gracie Mansion, overlooking the East River. My view is of the very Island I’ve been researching and writing about for the past two years. I can’t tell you the satisfaction I feel gazing at it. Just knowing I have a book coming out about this place.

I’d planned to start my book with a hanging that took place where this lighthouse now stands, but I’m going to use that chapter in a different way, it turns out. It took a lot of convincing to get me to open the book another way. But I love the new opening as well.