Okay, so perhaps I got a little swept away with the cuteness and may have ever so slightly bit off more than I can chew . . . .

I had my first look at what Forgotten Felines does. And we recovered two little baby balls of fuzz to be desexed and put into foster care. It turns out that the mother is horribly wild and was born wild, and the father was a tame cat that had been abandoned. ABANDONED!

And I was shocked to learn that because these two little kits had been in the wild for their short 12 weeks, that the SPCA wouldn’t take them in and would put them down. These cute little handsized balls of fuzz! I was shocked, and glad that Sylvia (The Cat Lady who runs FF) had put the time and effort into to trapping these kits (she was out 5am – 7am and 5pm – 7pm every weekday from a week before Christmas. She is one dedicated and patient woman!!), and wanted to find them fosters.

While I looked at these two she mentioned that she had no room to take them, and they would go to the SPCA who would put them down (the SPCA would have said they were ‘too wild’, and doesn’t have the resources to tame them). So, I offered to take one, and try tame it. I pick her up tomorrow. My own (temporary) bundle of 12 week old wild fuzz.

And with all the cuteness (although, ever so slightly terrified cuteness), how could you say that you wouldn’t try tame one, if the alternative was possibly death?

But it also became horribly apparent that Forgotten Felines is operating purely because Sylvia and the volunteers don’t mind picking up the cost. Because they barely get ANY donations at all! So I offered to try help, and look into things. If you have any ideas on how to generate funding for a charity, or would like to donate in anyway, please let me know?

Okay, so, yes. I do realise that my blog is now about fruit, and flowers and boring garden things. Or about my dog.

Sigh.

I could blame being sick (which I have been this WHOLE week – If you’ve been following my tweets no doubt you’ve heard all about it). I could blame being busy (which I also have been; Organising the Hen’s party for tomorrow (woo!), redesigning Rarg all over again, and oh, did I mention being sick?). I could blame just not caring (which is kinda true, because I don’t care that flowers and feijoas are boring subject matters).

But I shan’t. It doesn’t matter, really. I WAS excited about all those things (enough to go ‘fuck, I haven’t posted in ages! Quick – think of something to say!’ and to post about them). Besides, the alternative is I get a better life (one that doesn’t revolve around how my stomach is handling whatever I fed it), or I start using my blog to write lists mocking the people I dislike (“I’m not very clever, but I shall spout whatever my boyfriend says, because my main goal in life is to please him!”).

But flag. I don’t want to publicly share how some people manage to bug the shit out of me (particularly because I suspect they read this and then I might actually have to explain to them how horrible they are). And I don’t think my body is suddenly going to love me and decide that being sick is for other people. So how about this, then?

I went on a walk, out at the Waitakere Ranges. I shouldn’t have, because I was sick. And now I’m even MORE sick, it’s just ridiculous. But I was determined to DO something on the long weekend, so I went on this walk. I did, however, pike on Reverse Canyoning and a trip to Goat Island in the name of sanity. Perhaps next post will have something of interest in it.

Guess you’ll have to wait and see :P

Is almost here! Check it:

Those, my friend, are baby feijoas!!

They have to be my most favourite fruit. The Feijoa season comes usually around February and lasts a couple of months and in that time we are inundated with feijoa’s! I love that this isn’t the kind of fruit you buy. If you don’t have your own tree, it’s likely that your neighbour does, or a guy down the road. And usually, if you have a tree, you’re happy to get rid of all the feijoas you have. It’s one of those neighbourly things that happens around where I live. It’s not uncommon to be asked to take a plastic bag filled with feijoas home with you, and it means there isn’t rotting fruit left on some poor guys lawn.

I like them best with ice cream, or frozen and eaten months after the season has finished. Oh hurrah! I can’t wait!

So, even though I posted these to facebook a very very long time ago (June last year, say?), they are getting a bunch of attention in the now. And looking through them I miss that time. When the air was crisp and clean, the leaves were just turning colours, everyone wore multiple layers and jackets with checkers were in.

I love summer, I love being overly warm and beach trips and sunbathing. But I enjoy the cold just as much (assuming, of course, that it’s just the air that is cold and not I).

I’m not really sure why these shots are getting so much attention now, particularly when they’ve been up so long. Ah well. Perhaps these shot’s got better with age or something?

I don’t know. I guess if my facebook friends enjoyed them so much, perhaps you will too.

When stuff, and the herald AND the SPCA newsletter ran stories about the increase of animals being abandoned over the holidays, I was horrified. And decided to do something small to help.

So I volunteered with Forgotten Felines, which is a small non-profit organisation near where I work that care for a large number of cat colony’s. Generally they trap the cats (humanely), have them neutered before returning them to the colony. Kittens are neutered, tamed and put into foster care to wait till they are adopted. Apparently wild adult cats are too ‘wild’ to be tamed and re-homed, which is why they left in the colony’s and fed.

Which is what I plan on doing – I’ve been giving the job of a ‘feeder’, which is where once a week I toddle out to the colony with a couple cans of meat and cat biscuits and feed the wild kits.

I’m quite excited about it actually. I’m waiting on a few details, but will let you know how it goes. :)

Earlier this week I was at Sovereign in training session (where I was the trainer, not the trainee). I love that building. It’s all so well designed with natural materials everywhere, glass elevators and open spaces. There are bridges and catwalks across the atrium, clever kitchen ‘cafe’ areas and everything has a very comfortable, yet industrial and modern feel. Apparently it won the Institute of Architects national award, and I can understand why. It is a gorgeous building.

Anyway, as I said I was at this training session. Just as we were leaving, to be nice I collected up the empty water glasses and deposited them in the sink of the nearest staff kitchenette. As I left a woman came up behind me and said quite clearly, “Oh how NICE, she’s left them for us to clean up!”. Clearly she thought I worked there, and was not a visitor. A bit shocked, (I WAS trying to be nice and helpful, and I wasn’t sure what I was meant to do with them as there was no obvious dishwasher or anything) I thought, “I WAS trying to be nice. What else was I supposed to do with them?”, smiled at her and continued on my way.

When I mentioned it to the marketing communications head she laughed and told me I SHOULD have said I was visitor, that women would have probably been horribly embarrassed and it would serve her right. I’m glad I didn’t, simply because I care very little about people making nasty bitchy comments (at my previous work place it was quite common to be bitched about) and I don’t really feel the need to validate such comments. Plus, saving her from an embarrassing moment is a nice thing to do.

Anyway, this is a silly lead to a site I recently came across: Operation Nice. Operation Nice is a blog that documents nice things people have done (usually something more than clearing up someone else’s water glasses). When I read through a bunch of them, some made me laugh, some were heartbreaking and some made me wish I could do more. Generally, it made me feel glad that there ARE people who are nice, and who are doing nice things. I made me feel glad to know the world isn’t just full of people who like to make assumptions and bitchy comments.

Check it out, hey. Or if you are one of those people who do nice things, share your story with them. Perhaps it will mean something to someone else, and will encourage others to be nice too.

I’m not a gardener, not by a long shot. When I was living in the city I would inadvertently kill of whatever greenery my flatmate tried to put around the apartment. I think I killed several goldfish too, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I’m not a gardener.

When I was in hospital a couple months back, a very good friend brought me roses. It wasn’t until I got home that I realised they weren’t cut roses that I could stick in a pretty vase and throw out when they died. Oh no, she’d brought me potted roses, bless her environmentally friendly heart. Potted roses, that needed to be planted. So, remembering quite clearly I’m not much of a gardener, I planted them.

I planted them in the small garden on the porch, where Quinn liked to dig (I had hoped he might continue this practice once the was roses there, but instead he learned how to use the cat door and hung out inside, the silly dog!) I planted them with these blue pellets in a bag labelled ‘fertiliser’ that I found in the garage. Plants need nutrients, right? And fertiliser is meant to be good for gardens, right? I’m sure that’s how it’s meant to go. Something like that, anyway. So off I went, happyish that I’d planted something and thought perhaps if I watered it lots it might not die. So I watered it every other day and was generally glad that I hadn’t killed it yet.

Except, then the flowers turned from a delicate shade of apricot to blue. Fertiliser pellet blue, even. A super bright fertiliser blue. And then they fell off. In chunks. And then the leaves started to turn yellow and shrivel. I wasn’t really worried, and thought ‘oh well, killed another! Still not a gardener’ and was more than ready for the rest of the plant to die. At least I wouldn’t have to water it anymore.

But alas, the plant didn’t die. It made it through a swarm of hungry little aphids, and whatever it is that is making the leaves all grey and dusty (I suspect the snails). I stopped watering it while I went away over Christmas, and it survived that too (surprisingly, considering it’s undercover and doesn’t get water any other way). And not only did this plant survive, it’s flowering. Check it:

That is an actual flower bud. And, even better, it’s not BLUE! I still maintain that I’m not a gardener, not even close. These roses though, are the most stubborn, rugged and determined roses in all of history. And aren’t they pretty!

So, it’s happened. I am now on twitter. If your keen feel free to be a fellow twitter bandit – elly_rarg.

We can do bandit-y things! Ar!