Once one more week to go! This internship was originally supposed to be 12 weeks long, but it will be 10 weeks long for me, since I'll be completing my 480 hours early. I've had a lot of fun here, but I'm definitely excited to go back home.
- This week I've been doing a lot of cat stuff again. We transferred two cats from Tacoma Humane Society to our rescue, since Tacoma was entirely out of cage space. Tacoma Humane doesn't test for FIV or FeLV, which makes it cheaper for them, but less of a good deal for adopters, since they have to adopt the cat first before it can be tested for those diseases. Luckily neither of the cats tested positive for FeLV or FIV, and one of them is already adopted! The other transferred cat (a super cute kitten we named Aslan) has a lip avulsion, which means that his lower lip is not directly attached to his mandible, so it hangs down a bit. Aslan's lip avulsion requires minor surgical repair, which the doctor plans to perform soon. It's not a painful condition, but can be unsanitary if food gets stuck in the lip.
- The same day we took in two shelter transfers, a woman showed up and surrendered three kittens. They were in pretty good shape, but had a lot of fleas and had either pine sap or tar stuck to the fur on their feet. There were two tabby kittens that are siblings and one black kitten from another litter. We named the tabbies Graham Cracker (Graham for short) and Louise, and we named the black kitten Astrid.
- I spent one half-day this week at Renton River Days, another town festival. I talked to a lot of people about what we do at PSWC, and I advertised our shelter open house.
- During the shelter open house, we adopted out two cats, and got a lot of interest in a third cat. One couple stormed out angrily after hearing our adoption fee, even after I explained that all cats come spayed/neutered, fully vaccinated, microchipped, and with multiple deworming and flea treatments. We're a small rescue, so we can't give cats away for free. We don't have enough big donors to let us adopt out cats for $50 or $100. It's unfortunate, but that's just the way things are.
- I went to Mount Rainier National park with a coworker this week. We parked in the Sunrise parking lot, and hiked to the Mount Fremont lookout. It was a 5.6 mile hike that had a nice steady grade and beautiful views. There was also a good number of wild animals for a more popular trail. I heard pika, but never saw them in the scree fields. We saw marmots, ground squirrels, some small birds ( including a Yellow Warbler), and four wolverines!! My coworker Sophie was the one who saw them first. We were walking high up on the edge of the mountain, when she looked down and saw something running in a clearing far below. Using my binoculars, I saw animals that looked like a mix between a bear, dog, and weasel. I knew wolverines existed, but I wasn't really aware of what they look like. After asking a park ranger about our sighting, she suggested that we might have seen wolverines. One quick google search later, and the ranger was right! Wolverines have only been seen in Mount Rainier since 2021, and there are around 1,000 of them in the United States. Since wolverines are so rare, I'll probably never get to see them again, but boy am I glad I got to see them once!
