Day 16 - Sarah

Bio: Sarah is a friend I first met in 2005 when I was getting involved at Henderson. She is charismatic, smart, and a go-getter, she loves music and live concerts with a passion, and she is a photo-taking nazi who will enlist absolute strangers to take photos of her and friends. She is serious about those photos!

There are two things I really admire about Sarah. One, she takes the time to know her inner world enough that she knows what she wants. I don’t mean that in a selfish sense, I mean that in a purpose-filled life sense. Her activities, her time, her city of residence, all of these things are informed by her sense of where God is leading her and what he has entrusted her to do.

Two, she loves art and culture along with having a powerful faith, and can recognize the value of some “secular” art. Eternal truths are spoken or illustrated in the oddest places in art and culture. Just because the author isn’t explicitly faith-focused doesn’t mean there aren’t powerful truths to uncover in their work. As an example, Sarah introduced me to my favorite magazine, Relevant Magazine, which I highly recommend for any and all.

Day 16 Challenge: Ben, I’ve enjoyed browsing your blog these past few days, reading all about your exploits with pictures for proof. I honestly have struggled a little bit to come up with a worthy challenge for you. Although I’m still not convinced I have done so, the clock is ticking on my date. I’m pretty sure I need to get this in the mail TO-DAY. So here is, perhaps, a strange challenge… sort of like a car wash in terms of choices. I’ll explain.

If you’d like a GOOD challenge (wash, underbody, dry): Set aside an hour or so and go visit a kill shelter (as in an animal shelter where they end up putting the animals to sleep). If allowed, spend some time with the animals, petting them, maybe even letting them lick your face (I hear you are into the whole kissing thing).

If you’d like a BETTER challenge (full body shine- conditioning, tri-color foam, Durashield Protectant with Body Armor): Find a home for one of these animals. Rack your brain and track down someone who’d like a pet, and secure some kind of verbal agreement that he or she will in fact adopt from the shelter you visited.

If you’d like the BEST challenge (Tire shine package- long lasting tire shine, wheel cleaner PLUS full-body shine): Adopt one of these animals yourself. I realize this may not be a realistic challenge for you, and that is why you may consider the challenge complete should you do the “good” or “better” option. However, I did want to throw it out there in case you had been thinking, “Man, what I’d really like for my 30^th birthday is a pet!” And that is it… enjoy your Saturday!

Reaction: Huh. I continue to be surprised at the originality of the challenges. From what I know of Sarah, I would have bet money she would have had a music challenge of some kind, so this one takes me by complete surprise! I’ve never been to an animal shelter, so it will be a first for me in discovering what those places are like. I have to say, my chances of adopting a pet are pretty slim at the moment. 1) Jerrod owns the house so he gets to decide that stuff, and 2) I don’t think I want to keep an animal locked up in our house for 8 hours a day when I’m at work. Still, I’m glad she gave me options.

Recap:

I looked online and found the city of Edmond (where I live) has an animal shelter not too far from my house, off of Danforth and I-35. So in early afternoon, I hopped in my car and headed over there. There are several buildings housing city offices spread out among a pretty wooded drive alongside the animal shelter, which gives it a nice, nature-infused feel. Walking up to the door, I noticed several signs declaring anyone bringing an animal into the shelter had to go in and give the staff a heads-up first. I’m guessing there was an unfortunate incident or two between animals in the entry area.

I read the sign outside the door, which listed the various services the shelter provided, and at what price. Euthanization was an option, so I knew this was a kill-shelter, part of Sarah’s requirements. I haven’t thought too much about kill-shelters being bad or good, but if you want my opinion, they don’t upset me. Having wild animals roaming around isn’t good for public health, so these shelters provide a service to all of us. And if these animals get a chance to get adopted first, then that sounds like a fair system to me.

One of my friends, Kyle (Day 5) has rescued two dogs from the OKC animal shelter, and one of the things he’d warned me about was the smell. According to Kyle, walking into the OKC shelter is like getting hit in the face with an overpowering stench of dogs and cats. (Let’s be honest, folks. It’s largely dogs). However, I can honestly say the Edmond shelter does not smell that way. It smells of bleach. Strongly. Still, I’d rather go into a place that smelled like a cleaning product than one that smells like 100 odorific dogs. Good job Edmond.

There were two ladies at the front desk. One of them was helping a dad and his daughter fill out adoption paperwork for a dog, maybe a lab, sitting next to them. I waited in line, and listened to the process. Adopting sounds really easy, with one condition – that you own your residence. This man did not, and so the worker explained they would have to call the landlord and talk to him or her and get permission before they could sign over the animal. The man didn’t look pleased, but I’m sure this saves the shelter from adopting out animals that get returned a few days later when a landlord finds out.

The second lady, short, brown-haired with a bit of a button nose, waved me over. “What can I do for you?” she asked. I told her I wanted to look at some animals, if I could. She buzzed open a door next to the waiting area and I walked through.

I stood in a wide hallway with a couple doors leading off of it and a bit window ahead. To my right was a row of medium-sized cages with cats in them. Some were tabby, some were black and white, and one was all white. I felt a little awkward staring at the cats when I really had no intention of adopting one. It was like I worried they’d be able to tell and would, I don’t know, hiss at me or something. Cats are usually pretty stand-off-ish anyway. One of my friends told me, “Dogs think of themselves as people. Cats think of themselves as gods.” Which I think is pretty true. So what these cats did surprised me.

They were affectionate. With a stranger. I put my fingers through the slats of the top cage and started petting the cat there. It had been asleep, but it woke up and began pressing itself against the wires, letting me pet it. Once it was obvious I was staying and not moving on, all the cats did this. Some were more insistent than others, but all of them (about 15 cats) were eager for my touch. One of the cats on the bottom row of cages stuck its front paw out of the cage and hooked my shorts in its claw, almost as if it was crying out “Pet me!”

I made time to pet each one of the cats, and gave a couple some extra pets because they tugged at my heart strings a little. I wonder what goes on in a domesticated cat’s brain where it comes to long for human touch, as these cats did. Have we bred that into them? Do cats that go feral miss being petted and rubbed? I know people need human contact, but these cats acted like they did too. It surprised me.

I walked over to the big window and looked in on a kitten room. There were somewhere around 30 kittens in the room, which looked to be kitty heaven. Lots of comfy cushions lay about for napping, there were several large scratching posts with multiple levels for the cats to play on, along with hanging baskets and toys scattered on the ground. Seriously, if you are looking for a moment of sheer “AW” cuteness, that room will not be topped. Right next to the window was a chair that had five to seven kittens sleeping piled into a heap together. Others were romping around the scratching posts, and others were sleeping here or there about the room. I stood at the window and watched for a bit, picking out the different colors and types of fur in the room.

Loud barking interrupted my reverie. Two volunteers came in, a teenage boy and his mom, who each had a dog on a leash. The dogs were eager and straining at their leashes, and the two led the dogs into a room off the hallway where loud barks greeted their entry. Dogs are just loud.

I located a second room of dogs, other than the one the volunteers went into, and walked inside. There were about 16 cages, large to my mind (seven or eight feel long, four feet wide, 7 feet high) made of cross-hatch fencing. All the cages were full. I started at one end and worked my way down, petting the dogs. There were a lot more little dogs than there were big dogs. I don’t know if that is generally true of all shelters or just this one on this day. Of course the dogs were eager for me to pet them, as I anticipated.

One of the dogs towards the end was impatient for me to get to his cage, and he barked at me insistently to get over there and pet him! I like to think of myself as young and hip, but sometimes my inner fuddy-duddy comes out in force, and this was one instance of that. I didn’t like that dog barking so loud, and I didn’t appreciate him trying to get me to skip the others and attend to him only, so you know what I did? I skipped his pen and petted every other dog first. That showed him, huh? Maybe I should be disturbed by that. Maybe that shows a mean streak in me. I don’t know. If I’m honest, even though I think dog lovers are cooler than cat lovers, I am not a dog person. Dogs are stupid, and you can’t reason with them, and they are overly dependent on you and needy for attention, and I just prefer animals that behave. That’s sort of how I feel about children too. Shudder for my future offspring, and say a prayer!

I went through a second round of petting the dogs and then left the room. Out in the hallway a Mom and her pre-teen daughter were staring in the kitten room and discussing which one they wanted to adopt. The brown-haired shelter worker was there, so I struck up a conversation with her. Her name was Kelly, and she was from Scotland (which I noticed her accent break through the more I talked with her.) Actually, confession: I don’t remember her name, but I’m pretty sure it started with a K and Kelly sounds Irish, which is close to Scotland, so there you go.

The shelter worker told me they had two rooms for dogs, and both were full, that there were too many people not taking care of their dogs. They also recently moved the adult cats to the cages and put the kittens in the kitty room because there were so many of them. I asked what brought her to the U.S., and she said she was a grad student in violin studies at UCO.

The mother/daughter duo wanted to go into the kitten room to take a closer look at their pick, and I asked to tag along, so we all got to go into kitty heaven. The kittens weren’t as desperate as the caged adult cats to be petted (and many were asleep), but I did give some love to about 10 little kittens. One of them, my favorite, had funky stripes all over his body and was sleeping in this hanging basket all by himself. He’s probably the cool kid of the group.

The mother/daughter team picked out their kitten, and I had no more areas to explore, so I called it a day and headed out. I did make a measly little effort to shoot for the better challenge, and texted several friends that I was at the shelter, it was simple and easy to adopt a pet, and if they wanted one they should come over and get one. I didn’t get any replies, though, so I guess I only accomplished the “good” challenge. I can’t say that I walked away from the shelter with any new revelations on pet adoption, but if I ever do decide to get a pet, I know the Edmond animal shelter is a great place to do that.

However, since the car wash theme of the challenge got me thinking about it, I did go wash my car that day. I got the medium-grade wash, too. ;)