I'm heading to St. Louis...

Marshall's niece called this afternoon.  Red is out of intensive care and doing better.  So I will be heading to St. Louis tomorrow.  Good news!

Marshall gets to tend to the greenhouse while I'm gone.  And on Saturday, weather permitting, he is going to be riding his motorcycle for charity.

Then he will pick me up at the Denver airport Monday morning and we will be going to his oncologist appointment to find out how things are going.

Look for a new post Monday night with that news.

Now I'll get on my soapbox:  Our animal rescue group, Pet Project, is entering the busy summer season.  There are unwanted kittens showing up everywhere and we are getting lots of phone calls.  Over this weekend, one of our volunteers (Glenn) will be picking up 3 kittens in one location and 5 kittens in another.  Another one of our volunteers has 9 kittens at her house waiting to go to Pueblo for an Adoption Fair.  We got another call from a gal in Penrose where she came upon 5 more kittens -- she is taking them home with her for a week or 10 days until we have room for them.  And another lady in Florence found kittens that were born in her husband's boat.  It is only just beginning.   See below for photos of some of the kittens we've taken from feral mamas while they were still young enough to be tamed and adopted out.

Look at the little guy in the middle!!

This one is my favorite -- she got adopted FAST! You should have seen how gorgeous she was when she was cleaned up!

These little guys lived for a while in the shower of our master bath.

We were just awarded a $5,000 grant from the Animal Assistance Foundation to be spent on trapping  feral cats in our area, getting them fixed and then releasing them back into their colonies to live out the rest of their short lives without producing more offspring.  SPAY & NEUTER, that's the key to the ballooning overpopulation of cats -- NOT euthanizing them.  We are partnering with four local veterinarians to get as many feral cats fixed as possible this summer.  That involves TONS of work on the part of the volunteers doing the trapping.

And we are applying for a grant from the Colorado Pet Overpopulation Fund.  If we are successful, these funds would be used to provide low-cost spay/neuter for companion animals, as well as giving us some money to spend on educating people to the importance of spay/neuter.  It is unbelievable the number of animals euthanized every year because of unwanted litters -- could be avoided if people just got their pets fixed.