Janet Wright - Psychic Unicorns

November 2, 2011March 20, 2012

Humane Cat Trapping Project – Intro & Day 3 Report

baited cat trap for trap rehearsal feeding — Tempting trail of tuna for humanely trapping a cat!

This is a photo of the trap we are using in our humane cat trapping project. We have the trap on loan from Tree House Humane Society. Lorenzo and I have been contemplating adding a fourth cat to our animal family for a while now. Recently we have decided to trap our next pet cat, since there are plenty of abandoned cats roaming around our neighborhood, though some people may not realize it. I find trapping cats really fun and exciting. You never know which cat you will get, since in most cases there are many roaming around you haven’t seen. You have to plan and prepare, all things which I love. It’s a combination of a good deed and a fun adventure. I personally trapped our pet cats Zen and Bambi back in late 2006. There’s more info on those trappings on my site www.MyFeralKitten.com

This photo shows the basics about how we bait our trap, shown with no sheet for illustration purposes. Right now we are in the “trap rehearsal” phase, where our trap is rigged to stay open no matter what using several zip ties. It’s a tuna buffet essentially that we bait every evening with fresh smelly canned tuna, packed in oil. Once we are ready for the real trapping night, we will remove the zip ties so that the cat will get safely trapped when he steps on the “put paws here” part, labeled in the photo. The first night the tuna remained undisturbed. For night two, last night, I got rid of the old tuna and replaced with new tuna. Success!!! By 12:30am just after midnight I noticed that all the tuna had been eaten. I can check the trap right from our apartment window with a flashlight, the height of convenience!

We will continue to bait the trap every evening, to train our mystery meat eater (hopefully a cat) to return each night. I have a call into Tree House Humane Society’s spay/neuter clinic to make a spay/neuter appointment. We are hoping for an appointment for next Wed 11/9/11 but we’ll see. We will be trapping our cat the night before the spay/neuter appointment, and will bring him/her to the clinic in the morning still in the trap. Stay tuned to our blog posts for the next week or two. I will be updating our readers as things develop!!! If you want lots more detailed info on trapping, socializing feral kittens, etc. you can check www.MyFeralKitten.com which is very complete, and as I said details some trapping I did in 2006 and 2007.

October 18, 2011March 20, 2012

I Made My 17th Kiva.org Donation- for Free!

photo of Kiva loan recipient in Mexico — I just helped to fund Felipe's loan so he can buy clothing to sell

I have blogged here before about my microlending through the website kiva.org. For other posts on this topic check the right hand side under Categories: Giving. Giving with the Kiva site is really neat, probably the most rewarding philanthropy work I’ve done so far. You make a loan of $25 at a time to one person, and other donors around the world also pick whose loan they want to fund. Usually I try to pick people that I feel are very positive and whose positivity benefits those around them. I’m an energy reader, and with their name, photo, and description given by Kiva.org that’s way more than enough for me to get a sense of the person. I think that’s enough for anyone to get a sense of the loan recipient! For this last loan I made, I searched for people whose business involved clothing sales, and as I was looking through the photos, it struck me that Felipe in Mexico really needs this loan. He’s not my usual pick beaming with positivity, but I get the feeling he really needs a break. His other income source is farm work, and he has a wife and son he supports. Here’s the page with information about Felipe and his loan. Since these are loans, the people do repay them. I made this loan a few weeks ago. If you follow the link you will see that as of the date of this blog post not only have other lenders jumped on board so that his loan was fully funded, but he has already paid back 23% so far. As they repay the loans I get the money back into my kiva account so I can loan it out again. My loan to Felipe including the few dollar donation to kiva operating costs was all covered by balance I had already in my kiva account.

With Felipe and other loan recipients paying back into my account, I already have almost the entire amount I need back to make another loan! Stay tuned to see who I’ll pick next! 🙂

September 28, 2011March 20, 2012

Donating Unwanted Clothing

Howard Brown gives medical care & counseling to gay/lesbian people in need

Recently I donated two big bags of clothing. I think it’s really positive to donate clothing you no longer need, rather than throwing it away as garbage which benefits no one and uses up landfill space. Others can really still wear the good clothes we no longer fit or want to wear. If any readers don’t have transportation but want to donate clothes, try to get a friend to give you a ride and you can both donate clothes, furniture, and other household items. You could also google “chicago clothing donation pick up” and check out the well known charities that will pick up your clothing for you by appointment.

This time I used a metal clothing donation box. The clothing donation box I ended up using is just about a two minute drive from our house. I had the clothing in the trunk of my car, and I saw it on my way home from some errands, so it literally took two minutes of my time to park and put the bags into the donation bin. Instant good karma! I have been doing some reading on the internet about the donation bins, and they say that you should be careful as to which donation bin you use because some organizations give more to the poor than others. Soooo, I guess it could have been better karma if I had done a little homework on the internet first. It sounds like it’s safest to deal directly with a reputable organization like Brown Elephant, Amvets, or even Salvation Army if you don’t mind their more conservative perspective. I think next time I will drop off the clothing at one of the two Brown Elephant resale shops like I usually do. Either way, I think any form of donation is better karma than throwing it away and having it take up landfill space. If you have any clothing donation tips, experiences, or comments, please comment here.

September 21, 2011March 20, 2012

Goodbye Summer 2011

box of strawberry popsicles — Natural strawberry popsicles- guilt free summer fun

Summer 2011 is ending this week, and I think it can be helpful to get closure on the last season and try to embrace the upcoming season. Summer 2010 we had just moved to our new apartment, so there was a lot of settling in, slowly making the home look and feel like we wanted. This past summer we were able to enjoy our home more. We do have central air in this apartment, a first for both Lorenzo and myself, so that felt like a new luxury. We wanted to save money on electricity but still use our AC on those humid 90 degree days, so we kept the thermostat at a higher temperature. That worked very well, particularly with liberal use of our secret stay-cool weapon, natural fruit popsicles. Lorenzo’s favorite is coconut and mine is strawberry. They’re only 100 calories each, and I’m sure we saved a lot of money on AC because we were keeping cooler by eating popsicles. Well come to think of it, we did have a lot of popsicles! On my last shopping trip I bought more, but it will probably be the last time this year. Now I have to have hot tea afterwards to stay warm.

Janet w/pansies — Summer flowers on our back porch, greeting us every morning

Another thing that stands out about summer is that I finally planted pansies in a window box. We inherited a large window box planter at the end of last summer, and I had a very specific image in my mind of dark pink pansies for it. This spring I procrastinated, but this summer I went and got the pansies and and also a hanging basket of pansies. I went with my “Little Sister” Jazzy from Big Brothers Big Sisters, so that made the purchasing and planting a million times more special. Watching a 10 year old city kid make her first mud pies with a bucket, dirt, and a hose was pretty much priceless. I’m looking forward to having even more fun this fall, and I hope you will too.

September 16, 2011March 20, 2012

YoYo The Wonderful Cat

We love all of the animals in our home. There’s Zen, Bambi and YoYo the three cats and Odie the COO of Barney’s Home Dog Boarding. The most photogenic of the bunch has to be YoYo. The others have really endearing qualities but YoYo is the glamour boy.

Janet has blogged about YoYo before so some of you may remember him. He is a three year old “american shorthair” as our Vet Dr. Dickus describes him. He’s very vocal, demands a lot of attention and is quick to gobble up his sister’s food. He’s also so cute I find myself picking up a camera to snap his photo all the time. I’ve decided to take some of those shots that I have tweaked in various graphics applications and post them in our Etsy store.

These are the first three but there will definitely be more. Stay tuned for more adventures of our little feline prince.

September 13, 2011March 20, 2012

Awesome 5!

Several of my fellow comic creators and I are working on a compilation of our work titled Anthology Of Interest. Each of us is producing a twelve page story to contribute to the book. We meet each Wednesday evening to discuss marketing strategy, content and progress. We lost a few people along the way but right now there is a core group of about six that are serious about the project. My story is the first twelve pages of my weekly webcomic Awesome 5!.

You can click on the thumbnail to see the full size cover. Each story will have a cover so this is mine. The extra “!” is part of the team’s name, I know that it looks weird but that will be explained in a future comic. The organizer of our group had the brilliant idea of financing the anthology through Kickstarter, that way none of us have to come up with the cash and there will be no bickering over who gave how much and so forth. Even if the funding amount is not reached I still plan to self publish as a mini comic. As soon as we have the proposal video uploaded I’ll post the link so stay tuned!

August 22, 2011March 20, 2012

Sculpture Moment

Paige Bradley's sculpture "Expansion" www.PaigeBradley.com

Today I saw a photo of a very interesting sculpture on someone’s Facebook page, and I thought I’d share it here. It is done by Paige Bradley, and you can see her sculpture on her website here. It’s worth a look even if you only like this one piece, because you can see the illuminated base of the sculpture, plus other backdrops with it. Also she has a section of her site where she shows drawings, under the tab “works on paper.”

Before I mention my own thoughts about the sculpture, I wanted to ask, what does this sculpture mean/show/evoke for you? Do you like it? Why? There are four different photos of this sculpture on her website. This one here on my blog is the only one I could easily download, but it’s not my favorite of the photos. Which is your favorite?

I am not always moved by sculptures, but I particularly like the light coming from within her. Personally, it reminds me of the light generated by one’s energy centers, or chakras, emanating out into that person’s aura. Energy blocks, denial, facades or deceptive self- images we hide behind can surpress our energy a little like the opaque parts of the sculpture. For me the woman shown in the sculpture knows that her true freedom and wisdom comes from within, and from clearing the burdens and energy blocks she has within her own space. My favorite two photos are on her website, where it shows the illuminated base of the sculpture as well.

August 5, 2011August 4, 2011

“King Corn” movie inspires eating changes…..

King Corn documentary — Food for thought.....

We just finished watching “King Corn” which is a documentary movie we saw “On Demand” with our Netflix.com subscription. Part of the movie covers how cheap corn is used as feed for cattle, which really isn’t the best for their health. They are fed on feed lots where they can’t get much exercise due to crowding, and fattened up as soon as possible, in months in stead of years. One guy in the movie said the cows are basically obese, plus it showed just a bit of how it gives them excess stomach acid and other health issues so they have to be given antibiotics all the time.

Well I think this movie has finally pushed us into changing our food buying and eating habits, at least with beef. I will document in this blog how it goes for us so you can see if our resolve lasts. Just check the lower right side of the page where you see categories listed and go to the Food category in the future to see other posts on this. Up until now we have tried to economize and have bought our ground beef and frozen chicken at Trader Joes, and cold cuts and frozen tilapia at Aldi. I had already decided to stop buying cold cuts period because for some reason they make me break out. Because of this movie we will try to only buy beef from Whole Foods and we’ll make sure it’s grass fed not corn/grain fed. As far as our chicken, we are still debating what to do. I think we are nervous about the cost, but we’ll have to investigate the cost difference between frozen chicken at Trader Joes and chicken pieces at the Whole Foods meat counter. Most likely Trader Joe’s frozen chicken comes from a factory farm where antibiotics are given liberally. Now do we change all that now, or just our beef buying habits? How about you guys, dear readers? So we’re definitely changing our beef buying, but for chicken we will research further. Stay tuned!

The movie also discusses how much calories people consume with sodas which have tons of high fructose corn syrup. We already don’t drink soda, so we’re OK there. Years ago I heard how soda syrup can be used to clean corrosion off of truck engines, and that was pretty much it for me and soda.

July 18, 2011March 20, 2012

Our family vet visit – Uptown Animal Hospital

dog with e-collar — Odie last wk, a few days after his cherry eye surgery

Today we had The Family Vet Visit: vet check ups for all of our animals – 3 cats and our new dog Odie. Uptown Animal Hospital & Dr. Dickes really came through for us. We got an extra big exam room, we got a vet assistant who was great with holding and comforting our animals during the exam procedures, and thorough and efficient desk staff. Our vet Dr. Dickes is very knowledgeable and we trust his expertise completely. He has a great bedside manner with our pets and us, and definitely allows time for our questions. He even took the time to recommend this website The Ohio State Indoor Cat Initiative as a resource for cat info.

3 cat carriers and 2 cats — We had all the cat carriers out for a few days to acclimate the cats to them

I have always heard great things about the various other vets at the Uptown Animal Hospital and the overall pricing there, which is very important since if there’s ever an emergency and we need to see another vet in the office, I know I’ll be in good hands. You would think that with four pets we would have had to pay an arm and a leg to get them all check ups. We didn’t. For vaccinations and nail trims for all three cats (1yr rabies for 3, 3yr distemper for 2), an eye exam for one cat, an eye exam for our new dog Odie (who got cherry eye surgery last week) & a fecal test, we got out of there for under $400. (Odie already had his vaccinations.) I think Uptown Animal Hospital, relatively speaking, is great for affordable high quality vet care & I’ll definitely be “yelping” them today! 🙂

July 6, 2011March 11, 2013

Meet our new family member Odie the beagle/basset hound

photo of beagle/bassett hound Odie w/new dad Lorenzo — Father & Son Photo: Lorenzo w/our new canine son Odie

Lorenzo and I have been soul searching about adding a canine son or daughter to our family. Our old dog Barney is with us in spirit, but not body, since he passed away under doctor’s care 12/1/10 at almost 14 years of age. We wanted a mid size or small rescue dog. Above all we wanted a dog whose spirit was very kind and gentle and agreeable towards all living things, a buddha dog. 🙂 Yesterday we found our buddha dog, and he is now our son, peacefully dozing on our floor as I type this. His name had been Otis, but we have renamed him to Odie, after cartoon Garfield’s doggie friend. It’s only right, since Lorenzo is a cartoonist.

Odie was in a shelter in Kenosha, WI. We learned about this shelter through Petfinder.com, which is a website where most rescues and shelters nationwide list their pets available for adoption. I also searched several area rescue’s websites that I know personally through my animal welfare volunteering in years past, and present day donations here and there. I showed my husband a photo of one shelter dog whose photo and description moved me who was in Kenosha, WI. We then noticed that Kenosha, WI was only 55 miles from us and that they had three dogs on their site that we liked. We felt it was a sign, and that we were meant to go there. I cleared my schedule for that next day, we filled out the online application, and off we went to Kenosha, WI yesterday, arriving just as they opened their doors at 1pm.

beagle/basset hound on grass with Janet — Mom & new son: Me with our new buddha-dog Odie

Fate did all the rest. The original dog I’d noticed had already been adopted, the third dog we liked was not good with other dogs, and the second dog, now our son, we learned had been waiting for the right forever home for SIX MONTHS. He did have one brief adoption but they were not fully committed and/or knowledgeable, and brought him back. Right away I got teary thinking of all the “long timers” I had known or heard about at Chicago Animal Care & Control during my 3+ years volunteering there. It was just not fair that such a kind spirited dog had to go through so much, so he had to become our son. Then to further validate our decision that this was meant to be, the shelter said they had recently decided to fix his cherry eye condition by surgery for free next Monday 7/11/11, and would also waive his adoption fee since he was overweight. We had been prepared to pay any fees for our buddha dog, but it was a fun hug from the universe to receive such discounts. We have already spent a little of the leftover money on a very handsome harness for his walks, and he is very earnestly learning what is expected of him as we do positive reinforcement training.

You can look forward to lots of videos on www.BarneysHomeDogBoarding.com and blog entries here about him. Even though he’s only one day out of the shelter, it’s clear that the shelter told the truth, and that he really is great with all dogs and our cats and all people. All the shelter volunteers came out to greet us and celebrate that their beloved long timer was finally going home for good. I have already sent them an update with photos, and will keep sending them updates, to thank them for their faithful care of him. We know he will be a kind and welcoming host to my reading clients that come to the house, and a wonderful friend and gentle companion to the peaceful big-hearted dogs that we board with www.BarneysHomeDogBoarding.com. This six year old buddha dog is home at last.