Animalia

We were fortunate to be able to secure one of the very few house sitting opportunities available in Hawaii. But there is a price to pay for 3-1/2 weeks of free lodging. The homeowner here has a soft spot for rescue animals so there are plenty to take care of. In this case we are caring for dogs, cats, chickens, and plants. The two dogs are elderly, mangy (literally, we think), utterly pathetic looking creatures with hair falling out in large patches, and sores and strange growths marring their bodies. And one of them is prone to farting. Fortunately, both Rocky and Lava have sweet dispositions. We take them for walks once or twice a day, but their elderly bodies are sometimes reluctant. Feeding them isn't as simple as opening a can. Deborah has to prepare for them a special mixture of rice, papaya, carrots, nutritional yeast and flax seed. Every five days or so she has to mix up a big ten to twelve pound batch and then separate it into zip lock bags for individual servings. For “dessert” the dogs each get a frozen chicken thigh.

There's no shortage of cats around here either. There are thirteen – that's right, thirteen. That would send most potential house sitters running away screaming, but Deborah's parents had upwards of thirty at one time, so thirteen seems almost trivial. (Still, we are very thankful that Hawaii has the kind of climate where the windows can always stay open.) The cats are actually fairly easy to take care of. There is a cat door so they can come and go as they please, and are happy to use the great outdoors as their litter box. They eat standard kibble so it's just a matter of keeping the bowls full. Some are fully domestic and love attention, others are semi-feral and won't let you near them. Some probably belong to the neighbors. The homeowner meant to put together for us a list of the cats' names along with identifying photos, but she ran out of time before she left and we only got the list of names, which is entirely useless. We just call everyone “kitty.”

There are three chickens – also nameless to our knowledge and therefore each called “chicken.” They have a fairly big hen house so don't need to be let out too often. When I do let them out into the yard I have to watch them so they don't dig up the plants or wander over to the neighbor's yard. They are omnivores in the extreme, eating something called crumble, something else called scratch, virtually all the kitchen scraps, grass, leaves, bugs and grubs. When I need to entice them back into their coop I just dangle a bright green lettuce leaf in front of them and they hurry over enthusiastically. They aren't big egg layers, but they occasionally provide us with breakfast. Hopefully they aren't watching when the dogs get their dessert.

Rocky

Lava

Here a kitty..

There a kitty...

Everywhere a kitty