Heating Pad (free)

I’m fostering three black kittens for Austin Pets Alive, just in time for Halloween. I have named them after witches, but I made sure the names were obscure so as not to deter superstitious people more than necessary. I am calling them Millie (for Mildred from The Worst Witch), Timmy (for Tim Curry, who also starred in The Worst Witch, see video below), and Serafina (for Serafina Pekkala from the His Dark Materials trilogy).

If you don’t know The Worst Witch, it was a made for TV movie from the 80s starring Fairuza Balk (Return to Oz era). And if you don’t know that much, than you certainly haven’t seen this video:



Ahem. So. Anyway. I have foster kittens.

Timmy

There was a cold snap last week, and Andy stayed up all night worrying that the kittens were cold. You see, our new house has almost no insulation, which is absolutely ridiculous in Austin. We’re hopefully putting some in next weekend.

I found an electric blanket on Craigslist for $5, but when I went on Freecycle to get a heating pad for the kittens, three people wrote to me almost immediately. One woman fostered for the Siamese Rescue and wanted to have coffee some time. Another offered a heating pad that would need a cover; I was excited with the prospect of a simple yet satisfying sewing project, but she didn’t write back until too late. The third person to write offered a porch pick up, which is always easiest.

Andy and I drove to a street called Robin Hood Lane, which seemed mildly fitting, given that the houses were most likely about twice what we could ever afford, and we were pilfering a free item from one of the homes’ inhabitants.

The house was on a corner and somehow looked haunted. Spooky! Or maybe it was just because they hadn’t raked their lawn and it looked abandoned. There were also three bags on the porch that looked like forgotten newspaper deliveries, but which turned out to be porch pick-up items. I don’t know what was in the other two bags (I was tempted to snoop), but my bag had my name, and I took it. Inside was a lovely heating pad, perfectly sized for three tiny kittens.



We had been going to go pick up some garden tools as well, but Andy balked because we didn’t need most of them. It would have been a good deal, though—rakes, shovels, hoe, caulk gun, and a few other things for just $12. I had also wanted to go to the Hill Country Galleria in Bee Cave for the “Dogadillo Howl-oween Rescue Spooktacular,” despite the name having far too many puns than is in good taste. Last year I took my foster puppy Grady (Austin Dog Alliance), already a 50 pound Australian shepherd / border collie mix, to a similar event. He wore a bandanna around his neck and was generally the cutest thing you ever saw.

Andy said I wasn’t allowed to fall in love with any of the dogs, so I decided it was better to go back home instead. So we went home and I took a nap and then finally got to work on my Halloween costume.