Bassett Hound needs a home in Connecticut

fosterdogsnyc

This here Bassett Hound's name is Alfie,

and he's somewhere in Connecticut

and he needs a home.

You see, for some god-forsaken reason,

our Big Two Legged One is finding Basset Hounds to be quite cute.

This is worrying.

You see, 

it appears to me that

Basset Hounds might eat cats.

They look like they could eat me!

But wait,

then again,

look at this--

doesn't she look like perfect Basset Hound food

to you?

Oh, yeah, Bon Appetit, Mr. Hound!

You can come stay for supper, at least!

~ ~ 

Hold on there, Fluffy!

I am not going to provide a meal for a Basset Hound!

And furthermore, you Furr-Ball,

I absolutely advocate the way 

the BTLO is currently using our crappy little blog

to find a home for a dog in New York City!

I, as a former stray in Ankara, (not Ankara, New York, but rather, Ankara, Turkey!)

think that's pretty darned awesome!

You see, I was really pretty pissed at her when she kept me in that apartment there,

but now I know that I couldn't have gone back out

into those streets.

I had experienced the flavor of sleeping on a couch.

I would have been eaten alive!

So she kept me, even though I was the Biggest Bitch Alive.

I now know, and I must confess,

it makes me green with envy,

that she's done this before --

taken in us misfitty cats that no one wants.

In fact, I hear tell that she once too in a real doozy

of a cat when she was living in New York City.

I'm supposed to look a lot like that Other cat.

Notably, too, we all kind of end up liking her.

So here I am to tell you that

she's not going to get a Basset Hound,

but she thinks this Alfie is pretty cute,

and if she can help get him a home, she will!

(As a former pet-owning New Yorker,

the BTLO is a great advocate of a blog called

Foster Dogs In New York City,

which attempt to find homes for dogs

in the Big Apple.)

In fact, while we're at it,

here are a couple other dogs available around 

New York City,

all their info (and the originals of these pictures)

can be found at the Foster Dogs link, given above!

This is Newton, the 12 year old Cocker Spaniel,

who needs a home and very definitely likes cats!

And here's Tyler, 

a very handsome Bulldog:

(Now, there is a dog that eats cats!)

Besides here's some pretty good evidence that

a Basset Hound might not only like a cat,

but actually share in cats' very favorite activity:

Pişi misses her kuzu şiş, part III

1. 

I wonder if my face is a little dark in this picture.  This is me, in my "garden" in our apartment in Çankaya.  We moved there after the first year, and after I had The Operation.

Yeah.  The Operation.  It seems Americans have another rather odd tradition: they make it so their animals can't reproduce themselves.  And that assures the human that their animal will live a long and healthy life.  Or some kind of crap like that.

Well, I didn't know that.  And neither did Hasan, which is why he was so surprised when the Big-Two-Legged-One asked for that.  It seems the Woman-Who-Wanted-To-Save-All-The-Cats-In-Ankara had convinced him that he should do The Operation to cats she was putting back out on the streets.  He kind of understood that, because those cats wouldn't have any more cats.

But here I was, a cat not going back out on the streets, and they still wanted the operation.

Niçin? (why?) Hasan asked, the first time this was requested.  

"It's how we do it," the Woman-Who-Wanted-To-Save-All-The-Cats-In-Ankara said. And she told him about how healthy it would make me.  She made it sound like it would transform me to some Angel.

He just did what they asked for, just like he did it to every other cat the Woman-Who-Wanted-To-Save-All-The-Cats-In-Ankara brought to him, before she put them back out on the streets.  The big difference between me and all those other cats was. . . .well, read on.  Let's just say: I wasn't put back on the streets, and well, some people realized how well Hasan was doing this Operation.

2.
Two weeks later, the Big-Two-Legged One came and got me.  (Don't ask why it took Hasan two weeks to give me this operation. I try not to remember.)  Finally the Big-Two-Legged-One came and brought me in the taksi to my new house.  And there was another couch there!  It was pretty ugly, but I didn't care.  Here I am in one of the matching chairs, reading the Turkish Daily News with my friend the monkey, Hotchkiss.  There's a story about Hotchkiss.  Maybe I'll tell it later:

Like I said before, she made kuzu for me, and I got to sleep in a bed: what else could a cat ask for?  I decided that for the time being, living with her wasn't all that bad, and I just got to business partying in the really big, nearly empty apartment she was living in.  My favorite thing then, and even now, is playing football.  I love to kick balls all over the place until they go into little cracks and crevices, and then I just scream at them, until the BTLO comes and gets them out for me.

But then, one day it happened.  I didn't know it wasn't supposed to happen; after all it had happened before.  It was just natural, you know.  Part of being a girl cat: it was that feeling.  That feeling that I really wanted to go outside and find myself a boy cat.  Any boy cat.  Oh, it was so strong I thought I might even settle for a small boy dog.  So I stood in the middle of this big nearly empty apartment and howled.  All night long.  For a few nights.  Yelling really loud seemed to make it feel a little better.

We'd been getting along really well, but all of a sudden the Big-Two-Legged-One was not happy. 

Now I'll tell you something about the BTLO: she's not always on top of things, but fairly early, she realized that Turkish people are not really crazy about the idea of cats in their houses.  Her Turkish friends at work just kind of shook their heads when she told them about me.  None of them really wanted to meet me. So she figured that our neighbors might not be really happy to have me howling like that all night long in this apartment building.  So she called Hasan.  I guess he told her that sometimes this happens one more time after the Operation.

BTLO seemed to get even more angry after that.  She took me to another veterinarian, who stuck some long sharp thing into me -in return, I stuck a few claws in him.  He drew a little blood and so did I. 

But he did do something that made me stop wanting a boy cat.  For a couple months, at least.

Then it happened again, and this time it was much worse!  I knew how to solve the problem - just let me out!!!!  I knew there were cats outside; I'd seen them through the window.  I'd even be willing to come back in and keep her company, after I got it over with.

Instead, she took me back to Hasan's.

The bitch.  I was pissed.  No couches there.  I was back in the cage, back in a room full of dying animals.  The one thing I knew for sure was that I was really close to the streets I lived in for the first eight or nine months of my life.  And if I could get out, I could take care of this awful problem myself.  I knew there were plenty of boy cats out there that would help me.

It's true - if I could have gotten out there, I would have never come back.  I knew damned well by now that kuzu şiş picked out of the trash tasted almost as good as  kuzu şiş on a plate with a tomato and parsley garnish.  I would not make that mistake again.

But I never got out.  Hasan put me to sleep and did something else to me.  And I kept trying to wake up after that, but I couldn't.  I lay in that dirty dark cage and slept for days.  When I woke up, I just kept puking, for about four days.  And then I slept for nearly a week.

I don't really remember much of it, but I do remember that when I saw the BTLO again, I was really dirty and tired.  I would have taken her hand off, it I wasn't so tired.  I let her put me into that box and bring me back home.

3.
Back home.  Yeah, I was back in the place where I could play and eat kuzu and hang out on the porch. She would be away in the day, but she'd come back at night and feed and play with me, and sometimes she brought some other Big-Two-Legged-Ones over.  She worked with a bunch of other people like her.  They'd come and visit me, and everyone loved playing with me!  And I thought it was pretty fun playing with them too.

When it happened the third time -- by now you should know that it was that feeling, that feeling that I just had to get out and find a boy cat -- well, when it happened again, even I wasn't happy.  Because it hurt so much.  I felt like I was dragging my tale-end behind me, and I kept just sleeping in my sand box, because I kept thinking I was going to pee.  And I really hated the idea of peeing in our house.

I couldn't even scream, it hurt so much.  I just cried, and cried, and the Big-Two-Legged-One looked like she would cry, too.

She didn't call Hasan.  She put me in that box, and took me to the other veterinarian, the one we'd met before, who gave me that shot.  I kept trying to figure out what she was thinking, but I couldn't feel any emotions off of her; she just got really cold, and she said something to this other doctor, and he got cold, too.  He touched me all over, and all I could do was yell and scratch.  I didn't really mean to, but I just hurt so much.

I really had the feeling that she wanted me gone, just completely gone.  He asked her to not make him do what she wanted him to do.   I kind of understood - remember, my ears were working just fine then - that he was trying to do something for me.  To save me.  He talked and talked (he spoke her language) and then finally gave the Big-Two-Legged-One a piece of paper.

And she took me back home.  She didn't talk to me.  I knew that she really thought she wouldn't bring me back home with her.  I heard her on the phone.  She was calling somebody at a University.  Somebody named Mustafa.  I didn't hear much else, because all I could do was cry, with the pain I was in.

People think animals don't have memories.  That is just crazy not true.  I'll never forget that pain.  I'll never forget that whole year.  And I'll never forget that doctor, though I don't remember his name.  He wasn't really tall, and his skin was kind of dark, and he wore a blue smock.  And he kept saying:

"Please don't ask me to do that.  She's a healthy cat.  Please don't ask me to do that.  I can send you to someone who can help you.  If it doesn't work, then come back to me, and we'll talk again."

It's true - she never had that conversation again, though he became one of my vets after the next part of this story happened.  And I'm just too tired to tell it tonight!  For now, let's just say: what happened after that changed my life, and made me very angry for a long time. 

I'll tell you more later.  But it'll be soon later!  Thanks for reading.  I've really wanted to tell my story for a long time. 

Pişi misses her kuzu şiş, part II

. . . . check out those legs.  Sexy, eh?
That's me at a spry 1 1/2.  I'd just moved in with the current (and really only)
Big-Two-Legged-One.  Our first apartment together had this great balcony.
I'll tell you about that in a minute.

1.

But yes, I still miss my kuzu şiş.  Kuzu şiş çök özledim!  It's been awhile since I've done anything Turkish, but yes, I speak Turkish.  What, that bothers you?  

Deal with it.

Yeah, that's right: deal with the fact I'm a Turkish street cat.  No, I'm not one of those fancy-assed Van Cats, or even moreso, ben Angora'kedisi değil!   What I just said was I'm not one of those Angora Cats, either.  Funny thing is, I'm living with a cat now who looks like she is an Angora, but the joke's on everyone: she's a street cat too!  She told me that on one of our long weekends alone together, when the Big-Two-Legged-One was in love.

(I'm going to let Fluffy tell her own story, a little later.  But for now, the stage is mine!)

Well, the BTLO is always in love, but at that point in time, she was actually in love with a person.  She's done that a couple times before, but this one I actually liked, until I started to think that maybe he was lying to her.

But back to my point, I'm a Turkish Street Cat, plain and simple.  Not many people take a cat like me back to the U.S.A. with them.  Most people just feed me at restaurants, admiring how cute I am.  The ones who pick me up and bring me home, generally throw me back into the streets, or do what the People-With-The-Beautiful-Kuzu-Şiş did, and in a way that was kind of the nastiest of all.  They didn't know it was nasty, because they were Americans in Ankara, but it was nasty.

2. 

What they did was they forced him to give his word.  "Promise," they said, "promise you won't put this cat back into the streets."  They didn't speak Turkish; they spoke through an interpreter.  The interpreter used this word: sözleşmek, which is closer to a vow then a promise.  Promises, yes, can be broken.  Vows cannot.  Poor Hasan was just old fashioned enough to feel that once he made an agreement sözleşmeli -- he had to keep it.

You see, in  Türkiye, people believe that if you make a promise verbally, you should keep it.  And, I should let you know, that's also a basic rule of being a cat. I now know that's true for any cat, in any language.  I've discovered with The Fluffy One that this is a universal understanding between all cats.

The problem is people.

Now, in America, people tell you stuff, but then they don't do it.  Or they tell you some stuff, and they don't tell you everything.  Or they are really careful about the words they use, so they're not saying anything that would get them in trouble.

Call me simple minded, but that's just not how it works.  A spoken word, when spoken with sincerity, is as good as a written word.  This writing-things-on-paper thing is for the birds; a promise that is written in the heart (and the soul!) is far more durable.

Anyway, Hasan found himself making a sözlü with these people, and he felt he had to keep it.  He wouldn't put me in the streets as long as he had the food the people gave him.  When it was gone, well, he didn't know what he would do, but he wouldn't put me in the streets.

And - bok! all I wanted to do was get back in the streets.

So it was Hasan's sözlü vs. my will, and yeah, I got kind of nasty.  I wanted out; he wanted to fulfill his stupid promise.  He won.  And I turned into a huge bitch!

But then, the food was also running out. . . . 

3.

Look at that: that is one of the streets around Tunalı Hilmi, where I was born, and spent the first nine months of my life.  Then I lived about four months with the  People-With-The-Beautiful-Kuzu-Şiş, then about four months with Hasan.  And then, well let me tell you what happened then:

Little did I know that my life was being measured by the amount of food that was left in a big orange bag.  All I know for sure is that one day, sometime when the leaves were falling, this Big-Two-Legged-One appeared.  She was brought to Hasan by another American, a woman I'd met a couple times.  This Other American was married to some big businessman or something like that, and while he was going to meetings all over the Middle East, she was left to amuse herself in Ankara. And she decided to Save All The Street Cats of Ankara.

Let's just say: she had a really good heart.

Well, she would bring street cats to Hasan, and he would keep them for a few days, do something to them, and they would be screaming when it was over, and then she'd come and get them and put them back in the streets.  I really was willing to put myself through whatever torture those cats went through, if it meant going back on the streets.

Now let me tell you, on the streets of Ankara, I would have lived maybe two years, tops, and had about thirty or fifty kittens, before I got run over by a truck, or eaten by a dog, or tortured by some bored kid. Or just died, you know,  just froze, or starved or something normal like that.  That would have been my life.  But I would have loved every minute of it.  Except for maybe the end.

Think about it: today, I'm a little over twelve-years-old, and right now, I'm sleeping on a couch.

4. 

And I'm not even in Türkiye.  

That's what makes it hard.  But let me go on with my story:

So the Big-Two-Legged-One shows up at Hasan's.  The word on the street was that she just got to Türkiye and wanted a cat.  But I don't want a kitten; I want a cat who needs a home.   That's what she told some American colleague of hers who happened to be dating the South African Ambassador, and he knew the Woman-Who-Was-Trying-To-Save-All-The-Cats-Of-Ankara.  

So, if you're confused: the Woman-Who-Was-Trying-To-Save-All-The-Cats-Of-Ankara introduced me to the Big-Two-Legged-One.  Hasan dragged me out of the back of the cage I was in, and handed me to this scruffy, kind of confused, blond female human.  She didn't even speak Turkish!  She tried to hold me close, and I nearly took her arm off.

She handed me back to Hasan and said "OK, I'll take her," and all I could think was: "Bitch.  And you'll leave me in the streets when you're done with me, too."

But then she said something, and I didn't understand it.  And Hasan didn't seem to understand it either.  But she said she really wanted him to do something.  

She didn't demand a vow; well, actually I think she did, now that I know her.  She just said it in a real soft voice, which is how she says things. And her voice gets really soft and firm when she means it. So in that real soft voice of hers, she just asked him to do something.  And he did the best he could, despite the fact he didn't know how to do it, which is why I didn't actually move in with her for over two weeks after that.

Basically, he did the torture to me that he'd done with all the other cats.   The big difference between me and the other cats was: I felt ok when it was over.  And Hasan felt great, because he thought he'd finally done it right.  He kept calling me "my pişi-pişi," and actually acting like he liked me.

And I still just wanted to go back out into the streets.   

But instead, she came and got me.  I rode in one of those yellow taxıçılar.  Usually, the drivers of those yellow cars just yell at cats like me, and chase us out of the streets.  Generally they don't run us over, though.  But it happens sometimes.  The difference between the taxıçı - the taxi drivers - and all the other drivers, is that the taxıçı cry when they run over a cat.  Then they go on with their job, yelling at cats all the while. But this one drove me home and said "çök guzel pişi" while he drove me to my new home.  And I found myself in a new apartment, with a new couch.  And I had the cool balcony you can see at the top of this entry.  She would let me hang out out there, and it was fine.  I was home; I was comfortable; I was in  Türkiye.

And my name became  Pişi.  Because I am The Kat.  I am not "kitty kitty" (pişi-pişi), which is what street cats usually get called.   I'm just Pişi - The Kat, who made it to America with some chick who could write about me this way.

I'm telling you: I played my cards right.  I only had to live with her for three months to know that she was the one, the absolute human who would give her word and not go back on it.  I saw her do it, again and again.  And I knew she would not let me down.

And here I am, in America, over ten years later, with a woman who'll still cook kuzu şiş, and let me share it with her.  And then let me sleep in a big soft cozy bed with her at night. 

But there was a price to pay. . . .

You'd think this would be a happy ever after, but no.  Life isn't that easy!  You'll notice that in my story so far, I actually could hear things.  That's because I could hear when I was living in the streets.  My ears actually worked.  And then something really crappy happened.  That's all I can say for now.  It makes me upset just thinking about it.

But I'll tell you. . . . next time.