So, my good friends John and Elizabeth asked me recently, hey, where did you go? Which reminded me, sadly, that I had all but abandoned my online diary here.
Yeah, that's me, trying to be cute with a stuffed Chihuahua!
Truth is, my new job as pets editor over at The Orange County Register has me muzzle-deep in all things animal.
My day now revolves around posting pet items, fun and not so fun, events and adoption opportunities, to my new blog, Pet Tales.
When I’m not thinking of clever headlines, say for ponderous pachyderms and pedicures, I’m playing forum host to pet conversations at OC Pets, a section dedicated to conversations about our furred and feathered friends.
Here’s an example of today:
- Write an update story on Noah, a Weimaraner shot through the face and left for dead
- Call back two readers who want to donate funds to Noah’s medical bills
- Oh the irony: Spend an hour chatting with friendly guy about the old-fashioned (and cheap) form of pet euthanasia: a bullet through the head
- Submit photo assignments for various pet-related events here in Orange County
- Rewrite a boring story about dogs sniffing out cell phones in Arizona prisons. It now goes something like this: Hey, Katy, go find the remote control, why don’t ya?
- Remind folks that there are homeless pets out there seeking new homes
- Answer a friend’s question about puppies and chewies
- Edit the weekly pets column written by a peer
- Relink a colleague’s story about a cross-walk assistant named Shadow … a cat
- Post some cute photos of dog and her kittens (yes, that’s right, kittens)
- Oh, and then there’s the pachyderm who got waylaid by grinders.
The goal with my new job is to create an audience that visits me, oh, 150,000 times a month. Excuse me while I go throw up quietly in the ladies room. That’s a LOT of clicks, in case you didn’t know. For many of us in the blog world, that’s nearly impossible without a sturdy following of core readers. We’ve had our share of success here at The Register with our bloggers on real estate, food and shopping.
I can only hope that somebody’s clicking every day. I spend a lot of time going back and forth at Twitter, Digg, Pligg, Facebook, you name it, I’m posting my stuff somewhere.
What about life outside the newsroom?
Vacation plans recently have stalled. I was due to hike into the Grand Canyon this holiday weekend. The Havasupai Tribe opted to close the reservation at their magnificent falls until June 6 to offset any threat of swine flu. Argh.
Instead I stayed home and puttered in the garden and spent a lot of quality time with my own critters.
Noir, my newest addition, will be a year old in July. She’s turned into quite a character and is the most affectionate cat I’ve ever had. Knowing that she came from an albeit short life on the streets, I’m still impressed with her desire to cuddle and share space on the couch with her canine pals.
Katy remains big and solemn. On a recent trek on nearby trails, I stupidly wasn’t paying attention and realized about five minutes too late that the hot sand was literally burning her feet. We backtracked fast, but she walked funny for a week.
New to my flock of furry friends is a feral mama cat. I met her pregnant and now she’s got a litter tucked away under a neighbor’s house. Mama visits daily and still resists the dogs (who can blame her). Hopefully I can get her fixed after she’s done with the kittens … and yes, maybe I can find them, too, and get them adopted out.
Sometime in June I have to take a mandatory furlough week, with no pay, to help the company limp through another quarter of dismal earnings. I’m doing my part! On top of that I need to burn a week of REAL vacation because it’s piling up and they’re not going to give me anymore until I use some … sigh.
Maybe I’ll venture home to ol’ Virginny. Another option on my plate is to head to Maui in August to help a friend celebrate her birthday. Wanna bet which direction I go?
Although with four weeks of vacation banked, and a week of furlough on the agenda, there’s nothing saying I can’t do both!
