For the love of strays....

Kyiv is home to an abundance of stray animals - dogs and cats roam the streets freely.


You see them in city parks, on medians & roaming the streets......

You see them across the street by the construction site....the workers feed them

You see them hanging out on our front lawn (outside the fence)....

....after a few weeks of wondering, the mystery of who was feeding them was solved......babushkas!...

Kyiv, being VERY focused on image AND the host of the Euro Cup 2012 has decided these stray animals are not consistent with its desired image as an upstanding, attractive, developed European city.  So they did the natural thing..........put poison down in the parks.  (Yikes!  Clearly no PETA here.)


I also learned the hard way not to say anything about strays to your landlord.....I asked mine where to put the trash so the dogs would not get into it.  A few days later the dogs were no longer coming around.  I haven't seen any on our grass in over a month.  I don't know what happened - don't think I want to know.  


On a related topic, a friend of mine has apparently been labeled the stray cat softy.  People bring them to her knowing she can't say no.  She was up to 4 kittens when her husband starting offering co-workers bribes to take a cat or two off their hands.  I innocently went over to her house to join a painting class.  Then saw this........

  
And, while I have never considered myself a 'cat person' (I frankly did not like them), this little one & his brother made me revisit that assessment.  Next thing you know........'one week trial'

We are only 2 days in - so clearly have time to back out.  That said, we've accumulated silly amounts of supplies and toys, been to the vet for a check up ($3/cat - while I never had cats in the States, I can't imagine that's the going rate) & scheduled their vaccinations for next week.....

While clearly the signs are not pointing in the direction of making a return, as a former 'anti-cat-person', I feel I need to justify this seemingly rash 180.  My top excuses for bringing a set of feline friends home:

1. Logan's job includes managing the pet food business - yet we had no pets
2. Kids need to grow up with some sort of furry pet - but we failed having a dog in Chicago (was like having a 4th child) + the stray dogs that used to live in our yard might come back & harass a mollycoddled house dog
3. I already did gerbils (went through like 4 of them as a child)
4. We can chalk it up as serving some greater purpose

My favorite one is that we keep preaching to the kids the importance of trying new things - even things they say they don't like - so now I am just setting a good example.

In reality, I like having the silly balls of fur around!

So here's to new tricks!  Happy Monday