Musings from the Smalls Room by Drumstick (a rotund, yet energetic piggy)

Books, books, books … one of our cleaners has been so busy with keeping on top of sorting out all those fabulous donations that taking down notes on life in our little room has not been top of her list of things to do. She wanted me to let you all know that all the amazing donations have been sorted into genre’s and are now being sorted into authors. And you should tell all your friends about our sale on April 9th, if you are a book lover of any age (this year we have a spectacular selection of children’s books), a puzzle lover (we have puzzles from 100 pieces through 3000 pieces), a board game fanatic or looking for a movie to watch on a quiet Saturday night you should come and check us out.

Personally, I am not much of a reader, the pages are just too tempting to nibble, but I am not averse to a good audio book (we have those for sale too!) As you probably noticed Rudy is no longer writing our blog. So let me introduce myself, Drumstick is my name, I arrived here back in September … so yes, I would like to leave ASAP … I came with my brother, but he was adopted a while ago. I do love it here we are well taken care of and they have the most amazing food. If there is one thing you should know about me it is my love of a good bite to eat, lettuce, carrots, parsley, those delightful little treats that come out of those crinkly sounding bags, I am always up for something to eat. As you can probably guess I am on the rounder side as far as guinea pigs go, but that doesn’t get in the way of me running around in my cage. Currently I reside next to Bailey who is one of our newer residents, pleasant little pig, we often pass the time-of-day reminiscing about life in a house. Fudge, is still with us, he like me, was brought in with his brother, but Toffee went home quite a while ago now. Fudge is a roamer, loving to be out of his cage and chatting with the bunnies, although Slick is also a bit of an adventurer too. Snickers, one of the piggies born at a shelter foster home last summer has moved from the first floor to the ground floor in our cage apartment block, so he is also taking full advantage of his new found freedom once that cage door is opened to be cleaned.

Now onto our bunnies. We have a had some great buns recently, and so many of them have found wonderful new homes. You probably all heard about Shamrock, who arrived here after being found by our mail lady in an intersection at the Westgate Mall! We have such lovely supporters; she immediately knew what to do and brought her right here. He has settled right in, I mean who could find living here difficult, warmth, clean bedding, an ample supply of nutritious food, what is there not to love! When some new animals arrive here, they don’t have a name, or at least not one they are able to easily communicate to our humans, so volunteers and staff often name us. Shamrock however, got his name from a lady who visits us weekly with a wonderful group of very special young adults. They stop by on Wednesdays and help clean, fold laundry and my favorite part, feed us our morning meal. And what an apt name Shamrock is for a bunny rescued in March. Bran just recently arrived, as did Happy and I have heard very nice things about both of them. So if you have room in your home for a little (or big) piggy or beautiful bunny be sure to come and check us out.

Of course, as many of you know, they don’t just keep small animals here at the shelter. No, we are home to an ever-changing array of cats and dogs too. Recently the noise levels in the building have increased due to the arrival of a posse of puppies from down South, I believe they came from a bit further afield than New Bedford, but that is about as far South as I am familiar with. We have also had an influx of surrenders so we do have to listen to a cacophony of yapping and barking at all hours of the day and night. We have also had a deluge of pregnant cats, one came with her four babies (all with their eyes closed) on Sunday, and is now safely nurturing her babies at a foster home. Another arrived pregnant and was quickly also placed in a foster home. She thankfully had just enough time to readjust to her surroundings before becoming the proud mother to three little beauties. And when we didn’t think there would be more, a third soon to be mom was brought to our door. She just went to her first-time foster home yesterday, so we will keep you posted on her progress. We have also been pleased to offer life changing surgery to both a dog and a cat recently, who will now be able to find furever homes where they can live out their best lives. As you can see life at a shelter just doesn’t involve this one little building at the end of a long driveway, we require the support of foster families, local vets and of course all our volunteers and supporters.  Never a dull moment around here.

Finally, I wanted to share a video of one of my neighbors Slack, out and about with some of our recently adopted rabbits, next week we will have some new footage to share so you can see some of our new residents. But feel free to check out all our bios on the shelters page and share with everyone you know all our upcoming events, https://www.apcsm.org/upcomingevents