Internship Photo Essay: One With The Cats
I interned at the Fund for Animal Wildlife Center in Ramona, California. The FFAWC focuses on rehabilitating native wildlife such as mountain lions, coyotes, Raptors, Skunk, Bobcats, Snakes, etc. There are also some permanent animal residents that will live the rest of their lives under the care of the FFAWC. Some of these animals that live on the property aren’t necessarily native. The care for A hippo, 39 feral cats, and up until very recently a African Lion. The majority of the cats at the Fund for Animals WIldlife Center come from the San Nicolas Islands. A couple of years ago cats came to the island as pets and began to over populate the area. As they became a nuisance and threatened native wildlife it was decided to have them all killed. The Humane Society and The FFAWC went to rescue them and take them off the island. Now 39 of these feral felines reside in the spacious outdoor enclosure. Most new interns and volunteers start off in cats because many people are familiar and they don't require very much train care for. I was not interning for long enough or old enough to advance to other wildlife like coyotes, skunks and mountain lions. I had no problem with the cats. They were plenty for me to handle.
I woke up at five in the morning on the first day of internship to 3 new messages in my inbox. I had sent in the wrong forms for my back ground check and could not began my internship until they received these forms. After a lot of confusion and my first experience with a fax machine I was out the door and in my car with a cup of coffee and the radio tuned to KPBS. This was the beginning of a very long and very expensive new part of my daily routine.This situation didn't exactly prepare my self confidence for the new challenges and environments I was about to experience. On my first day I felt so overwhelmed with all the new material I was required to know and all of the new expectations. I had to think on my feet and I still felt like I was barely keeping up. My first half of my day I spent studying everything from evacuation plans to maps to dangerous plants in the area. After lunch it was time to began my training with the SNI cats. It sounds relatively easy to care for cats but it was a little more complicated than it sounds. I needed to learn how to medicate, feed, give water, give specific care and attention contribute to their enrichment, and many task that were required to be a caregiver for the cats. All of these required much attention to detail and had to be performed exactly as specified in my training. Caring for these cats was a serious job and an intimidating one. I was so nervous on my first day and I believe the cats could sense that. For the most part they stayed way out of my way as they did not recognize me.
After a couple more days I started to feel more comfortable with the daily responsibilities of caring for the cats. It felt like it would never happen the struggling feeling subsided and I was able to focus more of doing my job the best I could. After 3 days I was assigned to take care of the cats without any assistance. This was a big job but it gave me a sense of pride. I noticed every time I came in a fed, petted, and handed out treats the cats they trusted and accepted me more. By the time the cats recognized me they would wait at the gate every morning when I brought them their breakfast. Working a cat shift alone consisted of bringing in 25 plates of wet food accompanied by 7 and a half cups of dry food, cleaning out all 15 litter boxes, washing and scrubbing and replacing the specific ones designated to be clean, washing out and filing 25 water bowls, medicating, sweeping, shaking out blankets and replacing dirty ones, doing dishes and checking in on each cat during the daily focus group. All alone these jobs would take all 4 hours until lunch.
Once I was completely confident in these jobs it was time for the responsibility of medicating. This was by far the most difficult job. The first challenge was preparing the pills correctly. There was 5 cats that took 3 different kinds of pills. Each cat preferred a different technique of hiding the pills. For example Doug would only eat his meds if it was covered in a gooey meat substances call pill wrap and stuck on to a cat treat, Maggie only would eat hers if it was in a jerky type spread called a beef pill pocket, Scar and Phoebe only ate theirs hidden in a ball of elk meat, and Lady would have fancy feast spread out on two pieces of deli turkey and rolled and cut like a sushi roll. This was only a third of the challenge, next it was identifying the cats, for the first couple days this was very nerve racking and scary. I had a few pieces of paper with pictures, names, and key identifiers and descriptions of each cat. For example it might say “Largest of orange tabbies, light spot on left of nose, and pronounced features.” This was difficult when there would be 4 large orange tabbies. The last challenge was after you confirmed the cat was getting them to eat the treat you prepared. It seemed like every other cat would want to eat the meds except for the cat you wanted. Often you would place it in front of them and they would pretend to not notice it and look around. Sometimes it took as many as 10 attempts to get the cats to take their medicine.
On my last day of internship I went through the motions food, then litter, next water, but it felt different. I had been so caught up in my cat care duties that I forgot about the cats. I began to get really attached to my favorite cat friends. I spent the next half of my shift just sitting with them playing with their favorite toys. I had a long pole with a string and feather attached to the very bottom of it. I would swing it back and forth and catch the attention of distant prospectors. They would be lured in and jump for the feather. I even got a lot of unfriendly cats to bat at the feather toy. This was a very special and rare occurrence. I made a point to spend a lot of quality time with each cat before I left. It was really hard to leave on the last day. I hope to come back as a volunteer in the future.