It has been over two months since the local SPCA told all of us volunteers to stay home. They are still taking care of and adopting pets but they are doing it with just their paid staff. That means the cats and dogs are still finding homes but they have fewer people around to pay attention to them while they are there.
While I was volunteering, I took photos of some of the cats almost every time I was there and I thought this would be a good time to share some of the ones from this year. The last time I was there was March 19th, over two months ago, so I’m sure all of these kitties have found homes by now. At least I hope so. I also have forgotten all of their names except Grampa Hulu who was unusual because he was a male tortie.
Hopefully they will be letting us volunteers come back pretty soon.
Bad Cat Chris 
Beautiful portraits ! We hope many of them found a forever home. Purrs
Thanks. I’m pretty sure most or all found a home by now.
Such sweeties. I’m sure they are wondering where all the humans went.
It’s too bad because they love attention. My first job as a volunteer was to just pay attention to the cats.
We hope all those cuties are in their forever homes now. The mom hasn’t been volunteering at the shelter for the past 6 weeks either. Numbers were really down so she decided to take a break because of the virus. There were a few people volunteering still. But things are ramping up again…more kitties at the shelter…so the mom will probably be going back soon.
It will be nice to get back to normal. I miss hanging out with the kitties.
They are all so beautiful.
It’s hard to not take them all home.
I do hope all these kitties found homes in the time you’ve been away.
I hope so too. I think they probably did.
A MALE TORTIE. I’ve never seen nor heard of one, whereas I have a few friends who have ginger female cats.
There is about a one in six chance of a female ginger but a one in two thousand chance of a male tortie
Would it be ok for me to take a copy of his picture, please, to send it to my friend who is tortie-obsessed? She has 4 so far and I don’t think she’s ever seen a male.
Male tortoiseshells are rare and are usually sterile (From Wikipedia)
Als from Wikipedia:
A male cat, like males of other therian mammals, has only one X and one Y chromosome (XY).
That X chromosome hence determines the coat colour. […]
Very rarely (approximately 1 in 3,000) a male tortoiseshell or calico is born; these typically have an extra X chromosome (XXY), a condition known in humans as Klinefelter syndrome, and their cells undergo an X-inactivation process like in females. As in humans, these cats often are sterile because of the imbalance in sex chromosomes.
Some male calico or tortoiseshell cats may be a fusion of two twins into one cat (must be two males, if I understood correctly, which sounds a little gruesome, like The Fly-horror movie)
Others are mosaics, in which the XXY condition arises after conception and the cat is a mixture of cells with different numbers of X chromosomes.
It is complicated and I am not good enough to make it simpler.
Thank you for sharing that info. I read up on genetics when researching whether ginger cats are friendlier than average and discovered that a couple of hours of research was not enough to understand the topic.
And with my limited knowledge to start with I had to leave most of the explaining to Wikipedia
🙂
I would love for you to share it.
Thank you!
So many beautiful kitties! That is really unique that you found a male tortie. I hope that they all find forever homes soon.
Thanks. He was quite friendly too.
Grandpa looks rather displeased
Can you blame him being stuck in a shelter?