Busy day.

So, I feel like I keep writing what a busy day it's been... but these last few, it really has been.  My "day" is completely booked on my planner, like there's no more room to write anything for today.

Ok, so let's see.  I got up at around 9:45-10 to get ready for my chin pickup (the med. ebony female 3-4 months went home today) and went out to get the mail.  And lo and behold, there's a lady parked in our driveway asking me "Do you know where I can find Ashley?"  Yeah, that'd be me.  Except, it was like 10 am and she said she wouldn't be here til 10:30-11.  So... I hadn't even made it down to the basement yet.  So I silently thank god that I cleaned and vacuumed yesterday (cause if you saw the mess....) and we went down.  Got the female out, apparently she was having another bout of some loose poos, my fault entirely, because she was a chin that can't tolerate Mazuri, and what did I put in the bowl?  Mazuri.  For those that wonder, we have Manna Pro - Pro (rabbit food) that we have on hand for rabbits, and that gets mixed with Mazuri when switching chins on unknown foods over to Mazuri.  It is an "approved" chin food by the chin community, they prefer Manna Pro Sho, but I can only find the Pro, and the only chins on it are non-Mazuri-tolerant rescues and rabbits.  So, I can live without it having the yucca and something else in it (there are literally two ingredients added to Manna Pro Pro to make it Manna Pro Sho -- one being yucca, I can't remember what the other is, but it's not significant).

Anyway, so I'd been giving the chins in that cage a mix of the two foods, but apparently forgot, so I pick up the chin and put her up to my shirt... and end up with a brown glob on my shirt.  Of all days to wear white.  So I explain that she will be fine (the lady was going to feed Oxbow), this is my own stupidity (I don't think I worded it quite like that) and all.  So she went home. 

I promptly changed shirts.

Then, I had someone coming at 1 pm with her family.  Had some questions about the chins, wanted to talk chin, and all that.  Wanted to see what rescues we have available and all that.  So she was here maybe an hour or so, went over basic chin care, came to the realization that the only rescue we "have" at the moment is Posh, who is not physically "here."  So I told them I'd talk to Posh's owner and get back to them.  Still need to do that.

Then, got a text asking about the blue male rat that we have.  The guy said he wanted to adopt him, but he'd rescues 3 rats from somewhere and one of them turned out to be a female, so he wanted to know if we'd take it in.  Well, you know how that went, so we now have a fawn "self" female that's approx. 6 weeks old.  He came over, and I dunno what odd kinda mood I was in, I told him we'd just trade rats, I'd waive the adoption fee for the blue rat.  In the end, it's only $10, no big deal, and he sounded like a great home on his adoption form and all.  So, minus one blue male, plus one fawn female.

Oh, self = solid colored.

So then, I went to the powdercoating place to pick up Kelly's pan, and I took with me the torn-apart Chin Spin (well, the metal part of it).  Asked to talk to Shannon.  The receptionist's nice, but gets that deer-in-the-headlights-look every time I ask even the simplest thing about powdercoating.  So Shannon came up and said sure they could re-powdercoat it, so I picked a nice green color.  They're just going to powdercoat over the previous powdercoating.... which is mostly there on the outside of the wheel, except for some bad spots, but on the inside, the running surface... yeah, there was more exposed metal than powdercoating.  And I remember when that all came off pretty much at once, which Shannon confirmed, was a problem with the adhesion of the original powdercoating.  I'd like to think this company has a better idea of what they're doing.  So I'll have a bright wheel to put back together in a few days.

So on my way home I get a call from someone asking about the difference between chins and guinea pigs.  Apparently they'd run across my website and seen that I had chins and guinea pigs and wanted a comparison of them as pets.  Funny thing, I actually had to go on the website and see if I'd actually put up pics of the pigs.  Which I did not.  But, I did have mentioned that we had three, so she must have seen that one-line.  So we discussed pigs v. chins and she basically settled on the idea that a chin would be less of a responsibility.  Which, despite the much longer lifespan of a chin, I would have to agree with, based on the veggie requirements, the cleaning requirements, and so on.

So she wanted to come over today to see the chins.  You know, about noon I'd thought a nap would be good, but apparently that wasn't in the cards for today.  So she was set to come around 6.  So she and her two well-behaved kids (can't say that for all the kids) came over and saw the chins and we talked chin and all that.  So, we went over the type of cage and wheel and all that good stuff and she said she was going to talk to her husband and would get back to me.

So, that was it for people for the day.  Got an email asking about Delilah --  person said that they knew she was on hold, and that they'd been thinking about her for awhile (see, this is why you gotta jump on a critter if you want it), and someone beat her to it, but she wanted to know if that person backed out.  So I told her I would let her know, and was just thinking I hadn't heard back yet, when I got an email from the person who has Delilah on hold, answering some questions she'd left blank on the adoption form (which I'd asked about) and telling me she wanted a cage put on hold.  So I put the cage on hold for her, and the other part of the email was that she was telling me that she figured she could continue to get the Mazuri and hay and finely shredded paper shavings from me, and I could ship em to her.  Um... what?  The weight of those paper bags make it hard to get down to the basement, much less to ship.  Much less that, and hay, and Mazuri.  So I nicely told her, it might cost her less to just drive down here (from Chicago, not that far away) maybe twice a year and pick up a bag of Mazuri, a few bags of shavings, some hay.... versus me shipping it (plus, it's less work for me that way).  I hate shipping hay.  We'll see what she says.  But anyway, I marked her down for the cage she wanted, and I asked her what other supplies (if any) she wanted to get.  So, just waiting for that email back, and once I get that, I can set up Delilah's pickup.  Yay.

Then Jim (the rat guy) sent me an email.  He's constantly sending me emails about cages, and if I needed a lot of used cages, he sure can find them around the chicagoland area, but I'm good, so usually I don't inquire unless it's like a FN or something.  Well, this time he sent me this:

The Rescuer's Creed

I promise I will take your unwanted animals.
I will heal their wounds, their diseases, their broken bones.
I will give them the medical attention they need and deserve.
I will nurture their starvation and give them a warm place to sleep.
I will spay and neuter them, vaccinate them against the diseases that can harm them.
I will treat them and honor them.
I will buy them toys, blankets, balls, and teach them to play.
I will speak softly to them.
I will try to teach them not to fear, not to cry, and not to hate.
I will whisper sweet, kind, gentle words into their ears,
while gently trying to stroke their fear, their pain, and their scars away.
I will face their emotional scars and give them time to overcome them.
I will socialize them, potty train them, teach them to be obedient, show them dignity,
and hold their paws, and stroke their ears if they have endured too much
and walk them over the Rainbow Bridge,
BUT most of all I will teach them LOVE.
-Author Unknown

*ahem*  Ok.  I eventually started going through the random crap that makes up the disaster that I call a desk, and came across my receipt for USPS from the other day.  Well, I know the $11.35 that I charged the one person was right, cause it was flat rate, but one of my orders was through the webstore, which is notorious for overcharging shipping.  This time it really hit a high note, with a $15 overcharge, so I refunded that and sent an email to the person letting them know their package had gone out and they'd been refunded $15.  Which they said made their weekend, so I'm glad.  :)

Then, I was emailing back and forth with Christine (of Twilight Chinchillas) about a bed order that I wanted.  I'm getting a zebra-type bed for Toby's cage to match his zebra print fleece:

So then, someone called, at like 10:30 p.m.  Not even kidding.  Someone wanting to know about getting "Psycho" (a chin who is on hold for someone else).  Word to the wise -- after about 9 pm, local time, I won't pick up the phone unless I've either known you for years, or I'm expecting a late phone call.  This isn't a 24-hour animal hotline, sorry, it's my personal cell phone (on steroids).  The same number goes to me (Ashley Gajda), NWI Chinchillas, NWI Chinchilla (and small animal) Rescue, it's on my resume, and it's the number that the American Bar Association has on record for Ashley Gajda, attorney at law (also me, for anyone who I might've lost).  So I don't plan on ever picking up the phone either really late at night or if I'm only partially awake (so not at 5 am either, sorry early risers), especially for an un-known number.

Anyway.... so now I have to call her back tomorrow, and let her know that if she wants to know if someone backs out on Psycho, I can let her know, but she can't adopt her unless that person backs out.

Was planning on balancing the rescue account, but I can't seem to get the bank website to open, so I guess that'll have to wait for another day.  Oh fun.  First, it just wouldn't load.  Now, "the page cannot be found."  Well, I sure hope my money can be found....

Ok, but anyway.  Tomorrow I will not be posting about what a busy day I have had at the rescue, because I am going to the zoo!  With Meredith and her husband.  I have no one scheduled to come over, and I don't plan on scheduling anyone, so unless I somehow magically make some hidey houses tomorrow night (which would be great, but is highly unlikely) I won't have much to say.  Toodles.

Day flew by....

So today flew by... for good reason... was busy all day today.  Started off the day working on the cleaning the QC mansion and sanding the shelves.  Once I had that done, off to making poo guards.  So, cut those, attached those. Then I decided, ok, maybe I should look at how that wheel is attached and see if there's a way I could get the powdercoated part off.  So, turns out, it does unscrew, and then you have to hammer it like all heck to get the thing off.  But... I got it off!  Now, I just need to scrub and clean it as good as I possibly can before I take it in. 

So, added some stuff to that cage.  Added a hidey house up on a shelf, some toys, added some wood and interesting stuff to the toys already in the cage, added a few more perches and chews.

Moving on, I completed one of my orders -- of course, ran out of tape right in the middle, so I had to go to Meijer to get more tape.  So I come home, finish packaging up my order. 

So then I decide I should start getting ready the order for the person who's getting the two chins and has her $600 order.  So I start putting that stuff on the side, and I realize I still need to put together her hidey house.  She wanted a cottage one (as everyone seems to, lately), and so I already had the pieces cut out, so I sanded them and went to put them together.  And the one "side" piece that has the big door hole cutout?   Yeah, it cracked in half.  But, elmer's glue is like the duct tape of the chin world, so I slathered some on, stuck one of my fat rubberbands around it, and have it on the side.  Her house will be put together tomorrow, and that piece will be as good as new. 

Was going to start on her cage, but then I realized, I have two people coming tomorrow and everything everywhere.  Like it looked like everything had exploded down there cause I'd accidentally knocked over a plastic food bowl full of food, I had an open bag of trash down there, I had the guinea pig table blocking the one aisle... I had the fake-wood table covered in all sorts of crap....and so on.  So, I thought, ok, I can put the guinea pig stand where it goes, move the fridge onto the guinea pig stand (bottom shelf) and then move the table to accommodate.  Well, here's the thing, that meant moving the guinea pig cage off of the table it was on, and onto another table.  So to move the guinea pig stand into place, I ended up taking a cage off one of the tables (the empty one that the boys had escaped from last night -- which I fixed today with a strategically placed spring clip), scooting Keisa's cage over, scooting Gumdrop and her babies' cage over, and then moving the guinea pig cage (after cleaning it) to that table.  So then, I was able to move the smaller table out of the way, and put the guinea pig table where it goes.  Then I went to move the fridge onto the guinea pig lower table.  Yeah... it's about 2" too tall.  Grrr.  The two stands I have (the run stand and the guinea pig stand) should be exact replicas except for the casters, so I should have known ahead of time that it wasn't going to fit, but oh well.  So now the fridge is currently under the next table over, which the cord BARELY reaches for, as I expected that it would be a lot closer to the outlet (and only bought a 13' cord).  Oh well.

Anyway, so I realized that while the FN/CN cages have stocked up toys, because I just put those in those cages, my run toys were looking a little empty.  And with Myshkin stealing and hoarding toy pieces in his run, his girls need extra pieces for themselves, lol.  So I filled those up, and then realized that two of the cages on the bottom run only had two toys each.  Well, totally not fair to those chins (all the rest had 3) so they got an extra toy each.  And sticks for all of them.

Somewhere among all of this, I cleaned all of the runs, vacuumed all of the FN/CNs, cleaned the guinea pig cage and guinea pig tank (for Pixie), cleaned the rat cages, moved the male rat babies (7 weeks-ish) to the second cage on our rat stack, and cleaned Ally & Lola's cage.  So I think the only thing NOT cleaned was the prairie dog cage (which I did like yesterday? day before?) and Delilah's cage.  And hers will be cleaned once I get to it.....

So then, all of my spare wood (by spare wood, I mean the cut-up pieces that aren't big enough for much) had overflowed and ripped through the bag I was using to hold it (next to the table saws), so I went and got another bag, and went through every piece.  If the piece was 2" for at least, say, 6", I put it on the side (for poo guards).  So now I have a nice pile of potential-poo-guard pieces, I found some triangle corner pieces that I cut out, which I may use as corner shelves, or just sell as a one-time thing.  And all the other wood was neatly arranged in the new bag so it'll be there when I get a chance to cut it up.

Didn't do much with my zebra/leopard cage.  Decided that it'd be good with a hay holder (the one I made with the dowels) so I attached those, but I still really need that flying saucer in there, cause I can't tell if I have enough room for a hidey house or not.  I need to work on making shelves for that cage.

So then, somewhere in all of this, I got a call that showed up as New Mexico.  Didn't answer it at the time, was busy doing something, but later I noticed they left a voicemail.  Saying this is so and so, wanted to know if we still had the chinchilla for sale (which one?), call me back at xxx-xxxx.  Point is, there was no area code.  So, I tried the number she gave me with a 219-area code, got a cadillac dealership.  Tried the number she gave me with the area code that showed up on the phone (as the number she was calling from).  Number out of service.  So, I called back the number she called me at and left a message.  No idea if she'll get it or not, but that's all I could do.  So here's a word to the wise.  If you call me, and you want me to call you back at a number DIFFERENT than the one you are using to call me, please give me not only your phone number, but your area code.  If you are out of state, heck, even if you're in Chicago, I may try 219, I may try 708.  Other than those I don't know any local area codes, and I especially don't know yours if you're out of state.  Like far out of state like New Mexico.  So please, give me a phone number with area code.

On the note of "another odd phone thing" -- I tried to call up Kelly tonight (the $600 order person).  She had called a few days ago wanting to know how the boys were doing, and asking if a certain cage we had would be a good travel cage.  Well, I was betting she didn't look at the dimensions, cause the cage she had mentioned was like a gerbil cage, not a chinchilla cage.  So I called her back, said how the boys were doing, suggested a different cage, and asked for her to call me back.  That was several days ago now.  Well, so I never heard back.  So today, I called her, just to ask if she had thought about which cage she wants (so I don't sell it if she's already picked out one) and all that, and to tell her that I was getting her stuff ready.... but again, no answer, and I left a voicemail.  So hopefully she'll call me back.  I checked the number, and I am dialing the right number, so I know I'm not losing my mind. 

Let's see, what else did I do.  I vacuumed like everything downstairs.  I went through my "rescue box" -- when people donate supplies for the rescue, I put it aside in a specific tote to make sure only the rescues get it -- and doled out the goods.  Gave everyone water and food.  I need to hook up a second water bottle on the blue FN, cause with three chins in there, it's practically done every day. 

So, I moved most of the crap from that table-in-the-middle-of-the-room to the one that's by the stacked runs, so now, Pixie is on the middle table, and a few other things, but it's mostly empty.  Once I get it cleared off, it can go back upstairs and back to the garage.

Oh!  Pixie is walking *happy dance* -- I'm still going to give her her oral prednisolone until I run out, which may be another week or two, but better safe than sorry.  Let's keep the swelling down and keep my piggie improving.  Very happy for her. She even was more like herself today when I went to give her her meds, she was struggling more, like the way she did when she had all working feet, versus the way she would just let me do whatever when she couldn't move her back feet.  I made sure to not drop her this time, when I was moving her to another cage so I could clean hers.

Well, I think that's it.  When I left, it looked halfway decent down there.  So maybe I'll just need to do a quick vacuum when I get up and I'll be ready for my first person.  Oh and I need to get the food and the goodie bag ready for that, but tonight I had to take up all the trash (for trash day tomorrow) and take down all the wood I just bought (60 ft) and the boxes I unloaded from the trunk, so I did all of that, and now it's time to go upstairs and watch X Factor.  The cleaning will undoubtedly still be there tomorrow.  But at least now, all the cages (in use) are clean!! 

Today.

What I did today.  Hmm.  Seems like not much.  Went to the powdercoating place, picked up my three pans.  Dropped off my customer's pan, he said it may be done tomorrow.  Asked Shannon (owner) about re-powdercoating some of my QC pans and QC wheel... he said that it would be best to get them sandblasted first, which he said would run me about $30+ per pan, and then get them powdercoated, so another $10ish.  And then he asked me what it cost to buy my customer's pan (it was a new pan I just bought for one of our for-sale cages) and I told him it was like $25, so he said it would be better worth my money, if I'm concerned about the QC pans, to just buy new pans and have them powdercoated, as it'd cost less in the long run.  Good point.  I haven't worked on getting any of the QC's ready for the new setup, but when I do, I'm going to take a look at the pans.  If I really feel they need to be replaced, I will call up Bass and order them all at once (and save on shipping) and then get them powdercoated.  If I think they can go for a few more years (which is likely the case-- the powdercoating's coming off, but I don't think they're rusting quite yet), then they will, and I'll just keep Shannon's card. 

Asked him about the QC wheels.. he said if I had a way of getting the sheetmetal round part off of the wood, they could re-powdercoat that.  He said if they were to cover the wood and re-powdercoat the metal, the drying process is so hot that the wood would twist and warp.  Oh yeah, forgot that powdercoating happens at what, 140? 150+? degrees?  Yeah, wood warps when I keep it in the car a few too many hours, so I could definitely understand that.  Looked at one of the wheels today when I got home, without taking it out of the cage (I know, genius, really easy to tell how things are put together when you're looking through bars), and I think the wood part is screwed onto the metal, but I will look at it better later.  If it really is a few screws, I would just pop off the rounded sheetmetal and, without sandblasting (because Shannon said it's considerably more expensive if the piece is rounded in any way, and $30 is already expensive), and have the wheels re-powdercoated.  I could have chin spins in fun colors, lol.  We will see.

Went to the post office, mailed out a package.  Will email the person bout it tomorrow cause it's already late today.

Had someone come and pick up their almost $250 order, so that cleared off my work table, so I can start putting my almost $600 order on that table.

Decided it'd be a good idea to start setting up the last FN (the insides) at like 2:30 am, so went downstairs... and I see a little chin on the ground.  Ah hell.  So I caught him pretty easily, and I had this moment of thinking, "did he really squeeze through the bars?"  Cause he is like a 10-12 week old kit in a cage with 1" bar spacing.  But nope, he and his cagemate pushed the pan forward in their cage, exposing like a 2" gap at the back... which they promptly jumped out.  So, found his cagemate on the other side of the basement.  A nice extra dark ebony chin, looked like he'd found a few cobwebs along the way.  Caught him easily as well, which is good cause I was already wheezing.  Need to really work on taking my asthma med twice daily.  Anyway, so they originally went into a shut-off run, while I took a chin-chiller and blocked off the hole in Winx's Critter Nation.  Then the boys got the bottom.  I know Winx gets along with the mosaic, but with these boys going home soon, I don't need any disasters happening, so the boys are in the bottom, Winx (who I'm sure is really plotting my death now) is in the top.  Had to add another food bowl and water bottle to the cage.

So then, I didn't actually go down there to chin-chase, so I got the pans for the FN, put those in.  Bengal orange on the bottom, canary yellow for the top (it looks good, I swear).  Got out my zebra print liners, put those in.  Started putting the zebra stuff in, and thought, hey, maybe I can do this as my "print" cage with both the zebra and leopard.  So right now it's a mix of zebra and leopard.  Not sure I love it, but there's no shelves in it yet, will do that when it's NOT 3 am.  May move stuff around in there, and I think I will need to figure out something extra to put in there, and something extra to put in Gypsy's cage.  Cause like, in Winx's cage, I have that hanging ledge in the middle, and in Toby's cage, I have a tube in the middle, but Gypsy's is open at the top middle and this one will be open at the top middle....  I believe I have another wooden tube, so that may go in one of the cages, and maybe I'll make another one of those hanging ledges.  But I need to do something cause there's a tad too much open air.  Not using enough of the cage-space.  Oh, and I wiped down the Ed wheel from the prairie dog's cage (which he clearly wasn't using) and put it in the top of this cage.  Left room for the flying saucer, which I will be getting back from Meredith, and that can go in the bottom cage.  And I technically need that in before I do shelves, so that I don't have to move everything around to accommodate that.

Oh, and I got in the extra food bowls.  I don't know if I posted about that, but the previous time that I had ordered food bowls, I ordered 10.  7 came broken, called them up, they sent 7 new ones.... I think 4 were broken, they sent 4 new ones... and then like 1 or 2 were broken, they sent new ones (they do offer money back, but I want those food bowls-- it's hard to find places that have stuff reasonably priced that can support a small markup for the rescue to sell).  Anyway, this time I ordered 20.  And these people must have had a light bulb go on or something... apparently these bowls come in boxes of 12 (had I known this before, I could have made this all a lot easier).  So, they sent a box of 12 and a box of 8 (both in a bigger box, along with some other random stuff that I ordered).  Well, two came broken, and I called them up, said that two were broken, wanted replacements, and they sent two, with *gasp* packaging material in the box!  Cause, see, last time, when they were broken (the 7 out of 10), on the last phone call, I told them (nicely, I swear!) that the reason they were coming broken was cause they would send a food bowl with a thin flimsy piece of bubble wrap around it inside a box the size of a microwave, with no other packaging, so it would bounce around and break, and they would wonder why, even with no damage to the box, the bowl would be broken.  Anyway, this time I only had to deal with two shipments, the first time (20) and the second time (2).  Awesome.  Next time I think I'll just order 24 so I get two full boxes.  I didn't even think to ask if a certain number came in a box, but if I ever have to switch food bowl suppliers, that will be on my "good to know" list. 

And then cages.  I went today to order some more of the large cages, the purple and black ones.  And over this past year, the price has been creeping up.  Like the one time I ordered, it was an extra dollar, the next time, an extra $2.... this time it was an extra $17!  Holy shit.  Like it's one thing to up the price a little, this is ridiculous.  So I looked for another supplier, and I found two of them that offer the cage at a price that's closer to my original price (closer than $17).  But... both are out of stock.  And wouldn't you know it, someone decided to text me asking about a cage and saying how great a price it was at $143 with shelves.  Um... yeah.  Sold the last one today, buddy (went with the $250 order).  So, I told him, I can get it now, at a higher price, or I can wait and see if the other places get it in.  So in the end, we agreed that I'll give it like a week, check if the places got it in, and get back to him.  I really do hope that the places get it in, because I know prices go up, but a $17 hike in price is ridiculous.  And the same happened with the smaller cage I sell as well.  It went up about $15-16 or so.  I still have one of those left, but for those, I should start looking for another supplier as well.  This is such shit, the cage didn't change an ounce, yet the price jumped so much.  Ah well, that's for another day.  I have marked down to check on the cages in a bit, and I can just hope that one of the cheaper places gets them in.  We will see.

Well, I think that's it for today.  Oh, was going to put my cheetah hammock (I've called it leopard for the longest time, but it really is cheetah) in the zebra and leopard cage, but when put next to those two... it does look a bit different than leopard (I know, "well, yeah") so that one can get saved for one of my other cages.  I am digging my multi-pattern cage though.  It looks good.  And the thing is, that cage, being zebra, is going to get the most colorful toys and all, because I won't be trying to match colors.  But... the perfect thing about that cage is that I have several of those food-and-treat bowls by SuperPet (my mom thinks they're adorable and every time we see them she asks if we have enough, haha, they are cute).  Anyway, we have several of those, and I want to say all the ones we have are either yellow or orange.  So they'll match the pans! 

Anyway, that's it for today, gotta sleep or I won't get anything done tomorrow.

Orders and more orders

So I put together orders today.  Got together the hidey house order that's been up on my board forever. 

Also put together an almost-$250 order for someone who's adopting a pair of 10 yr old chins from another rescue, but getting all of her supplies here (yay!).  So she's coming tomorrow to pick everything up, those chins are gonna be spoiled.  Nice cage, wood shelves, hammock, treats, lots of nice goodies. 

Working on another order, a smaller one that was a corner shelf, perch shelf, cottage hidey house, and some shelf hardware sets.  Got everything made (the cottage house is drying), but I couldn't cut the  perch shelf cause it was too late at night.  So once that's cut, that order can go out (once the house dries). 

Then I got together an order for one of my "regulars" -- someone who's always ordering food.  Usually it's just 10 lbs of food, but this time it's that, a goodie bag, and four circular perches.  Turns out, I can just baaaarely squeeze all of this in the long-medium sized flat rate box.  So I got her a total, if she paypals me by the time I go to the post office, that can go out pretty quick. 

And I think all that's left, currently, is the order for the person who's getting the two baby chins from us.  Gotta get her cage shelved and the pan powder coated and all.  Well, the powdercoating place called today and said my pans are ready so I need to go there tomorrow and get those, and drop off this person's pan, and then in the meantime, shelf her cage and get the rest of her stuff ready to go.  I'm aiming for being done with everything by the time her pan's ready, that way I can just call, say hey, everything's ready to go, and she can come pick everything up.  We'll see how that really goes.

Didn't do anything else as far as the used stuff today.  Still have more down there, need to wash some stuff and take pictures of some stuff and all that.  I spent some time sanding and rasping those cutout circles I have.  Meredith did all the small ones, but I have a huge bag full of the big ones, and I intend to include those in some of the toys that I plan on making (soon) and besides that, I would just prefer that they were sanded and out of the bag, out of the way, put off to the side somewhere, so I can concentrate on something else.  So I did that for awhile til Pandora ate my phone's battery and caused me to go back upstairs for the night.

Gave Pixie her nightly prednisolone.  She doesn't mind it actually, she just nicely takes it.  If only the chins were so good about taking meds.   Funny, the vet said they gave me more than I needed incase I "missed" and looking back, I should have told them, if I can get a chin to take meds, any other animal is a piece of cake.  Pixie doesn't even move when I go to put the syringe in her mouth.  I can't tell if she's doing better or not.  Meredith was there with me today to see her, and she did have her feet under her, but then I still see her laying with her feet like splayed out, rather than my other guinea pig position of "caterpillar" with all the legs tucked under.  So it's still up for grabs how she's doing, so we'll see.  Keep her in your thoughts/prayers.  Haven't spent a ton of money yet, well, maybe $100-150 so far, but I don't plan to give up until I'm sure she won't recover.  Dr. Wan (I prefer Dr. Foster, but he wasn't in, drat) said that these kind of injuries can take a long time to heal, so it could take several shots, lots of oral medication, and so on.  But if that was the case, I would think we'd see some sort of progression on Pixie's part.  I'm rooting for her, who's with me???

The making of a run stand

The making of a run stand, or in this case, a run stand to hold a guinea pig cage.

Start with some 4x4's, cut to length.  For ours, these are 18" long.  Place a 2'x4' sheet of plywood on top.  Start screwing the plywood in, leg by leg, making sure the legs line up with the plywood.  In this picture, the plywood is mostly just resting on the legs, though there is one screw holding the closest leg to the plywood.

Add some more screws, and attach all your legs.

Want something on top of the plywood that's not quite so plywood-looking?  Here are our two pieces of fir wood, waiting to be put into place and screwed in.

Fir wood in place, four screws holding each piece in place.

To make the fir extra secure, flip it over, screw every 6 inches around the boards.

I seem to be missing the picture where the other board of plywood is attached, and the casters are attached to that.  

When it's not level... improvise!  There's probably at least 6+ washers under each of the four screws on the caster, to give it some extra height.

Final product.

Looks good!

One more thing

One quick thing before I dissapear downstairs for hours again.

My order from February -- came in the mail today!!!!

Been doing a lot lately...

So, been doing a lot lately.  Posting?  Not so much.  So to catch up...

We are now down to one adult rat, the fawn & white male, as well as Gumdrop, four of her original babies, and 10 new babies. 

As for chins, our mosaic male kit (Lilly's kit) is going to be going home along with our 3ish month old extra dark ebony boy, they will be going home with Kelly.  She wants the pan of her cage powdercoated, so I will be taking that in when I go to pick up my pans (likely tomorrow).  And her order is a huge order, like almost $600, so it'll take some tome.  Most of that is the chins, she has $325 in chins and then the cage with shelves (it's #17 on my page) is $170, and then just some other supplies.  So I need to get started on that.

Still have an order from August, so I am going to go downstairs and pack that up and try to get that out today.  It's like "order time" right now or something, got several in the last few days.  So Meredith was over here today, sanding down some wood pieces, while I cut out the pieces for some cottage hidey houses.  That's our most popular hidey house, I believe, and it's like we have I think at least four on order, and I have  none made.  So I cut out three of those and she worked on sanding stuff, so that was helpful.  Need to put those together... 

So, been moving MORE stuff around in the basement, got our one "wall" done with the new cages and new setup.  Well, almost, the one cage has nothing in it, no fleece, no shelves, no nothing, and the pans for that cage are the ones I need to pick up from the powdercoating place tomorrow... but there's no reason (short of I-need-to-do-these-orders that that cage can't be finished soon).  And then, Shiloh's cage was completely cleaned and moved against that wall.  The QC Mansion is still pulled forward on another table.  I'm still debating about actually taking out all the shelves to clean them, but it does appear that I will at least need to loosen the bolts so that I can get all the poos and crud that have wedged themselves between the shelf and the cage out.  Then, just need to clean the shelves, install poo guards, and that cage can go on that wall as well.  And that will complete the back wall. 

I made the stand for the new guinea pig cage.  Like the last one, it didn't want to cooperate, and so one caster had to be propped lower than the rest to even out the table.

Came up with some new toy ideas with Meredith, will have to see how those pan out when we actually try them. 

Let's see, what else have I been doing.  Oh!  I went through just about everything we own downstairs and decided what we're keeping versus selling.  Been adding the "used" stuff to both our Word doc Supplies for Sale as well as to the webstore.  So if anyone needs any extra food bowls or water bottles or some odd stuff like wheels for rats/gerbils/etc, there's stuff up there.  And there will be more stuff, as I get to cleaning more of the stuff and get it all listed.  I will not be sad to see this stuff go, I never quite realized just how much junk we have that we don't use!  I mean, some stuff we're hanging onto, like I have my stuff for Aries's (hamster) playtime, and I have the litter pans for the rabbits, and some igloos for the guinea pigs and all that... but definitely lightening the load for the stuff that we really don't need.  So now it's mostly just like washing stuff and getting it ready and all.  Fun fun. 

Oh and I cleaned off the table where Aries' cage is, so I will have the room to use it as my work-table again.  And now that the guinea pig cage is off of the floor (it was under the work table) I will actually be able to pull a chair up to the table and do things!  I know, amazing.

I still need to work on the liners for the guinea pig cage, so they're not set to go in it yet (it is divided, Pixie will have her own section), but soon.

Well, I sent the table pics from my phone to my email, and it's taking forever, so I'll post later with an update of what else has gotten done, along with the table pics.

Toodles for now.

Phone call

So I get a phone call today from someone inquiring about chin supplies.  After playing phone tag for awhile, I finally got ahold of her.  She wanted a chinchilla wheel, and I explained that the wheels we have, even though they're 12", are too small for chins and will curve their spine.  So she asked about water bottles, and I said that we had some used ones and some glass new ones.  And so she wanted to know how the glass ones hooked on, and I told her.  Then she asked me if I had any plastic igloos for chinchillas.  So I told her, plastic is bad for chins, you should really get a wooden hidey house, and I said that we had some of those if she was interested.  Then she asks if I have one of those plastic dust bath houses, and I explain that we don't have any of the houses (which I now realize, yes, we do, we have one purple one), but I tell her we have this dust house that IS a dust house, it's just not the house-shaped one.

So, then she asks why I have all this stuff for sale and I explain, we're a chin rescue, so we sell the stuff we use and the stuff and so on so forth.  So she wants to ask me a question -- tells me she just got two 3 month old chins, and male and a female.  They get along fine (well of course), but she's worried about the male getting the female pregnant, and she wanted to know if that would be problematic if she did get pregnant.  So I told her it would be, and I told her that we had some 5 month old females come in that were pregnant, the one died, the one ended up having to undergo a spay, died later, and these were chins that were 2 months older when they got pregnant, than her female.  And so she was like "oh," and I told her, normally you'd put chins together for breeding when they're a year old, not 3 months. 

So, of course, she said she'd decide if she wanted the stuff from us, and if she did, she'd call me back.  I'm sure I'll never hear from her.

But this is a perfect example of why people shouldn't get pets from the pet store -- they have no idea what supplies to get, what's safe or not, when to put chinchillas together (although, pet store chins should never be put together).  I bet you those chinchillas are getting gobs of raisins, the wrong type of food, and everything.  It's too bad not everyone does their research ahead of getting the pets, throwing them together, and hoping for the best.  That female could literally die if she gets pregnant.  While the lady must have thought that her getting pregnant at that age probably wasn't ideal, cause she did ask if there would be problems, the whole thing could have been solved by, oh, I dunno... NOT putting a male and female together at 3 months.

/end rant.

Stupid people

So, today's one of those days where I just keep running into idiots. 

The notable one was this:

I've been looking for rats for a very long time and I would love it if I could buy two of yours. I do, however, have one problem. I'm not sure how I would be able to receive the rats because I live in New Jersey and am not able to travel that far. Would mailing the rats be too stressful an ordeal for them? Or are you willing to travel? If neither of those things are possible, I totally understand.

Not, would mailing be too expensive?  Cause, see, that would be a logical question, as shipping rats would be like $250+ for $15 worth of rats.  No, would it be too stressful.  Yes, it would be too stressful to mail a pair of baby rats halfway across the country.

Then -- am I willing to travel?  Oh yeah, 15 hour drive to New Jersey?  No problem.  775 miles, my phone says.  Yeah, sure, for a $15 adoption fee, a 15 hour drive of 775 miles is TOTALLY doable. 

I think some people have lost their minds.

Today + Pixie

So, started out the day on a happy note (uh, yeah) by taking Pixie (gp) to the vet.  Turns out, she has a spinal cord injury, and they think that there is swelling which is causing her to not be able to move her back legs.  They asked if she'd been dropped recently, and I told them that this developed out of the blue, and they said well how bout in the last week?  Yes, she was.  And was fine for several days.  Turns out (and I didn't know this) that it can take several days to even a week for the swelling to get bad enough that the show signs of the trauma.  So I did this to my poor baby girl.

Anyway, the vet gave Pixie a shot of steroids, to hopefully bring down the swelling and help her regain use of her back legs.  We'll see how she does.  They said if no improvement by Fri/Sat bring her back in. So I've got my fingers crossed and will be praying, Meredith's praying, if you're reading this, it'd be awesome if you'd say a prayer for Pixie.

Then, went to the powder coating place to pick up my pans, cause they called and said they were ready.  Got there and I had brought more pans to do, and I had originally been thinking orange for all of them, but then I saw this pretty bright yellow, so I decided (with my mom's help, who I was texting and asking what she thought) that the bottom pan was going to be orange and the top pan was going to be the bright yellow.  That's for the zebra cage.  So, picked up the blue pans and left the others there.

Went to the feed store, picked up their last bag of LabDiet lab blocks for rats.  David said they'll be getting in Mazuri lab blocks for the rats, because LabDiet is discontinued (darn it, I liked that brand).  So after this bag it'll be Mazuri lab blocks.  Which is fine, rat people use that.  But you get used to something after so long, you know?

So, since 394 was backed up to all hell, I emailed the person I had set to come at 6 today and asked her if she could come later. See, that's the advantage of a smart phone in non-moving traffic.  You can change your plans.  So, got an email back that she could come a little later on, and so I had time to get home and get her stuff ready and all.  So Ember went to her new home today.  Very happy bout that. 

I tried to get Delilah intro'd to the other cage of girls, but Delilah was set on attacking them, so apparently it was ok for her and Daisy to get along, but she don't like other females.  So I took down the "she gets along with others" from our website, since she decided to be difficult.

As the world appears to have it out for me, our med. eb female (the 3-4 month old) started having loose poos.  So, I put her in a separate cage, gave her fresh water, fresh hay, fresh pellets, and some probiotics.  We'll see how it goes. 

Cages and more cages

So, had someone come over to look at the chins, we talked chins for awhile, she left.

Had some other people come over and adopt Juno and Buddy and got them a cage and a hammock so they should be good.

Then my rat-adoptive home came over and adopted a blue male and a black male.  Yaay.  I can stop griping about him not getting back to me now.

So, in the spare time in there, worked on homework, cleaned up some cages, and actually put the cage pictures up on my website.  I know, not very many chin cages, but hey, the quantity's something, right?  Anyway, more updates as to that later on.

So, Pixie (guinea pig) is looking like she needs to go to the vet, so we'll be there in the morning and see how that goes.

Anyway, back to griping -- you know that order from February?  The one that I still don't have?  Yeah.  So, I looked in my facebook messages cause I could've sworn that she'd told me a week, and surely that week had passed.  So, the relevant portion of her message from back then said "It will be this week."  Funny.  That was said on August 21.  As it is now September 4th, we are now at 15 days, which is two weeks.  Now, I understand this might be getting petty, she says a week, and it's not a week, but this is not the first time she has said "it will be this week" and then a week+ passes and I don't get the order.

So, patience is wearing thin, so my message back was this:

I hate to be a pest, but can I expect to get this order anytime soon? Every time I message you, you tell me it'll be "this week," and then something comes up, the week passes and more time passes and I'm still without my order. I'm fine with the money being refunded if that's what you'd like to do, but at this point, I'd either like to get that, or my order soon.

I feel like that's about as "nice" as I can muster up.  I know she "says" she sent the order way back when, but she was just so willing to remake it and send it now, that it makes me wonder if it was ever sent in the first place.  We have never had a package or mail get lost. Sure, we've had mail from the other side of IN take four weeks to get here, but it DOES get here, it just takes the long way around or something.  But a package from the beginning of the year, if it was really sent, I should've had by now.  And this isn't like a $5 order where she can just be like "oh I'll whip up another one," this is like a $90 order.  So even though the materials don't cost that much to make the items for the order, it seems a tad suspicious (to some friends/relatives anyway) that she'd be so willing to send out another order on my word that I never got the first one.

Don't get me wrong, I understand things come up.  I can't say I'm the quickest with every order, I have other things going on in my life, so even if I get your order ready, it may not go out for a few days, or I may have to find the right size box, or whatever, but I don't wait weeks upon weeks.  And if I do wait say a week and I get an email like "has my order gone out yet?" -- well, first, I refrain from pointing out that the order has to be paid for before it goes out (which it never is paid for at the point people send me that email) -- but more importantly, I literally take that order to the top of my list and get it done, get the person the final price (with shipping quote), and get it shipped out because I know that person is paying attention to how long it's taking.  Some poking and prodding may be necessary, but I do it upon the first poke.

This has got to be the 3rd or 4th poke in RECENT months, not counting the multiple emails that I sent between February and July -- none of which were ever responded to, might I add -- which have all resulted in "it'll be this week."

I have to say, I have some fleece items from this person and I do like their work.  I think it's great.  But after this... I am never buying from them again. 

Funny -- I log onto facebook and I have a message:

Give me until tomorrow and I'll have your package on the way.

I sincerely apologize...

When push comes to shove.    .... but.... we will see.  I will believe it when the package is on my doorstep.

The more people I deal with, the more I like my rescues.

So, the two female rats were adopted by the guy who came here today to look at them.  So, that other home who'd basically told me that they could "beat him here," was texted and I told her that they were adopted and asked if she was interested in any other rats.  Of course she wasn't.  Cause, you know, those two rats were the only two rats that were just perfect for her family.  I mean, yeah, the other rats look different and all, but they also asked about Buddy and Juno.  Why even ask if they weren't interested?  I mean the difference in age was 5-6 months versus 7-8 months, and male vs. female.  Buddy and Juno are even the BETTER pair of rats, though, I'm not sure I'd want them going to a home that cares more about beating the other homes here to get them.

Then, I had someone email about the baby rats, asking if we had any females left.  I thought I had changed all the ads, but I somehow forgot to change the PetFinder ad.  Actually, I'm banking my money on the "I changed it, but their site is ridiculously slow with updates, so it didn't appear changed."  Anyway, I emailed her within a few minutes, and said no, we're out of females, but we have males, and we have new babies that will be ready in a few weeks, blah blah blah.  Got a email like 5 minutes later saying she went to the humane society and got her some rats from there.  Really?  So, unless she lived like across the street, she literally had to like email me, go to the humane society, adopt the rats, and come back.  Cause I kid you not, all the emails were within 20 minutes of each other.  So asking her to wait 4 weeks for babies?  Heck, she couldn't wait 20 minutes for a return email.

Now, here's the odd one out.  Got an email asking if we adopted out Elena and Tseng, as the are no longer listed on our page.  Now..... do those rings name a bell?  No?  Are you sure?  Good, cause they shouldn't.  In the 9-10 years we've been doing this, we have never had an Elena or Tseng here.  I nicely emailed her back saying she must have the wrong rescue, but that we do have chins available if she's interested.

Ok, so remember how I was saying that rat guy has til the 4th to come adopt or put a deposit on the blue males?  Well, it's the second today, and I got an email from him saying "I will try Monday to stop by and see the little blue boys."  Gee, thanks for the specificity.  Ok, so, I probably told him that I expected to be home a lot of Monday, but people -- if I tell you that, that doesn't mean I'm going to sit home for 24 hours straight so you can pick and choose a time to come show up to see the pets.  This is not a pet store, we don't have "hours."  I say I'll be home all day so that you can pick a time, and I can make sure that I am home at that time that you have picked.  Other than that, even though I have said I "should be home most of the day," that does not guarantee I will be home if you show up at any time other than your specified time. 

So, I emailed him back saying that I don't expect to be home all day, so I need to know when he'd like to come.  I told him that I have someone coming at 5:30, so he can't come 4:30-6:30 (well, he could come 6:30, but the point is, he can't come at the same time as them -- that's how we had that chin stolen last time was that he un-knowingly distracted me while those people were stealing the chin.  Not this guy's fault, he was showing me an injury on one of my rats, but it just happened to be at the point when the cage was being opened, and he made me turn around.  So... nothing against him... but I am making my best sure that we don't have multiple people here at the same time, regardless of who they are.

So, I just got an email from him -- "maybe around 7."  Maybe??  I told him I'd mark him down, but I reiterated that if he doesn't show up tomorrow or Tuesday, the rats are back up for adoption.  I'm getting less and less patient with people with time.  Holds are max of two weeks with no deposit.  After that, you're shit outta luck, because most places won't hold AT ALL without a deposit.  It's one thing if the chin isn't ready to go -- sometimes we have people who want to be notified when the chin's ready to go, so I won't post the chin until I talk to them, but these are rats that other people HAVE WANTED and I have hung onto and this guy has dragged his feet for almost two weeks now, after he decided to not adopt Buddy and Juno because he wanted these more, and in short, he's pissing me off.  I marked him down.  We'll see if he shows up tomorrow.  

On a positive note -- we have someone interested in Ember, the person coming tomorrow night is coming to pick out rats (I don't think they specified male/female, just wanted same-sex pair so we'll see who they take -- I may try to push an adult pair), and then I just had someone else email about the babies.  Yay.

Not much new + mini rant

So, not much going on lately.  Other than the adoptions which I've been posting about, but not many interesting emails or anything really.  Ok, well I take that back.

Today, I got a text from someone asking about the two female rats that we have up for adoption.  I have someone coming tomorrow night to look at these females, and I told this person that.  So they were like, "well I can come today."  Excuse me?  This is not let's-see-who-can-make-it-to-Ashley's-house-the-quickest, this is a rescue.  That is practically synonymous with "no immediate gratification."  So I couldn't hold that one in, and I literally told her, hey, this isn't a race to get here, it's whoever tells me they're interested first gets to come and look at the rats first.  So, now she wants to know if the guy doesn't end up getting the rats.  Ok, can do.

Moving on.  I have my hammocks on sale right now.  So, I had someone contact me and say the want this one and this one and what will the price be.  So I stop reading right there and I'm ready to type $15 and then I notice the actual sentence is...

"I was just wondering what the pricing on those two would be, if there were any deals for buying a set, etc. Just let me know, thank you! "

Hate to be debbie downer, but it's like dude.  #1 -- They're ALREADY on sale, so you'd already be saving $2 (for two of them) off the regular price.  #2 -- You're only buying two.  Ask to buy 5+ hammocks, and we can talk multiple purchase discount.  #3 -- Just cause you're buying two hammocks with the same design does not automatically make it a "set" -- you simply like that pattern.  There is no discount because you happen to want two of the same hammock.

I do have more fleece available than what I currently have up on my fleece page.  I know, I probably shouldn't even say that.  [In all fairness, I haven't had the chance to sew the rest into hammocks, I'm working on listing cages and re-doing our set-up first]  But I am set on the idea that I want to sell down the old stock, which is why it's on sale and some of the hammocks are reduced even further than the $1 off.  I have no problem taking off more when it's like a quantity discount.  I have had people buy like 5 hammocks before and we can talk.  Or people buying lots of money's worth of chin supplies, I'll throw in samples and goodie bags and whatnot (I think about it when I'm packaging up these things -- if you're local and you've bought a lot, it tends to slip my mind -- feel free to bug me for some samples and freebies).   

And I usually do throw in something small, a toy or whatever, with the hammocks.  But like, ok, most people's hammocks online are $8 or $9.  I think the reason I picked $8.50 was because a lot of people had them for $9 and I wanted to be cheaper than the majority.  Ok, so, on sale, they're $7.50 -- some are even $6.50 or $5.50 for the less-than-perfect-size ones.  And I should lower it more?  How bout you suck it up and pay the SALE price?  This isn't a garage sale.  I take that back.  For items marked OBO this can be a garage sale.  [OBO sometimes happens with cages or used items that I just want GONE].  OBO does not happen with items like hammocks that do not take much room to store.  Sure, I want to sell out of the ones that I have like one or two of, but I'm not giving them away. 

I was just talking about something similar like this with someone the other day.  We were talking about a rat cage that I was selling later that day for $50.  I told them, I didn't pay $50 for the rat cage, I paid *mumble mumble*, but the thing was in pristine shape and was just perfect, practically looked straight-out-of-the-box.  The person I was talking to said this, and I never thought of it that way -- something along the lines of "you're saying them from having to purchase a cage new.  Maybe it's not dirt cheap, but if they had to buy it new it'd be $80.  So it's not $20, but if they had to buy it at the store, it'd be $80.  So it's still cheap-er."  Good point.  And the money made from donated cages or cages that I've found cheaper somewhere and can turn around and sell with shelves or additions or whatever... those help fund the rescue and help keep it up and running and all. 

Adoption fees aren't everything, that's why we sell supplies.  I have two rats, Buddy & Juno, up for adoption for $15.  Guess what, their vet visit and meds probably cost me $70-80.  Even with no vet bill, still had to feed em, care for em, change bedding, give em water, etc etc. 

In fact, that's why I decided to go through all my stuff and sell the cages that I don't need and go through the boxes and sell the stuff that's just taking up room in the boxes... cause something has to pay for the vet bills.  Supply sales have been good this year, I can't complain, but I've also added new FNs this year and that's cut into the rescue bank account.  There's still money there, no worries, but I like to keep it as far in the positive as I can.  I give people deals when I can, and I've even told people before, I'm not so much big on discounts, but I will gladly throw in more food or more hay.  But no, people always want something for nothing.  Doesn't matter if they want me to discount them $5 and I'm willing to give them 5 pounds of food for free, which would cost more than $5....

Ugh. 

On another note, do we all remember that person who has the blue rats on hold til the 4th?  Yeah, still haven't heard back.  Now come on, how hard is it to pick a day and come?  I mean, we've had people from farther away than them show up quicker than them.  And I'd venture to say that this person is retired, even.  But hey, if he's not in any rush to get them, they will go back up for adoption, and if they're snatched up before he can get here, then so be it.  The only reason Buddy & Juno were on hold for so long for this person was cause they had their medical issues that needed to be dealt with, and I was under the impression that they would be adopted once those issues had resolved.  Of course, in reality, then the babies came along....

Ugh.  People.

  

CLE day

So, I'm in Valpo today as moderator for a Family Law CLE.  Which means I had to hit play and make sure people sign in and I don't have to pay the $240-ish fee to attend (so many hours of CLE are required for licensed attorneys).  Anyway, the point is, everyone comes to these things and brings something else to do, myself included, so I have my netbook, planner, and all that fun stuff with me.  Hey, I can listen to it in the background and still pick it up, right?  In reality, we all get a binder with info about all of the (recorded) lectures, so I can always look over it later.  Will I?  Probably not, but I have it if I need it.

Onto chin stuff.  Yesterday was a pretty good day.  Without getting way more personal than necessary, I have an undiagnosed medical problem as of yet, and my specialist dr refused to give me pain meds, despite the fact that I couldn't sleep cause the pain kept waking me up, and I couldn't concentrate cause of the pain.  But my family doctor, who can see reason, squeezed me in yesterday and prescribed me a pain med, so I was actually able to function yesterday.  Always a plus.

So, I have this one order from someone I know on Facebook.  She wants a hidey house that can fit 5 chins, with some sort of food bowl on top.  Ok, so basically she wanted the hidey house to look like the cottage hidey house, only with an extra door on the opposite side of the normal door.  And she wanted the hidey house to be like 16 L x 10 D x 7.5 H.  So over the past few days I built that.  Then, she originally wanted a box with a circle cutout to hold a food bowl.  Well.... I only have two of those circle cutout drill attachments, and I paid like $35 for the larger one, and of course, that one was too large.  Since the attachments are a bit too expensive for me to just go buy the right size for a custom order (though, it's not a bad idea in this case), she said to just make a box for the food.  I had a picture of this wooden hay cube holder that I had custom-made for someone, and she liked that, so I went to building one of those.  But, I specifically made it the size where it can hold (relatively securely) the food bowl that she has.  So if she wants to use it with the bowl, she can.  If not, she can put the food directly into the box.  So, that was put together yesterday.  Still have to attach the food box to the top of the hidey house, and then I have to figure out how much this all is going to cost her, if she likes it.  What I usually do with custom orders is I put em next to one of our normal hidey houses and compare size, to get a general idea.  I've had custom houses go for $10 before, because they weren't very big or complicated.  I think this one currently will be bigger than even our Porthole Hidey House, but that'll be a starting point (we'll see how it compares) and we'll go from there.  I hope she likes it, I think it turned out pretty good. 

I had someone ask, a few day ago, if we offer boarding.  Well, I suppose we could.  I emailed her telling her as much.  Haven't heard back yet, I dunno if I will, but I put up a poll on the forum to get an idea of what the contract should say and what I should be charging and all that.  So we'll see.  Maybe I'll work on that contract today. 

Got an order on the 27th for a hidey house w/ hardware and two circular perches.  I have the stuff ready, just need to literally drill the holes for the hardware, attach the hardware to the circular perches, and go from there.  It's on my to-do list.

Currently working with two people to set up times for these people to come over and look at the rats, hoping those will get set soon.  Also hoping that Jim gets off his ass about coming to see/get the baby rats.  I try to be a tad less of an ass to our adoptive homes, but he said he was interested in these rats awhile back -- if he doesn't want them, surely someone else does, but he seems to not want to set a date.  He just keeps asking me what my availability is, and I tell him, then those days pass, and I email him again, and he asks what my availability is, and I tell him, and I never hear back.  And he's only about 30-45 mins from here.  We had someone come from Madison, WI, a 3+ hour drive, the other day.  Surely Jim can find the time to make the short drive and pick up his rats. Ok, so I looked up the email, I originally told him about the males on the 21st -- so I sent him an email saying that our 14 day hold (max) expires on September 4th, so if he hasn't come and adopted them by then, or hasn't given me a deposit to hold them, they will be back up for adoption.  Maybe that sounds a little mean and pushy, but I really feel like #1 - if he really wants them, he needs to make more of an effort to get here over simply asking what my schedule is and not getting back to me and #2 - I am getting sick of being stepped on and taken advantage of.  Most rescues won't hold anything without a deposit, so two weeks is like unheard of.  I'm being nice already, and people are dragging their feet.  I don't even mind if the pickup date is set for two months from now -- if it's set, then we're good, but no pickup date and no emails or anything, I can't hold em forever.

**update -- looked at my email right before I hit "publish" -- I have an email from Jim asking, "when are you available?"   *facepalm*  History is repeating itself.  Well, I did tell him though.  He's got til the 4th

So, as for yesterday... other than building the hidey house, it was cleaning & organizing time.  I went through my lidded basket that holds the stuff for the "other animals" -- the non-chin stuff.  Found a thing or two that can go into the "sale" pile.  Also went through everything under my supply table, that stuff all pretty much stays under there, so that part was ok.  Had to make up some more rat food.

The people who bought one of the baby rats yesterday bought 5 pounds of lab blocks, which pretty much cleared me out of those.  So I'll need to go pick some of those up.  They also bought this one wheel that we have had like forever, so that's one less thing for me to need to sell.  Still haven't gone through the water bottles or feed bowls boxes, but I need to actually clean all the excess food bowls and water bottles so I have all of them together to look through.  I also believe I have a box with some small animal wheels and shelves for some of the small animal cages and all that... need to find that and put that in the pile of stuff to be sold. 

Cleaned a ton of cages out yesterday.  Today was trash day, so Thursday is always a good time to clean cages.  Cleaned out the gp cage, cleaned all the runs, all the rat cages.  Jessie's eyes FINALLY look healthy, so she got her collar back on and went back into the run. 

Buddy and Juno appear fully healed and were listed up for adoption.  Marshmallow & Oreo also appear good to go.  I think we found out the problem with Marshmallow's biting -- she doesn't like people reaching down from above her.    For the most part, she's fine if you're trying to scoop her up with your hands around her belly, but picking her up from above?  Not a good idea.,

Also put up the ad for Psycho.  Mentioned no small kids, quiet home.  Hopefully find a good home for her.  It'll just take a little more time, as so many people have loud homes with kids.  Nothing wrong with that, but that's just not the home for her. 

Renewed and updated the other ads I have for the critters so those are all up to date.

Need to weigh the chins again for their bi-monthly weigh in.

My waiting list is really pissing me off right now.  If you want to be on it, at least have the decency to get back to me when I email you.  If you were added to the list 6 months ago, and you already got a chin, I totally understand.  But if I marked you on the list less than 60 days ago, I don't feel it's too much to ask for you to email me back and let me know that a) you already got a chin, b) you can't get a chin right now, c) you don't want the specific chin I've told you about, or d) whatever else.  It's an email.  Being put on the waiting list doesn't mean you have to buy/adopt the chin when I get to you, it just means that you have first crack at the chin you specify you want when I have that chin.  But to me, that also means that there should be the common courtesy that if I email and say, hey, got the chin you wanted!, you can at least email back and tell me "not right now" or whatever the case may be.

• I had someone on my list who wanted a 2-3 year old rescue.  Never heard back from the initial email.  
• Had someone who wanted two chins, preferably babies or younger chins.  She replied to my email, said she was interested and wanted the chins.  When I asked for the adoption form to be filled out, she said she already had.  Did not have it, so I told her so and asked her to email me with it.  5 days passed, I sent the 2-day notice, never heard back.
• Had someone who wanted a white male that was good with other chins.  Never heard back from the initial email.
• Had someone who wanted a baby white female.  Responded saying they are not currently in the position to get a chin, but they will let me know when they are.  <----------- this is the CORRECT result
• Currently emailed someone who said she was interested in a baby, preferably bv, but would take standard or mosaic.  Emailed a day or so ago... haven't heard back yet.  She still has time though. 

So, I think in the future, to get on our waiting list, I'm going to require a phone number as well as email.  Because I know in the past, some of my emails have gone to spam and so people may not actually received them (I acknowledge that not everyone is like me and combs their spam folder for adoption emails), but if I can leave a message or talk with a person, I feel like that's more reliable.

So, I think that's it for now.  Only like 4-5 hours to go.

Free time

Got some free time as my schedule got all twisted around today, so I'm posting.

Already had a rat adopted today -- our last baby female rat went to her new home.

And in other news.... remember the male rat that was brought to us when someone found him outside?  He unfortunately passed away yesterday, after only being here seven days.  Though at least, he had a warm bed/hammock, all the food he could want, water, and love at the end.  We named him Rascal.  RIP Rascal.  Some pics of him:

Someone asked awhile back about the "salads" that we feed our fluffballs (the guinea pigs and rabbits, NOT the chins).

Those have romaine, kale, cilantro, and carrots.  Yum yum.

Got back two of the pans we had powdercoated a nice bright green.

...and in the cage:

Love how it looks.

Currently, I have the blue pans at the powdercoating place.  Have the cage all ready for those pans:

... and I think that's it for right now.

Good last few days

Its' been a good last few days.  Lots of adoptions.  This is going to be short cause I don't feel too super right now.

On 8/25, Honey went home.

On 8/26, Spots and Princess AND four baby rats went to their new home.

On 8/27, three baby rats went to their new home.

Also on 8/27, we had Morgan and Chris drive all the way here from Madison, WI, to pick up two female rat babies.

The "other news" stuff will be posted tomorrow.

Buddy and Juno

... and no, his wife would kill him if he got another cage.  So Buddy and Juno are going back up for adoption once Buddy's last little bit completely heals.  Go figure. 

Good day, but some people need their heads bashed in.

I know, contradictory title.

Good day for the rats, because we adopted out two female babies to one person and three female babies to another.  The people who got the two babies came all the way from Madison, WI!  That's like at least a three hour drive for $15 worth of rats.  Very nice people. 

Anyway, as for the idiots....  everyone on my waiting list right now is turning out to be flakes, and other people with my critters on hold are pissing me off.  Let me explain.  I have one person on my waiting list, been there since 7/15.  So, not very long.  Not like the people who've been on the list for 6 months and give up waiting.  So, she wanted a pair of females, young ones, ideally she said both babies, but one could be an older one (less than 1 year), the other could be a baby.  So, I had emailed her about this med. ebony female that we have that's about 3 months old, and a standard female we have that's about 9 months old.  They're caged together, get along great, both rescues so they're cheaper than if she was getting pedigreed chins of that age.  So, I emailed her on 8/20.  She emailed me back 8/21 and asked for pictures, so I sent those and told her I needed her to complete an adoption form.  So she emailed back saying that she already did.  Well, I looked in my chin email folder, no attachments on any of her previous emails, and then I looked in my actual manila file folder and no adoption form for her in their either.  I didn't think there would be, but just in case she was right and I was wrong (hey, it's happened before), I checked.  But no, I didn't have it.  So I told her I didn't have it, and I told her that even though she did it, I needed her to re-send it because I didn't have it.  So, of course, I don't hear from her for several days, so yesterday, 8/26, I email her saying, hey, it's been 5 days, this is your 2-day notice, if I don't hear back, you lose your hold on these chins and you lose your spot on our waiting list.  So, she has til the end of the day tomorrow (Tuesday) to email me back, or else these chins go back up for adoption or to the next person on the list.  I don't anticipate hearing back, but you never know.

So, then for the white male chin.  Didn't think that I'd hear back from that person, considering he couldn't even be bothered to email me back to tell me if he wanted an adult or a baby, but since I had told him I'd put him on the waiting list, I thought I'd email him.  Well, today was day 5 so I sent him the 2-day notice.  So he has til the end of the day on 8/29 (Wednesday) to get back to me, or else the boy goes to the next person on the waiting list. 

Then.  Ok, I didn't expect the first one to be flakey, I sort of expected the second one, but this next thing is what really got me p.o.'d.  So, our one adoptive home, someone who will remain nameless, but who has adopted several rats from us in the past, had put Juno and Buddy on hold for them.  However, they needed to be cured of their skin condition first, so this person was basically waiting for them to heal so that nothing would be spread to their rats.  Fair enough.  Well anyway, so they were on my waiting list for a blue dumbo rat (which I had sworn, we'd never get in).  Well, hell must've frozen over cause two of the babies we got in the other week were blue dumbos.  So, I emailed him and let him know.  Well, now I'm feeling like that was the stupid thing to do, because when I emailed him today asking when he wants to come look at the rats, I asked him if he's still interested in Buddy and Juno, and he was like "I'd much rather have the blue dumbos."  *yanks hair out*  Really?  Cause I have a gazillion people wanting to adopt a pair of year-old males, versus the babies which I can adopt out like candy, and he would "rather have the babies?"  Like I wanted to be like, "um excuse me?  you already put the adults on hold, and I wouldn't be holding them for you, and I wouldn't have TOLD YOU about the blue dumbos if I thought it meant you were sticking me with the adults."  Now, don't get me wrong, Buddy and Juno are very sweet.  But ugh.  Just pisses me off. 

So I said something to the tune of, when they're healthy, I'll put them back up for adoption.  So he then emailed me and said "Really hate to see Juno and Buddy go to someone else, I need more room!"  So... it's like ok, do you want them or not?  So I emailed him and asked him, well, what does he want to do with them?  Cause if it's a cage he needs, (and he's willing to drive faaaaaaar for cages), I linked him a critter nation in the South Bend area, but if he doesn't have room for another cage, then he needs to let me know, because I have too many critters on hold for people who aren't sure whether or not they want them.

AND this guy has been aggravating me lately.  Ok, the people from Madison were able to pick up and drive here today, and that's like a 3 hour+ drive.  He's like 30 minutes away and the stinker will tell me he wants to come one day, and says he'll call, and then never does, and then say maybe the weekend, and then never calls, and so on and so forth.  And when he doesn't call, if I don't email him to ask, ok, when next would you like to come? I wonder how long it would take him.  I mean, don't get me wrong, this guy is a great home for rats but he's wearing down my patience for him.

But let's end this on a positive note -- we have one remaining female baby.  The people who want to adopt her are hoping to come this Wed/Thurs morning to pick her up.  Then I will just have Gumdrop (mom) as the only female out of this most recent group to come in.  And Gumdrop is very likely pregnant so we will soon have MORE babies up for adoption.

Day 1 of the Re-arrange

So, today was the first day of re-arranging the set-up.  I've been talking about it forever but today I actually started.  So, I put all the shelving back in the pink zebra cage, and decided Toby can have it.  For anyone who knows my gay chin, it fits Toby perfectly.  He loves it.  So I did that, got that cage setup, put him in there. 

Then decided that since I have the pans ready for Winx's CN, I should do that next.  To avoid the problem I had with the other cage (which was forgetting where all the shelves went), I removed the chins and glued on the poo-guards while the shelves were still attached.  See, smart.  So Winx and his little buddy are cramped in a run right now, and so that Myshkin wouldn't get any ideas, I closed him in with one of his females.  So now I have two angry males.  Ah well.  The shelves need time to dry and when I go down there next, Winx and the baby can have their cage back.

I was going to start on my pink white fluffball's cage... I had actually closed of the top and was going to do the poo guards for the bottom shelves... but then I realized it was like almost 11 at night, and you can hear the saw outside the house, so it would probably have woken people up.  So that's for tomorrow. 

So, since I moved Toby into his FN, I was able to remove his double cage.  With that removed, I scooted down all the other cages and just moved one of the small ones to a side table and I was able to pull away one of the 8? 10? feet tables.  That table is my dad's and he is getting it back.  So in it's place went Winx's CN and Toby's FN, and next will go the other three FN's when I get them poo-guarded. 

Went through a lot of the stuff that was under the tables in the boxes.  Put some of it on the shelves under the cages.  Can't say I love the way that looks, but I lose all my under-the-table space by replacing the table'd cages with FN/CNs, so the stuff has to go somewhere.  The remaining stuff I semi-organized, but going through it all is for another day.  I went through everything on the bottom shelf of my run-stand and now there's different stuff there than there was before.  I need to go through my two plastic chests-of-drawers cause I know there's junk in those that can either be sold or that I don't need. 

Now that I'm actually moving all of this stuff... I don't know where I think my tables of cages are going to go.  The four FNs/CN are going to take up most of the wall, I doubt there'll be room for a 6' table (all mine are 6' -- the family is getting back all their tables) next to the 5... well, I guess this just means we will not be taking in a gazillion and one pets.  Not a bad thing, the less pets, the more time each gets, and we will still have spare cages, but I can definitely part with a few more once I get all the FNs up and running.  So far, only have three, the fourth is sitting on the side waiting for me to sit down (er, well...) and put the fleece accessories in, and the fifth has no shelves or anything so that'll be a whole project in itself.  Though at least for that one I will poo-guard the shelves BEFORE I put them in the cage. 

So the other liners we have... one is a tie dye blue, the other is zebra print.  I'm still waiting for my leopard print to come in (from February... hate to say it, but it's one excuse after another... "oh it'll be done this week..." when I don't get it "oh I was sick in bed all week."  The latest thing I've been told is that she had a stroke and was just getting back to using her body... now, don't get me wrong, I have no doubt that these things could be happening... but this is someone relatively around my age, who posts on her facebook page every couple of days.  So I'm a bit iffy.  And I really do want my leopard print set, but I figure I'll just have to keep bugging along.... this was $90 worth of stuff, I'm not just going to forget about it.

But anyway... so with the two pink cages, the powdercoating place only had this fleshy pink which I was not crazy about (it was an eww color) so those pans are black.  I got the pans for the tan/blue/green striped cage done in a bright grassy green.  For the blue liners, obviously a blue pan.  I'm debating what to do for the zebra cage though.  I mean, it's not costing me any more to get a pretty color versus black, so I may just pick a fun color and have the pans be like a neon orange or something.  I dunno.  Maybe I'll bring my mom with me so I don't pick something too nuts, but I like the color aspect of it, and with the liners being white and black, I think I can add some color to that cage. 

That may be it for now.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to move Winx and his buddy back into their cage, move miss-crabby-pants into that run, do the poo guards for her cage, and maybe get started on the one FN that has the shelves and just needs the fleece stuff put in.  We'll see what else goes on tomorrow, got two supply pickups.