Oh, Look, A Post About Cats (Or, Why I Truly Have The Greatest Job In The World)

It’s hard to imagine loving one’s part-time job. Now, while I’ve never really had a job that I’ve loathed, jobs offered to students are typically not the most glamorous, nor high-paying. Since the age of fifteen, I’ve worked almost exclusively in the food service industry; from waitressing to prepping food to scooping ice cream. Last winter, after starting (again) my first year of university, I found myself working at the Montreal SPCA, and it is by far the most amazing job I’ve ever had.

YOU GET A CAT! YOU GET A CAT! EVERYBODY GETS A CAT!

I would never try to convince anyone it’s an easy job, though I would argue I work in the easiest department in the building: animal placement. As an adoption counselor (and occasional substitute foster family counselor), I have the pleasure of seeing the animals leave. As I’ve said to many adopters and potential adopters over the past year: I love these animals so much, I never want to see them again. There is an overwhelming feeling of love and satisfaction that comes with waving at an animal as it leaves the shelter. While I have of course cried tears of joy on many occasions, I have also cried tears of sadness as well.

The first time I cried was the third week of my employment. It was also the first time I experienced the dreaded retour d’adoption. Maya was a beautiful nine-month-old husky. Her fur was a beautiful rust color, with wisps of dark brown and grey. I can hardly remember the reason she was abandoned at the shelter in the first place, but I do remember that she was adopted and returned twice after that before she finally found a suitable home. She, like many nine-month-old huskies (and frankly, most nine-month-old dogs), had an insane amount of energy. She was also incredibly strong and had an incredible lack of training. She was one of the first dogs I took out of a cage on my own. I had burst blood vessels in my hand and wrist from how much that sweet girl pulled on the leash (now, of course, I never wrap my leash around my wrist. Rookie mistake.). When I came in for my shift and saw her in her cage once again, I broke down crying. I slipped out to the bathroom to compose myself. Then something happened. A spark was lit in me, one that has yet to go out. No, more than a spark: a blazing fire. A blazing fire of fierce love for the animals under my care. A fierce need to protect them at all costs. I remember how strict (and, in retrospect, borderline aggressive) I was with the family that ended up adopting Maya. Happily, like many other cases, they were the perfect fit for her. I think about her sometimes, and I hope she’s having lots of fun hanging out in the suburbs and spending the weekends at Grandma’s farm in Ontario.

Sadly, not all the animals I fall in love with get a happy ending. While I’d like to think my memories are filled mostly with these happy stories, they’re not. On bad days, I remember the heartbreakers. I remember cats being brought it after having been thrown from third-storey balconies. I remember dogs with separation anxiety being brought back too many times to count, and making their trip to the Elysian Fields far too soon (miss you, Pongo). I remember all the victims of shelter life. I remember all the victims of ignorance who died of circumstance.

A beautiful cat who was recently adopted from the Montreal SPCA. This was one of the few good pictures I could get of her, because she kept rubbing her chin against the lens of my camera.

I ACTUALLY WROTE A POEM ABOUT THIS FOR CLASS ONCE

Because that’s truly what shelter animals are: victims of ignorance. Fourteen thousand is the annual average of animals brought in to the Montreal SPCA. Yes, a fair number of those animals (more specifically, cats) might have been born outside, and bringing them to us was an act of kindness on the part of the public. But too many of those fourteen thousand animals were brought in because they were unclean, too big, too small, too loud, too old. As a (sadly, soon-to-be former) colleague of mine put it, animal shelters are a big hole in to which people dump their responsibilities.

As I mentioned above, I have seen the worst of humanity in their treatment of animals. Puppy mills, hoarders; animals beaten and burned and shot. But the thing is, they’re not the majority of the people whose animals end up in our care. While we do have at any given moment hundreds of active inspection cases, the vast majority of animals are brought to the shelter because people are simple uniformed. They think declawing a cat is a solution to its scratching problems. They believe putting a choke collar or a prong collar around its neck is the most efficient (and only) way to train their big, strong dog. They think letting a husky puppy run around the yard for thirty minutes a day is enough exercise (and then wonder why she starts biting people). These are not malicious people. These are people who truly love their animals. These people are simply uneducated. They get their animals from pet stores and (now more than ever) the internet, with no knowledge of what they are getting in to. Some might believe they are getting their dogs from breeders, only to be purchasing from puppy mills. On sites like Kijiji, animals are given and traded like Pokémon cards, all to make a quick buck.

Many of the animals in shelters do not die of disease. They die of circumstance. Circumstance of breed (3000 pitbulls are put down in shelters in the States every year), circumstance of age, circumstance of timing. Their owners get sick or get divorced or move, or simply do not have the time to take care of them (though they did have the time to buy them in the first place, but that’s an argument for another day). If these cats and dogs had lived in different circumstances, they would have died in different circumstances too. Hopefully, circumstances in a very distant future.

KNOWLEDGE IS STILL POWER

I think, for me, that’s the most frustrating part of my job: dealing with the ignorance. There are a lot of people happy and open to learn about what they don’t know. However, there are equally as many people on the other side of the spectrum who refuse to listen. I sometimes think it might have to do with the age and gender of our counselors (all females in their twenties), but often wonder if it’s something else. Why would one not be open to not declawing one’s cat if statistical evidence is being presented that suggests it’s a terrible idea? Why would one nod along in agreement with recommendations on positive reinforcement training, then go home and put a choker around their dog’s neck (and bring the dog back when it starts developing behaviour problems)? And, the one that baffles me most: why would one lie about having children just to have that dog? Why would one put one’s children at risk like that?

I REALLY DO TRY TO GIVE PEOPLE THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT, I SWEAR

It’s really hard not to judge people, doing the job I do. I’m naturally quite a pessimistic person. I don’t know if that’s just the way I’m wired, or if it’s something that’s developed over time, but that’s how I am. I always try to be cheery with clients at work, or at the absolute worse, passive-aggressive. It becomes more difficult, however, when faced with complete and utter lack of empathy. People believe that we just want to give animals away. As a kill shelter (God, I hate that term), we do prioritize placing the animals above all else, but we still have to maintain a certain level of strictness. We are, after all, not just an animal shelter, but the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. We have a duty to these animals. We are their voice, and we have to, above all else, represent their needs.

In Quebec, animals are seen as objects. Legally, they have no rights. This is why, unless the SPCA gets involved, the government does nothing to stop puppy mills or animal hoarding, and little to no jail time is given to perpetrators of animal cruelty. I think a lot of people who come into shelters don’t realize that that is the reality we as shelter workers face every day: utter powerlessness. We work in a system bound by legal and financial constrains, where ethics are often set aside. This is the reality of our world, and every day, little by little, we beat against a brick wall trying to fight it.

Pictures from the really cool photo booth we had at our annual Christmas party (December 2014). These are just a few of my amazing, hard-working, passionate coworkers that I have the privilege to call my friends.

I think, at the end of the day, we are all victims of circumstance. The veterinarians and vet technicians who work at the Montreal SPCA do not enjoy putting animals down. No employee looks at our euthanasia rate and is happy with it. Every day, we fight a system that is (currently) designed for us to lose. Now, I know that we will never live in a world where ethics and morality will be more important than money or legalities. I know, like all things, animal welfare is not black and white. There is never a simple solution to anything. There are so many grey areas, and like all things, we have to pick our battles. The world will never stop relying on industrial farming; it’s just not realistic. Vegetarianism and veganism are not rights; they are privileges. There aren’t “two kinds of people in this world”. Nothing is ever that simple. Animal shelters are not ASPCA commercials. Not every shelter animal was abused or neglected. Ethics is not empirically more important than legalities, or vice versa. I think, however, there is one thing we could all agree on: people should always try to be good and kind, to all species. Be kind to animals, be kind to shelter employees, be kind to your neighbours, and be kind to your enemies. If we kill ‘em with kindness, maybe one day, that’s all the killing that will be done.

"To Catch A Predator" Is Not Real Life (or, How Internet Friends Are Indeed "Real" Friends)

When I was a kid, I was allotted one hour a day of computer activity. Oh, you read right: one hour. Those were the days when school assignments did not require a computer to be done (oh, what simpler times they were. I actually remember a time before Google. The computers at school’s default search engine was Ask Geeves. I mean who the hell is gonna trust a search engine that sounds like it was named after a butler? Everyone knows it’s always the butler that did it. Who’s gonna trust a murderer, am I right?). I mostly used that hour to play the Sims (the first one, I’m that old) and sneak onto MSN Messenger (like Facebook Messenger, but way cooler. Who remembers the giant annoying buzzing animations?), which was, when I was in elementary school, forbidden. I never knew the exact reason why my parents did not want me going on MSN Messenger as a kid, but I assumed that it was because they thought that’s where the predators were.

My parents are not like most: they both have degrees in Computer Science, and have pretty much always known more about computers than I do. Growing up in the beginnings of the Internet Age made my situation relatively unique amongst my peers; even in high school, most of my friends were vastly more technologically savvy than their parents. And this was before the emergence of the smart phone (I knew one person in high school who had an iPhone; all my friends’ cell phones had real keyboards and were often *gasp* flip phones). 

I truly “discovered” the internet when I got my first laptop. I bought it at the end of the summer of 2007, after working my very first job at a reception hall, waiting and cleaning tables for weddings. Some time after that, I discovered the wonderful world of FanFiction, where I reignited the love of writing I had developed in Mrs. Krupp’s sixth grade English class. I mainly wrote fics for Bones and Hannah Montana (if you want to mock me for the latter, please see my previous post. I’ll wait. Oh, feel silly now, do yah? Good.), but read fics for pretty much all my favourite fandoms. Then I discovered YouTube.

ENOUGH BACKSTORY: ON TO THE MR. FEENY-STYLE LESSON!

YouTube was what my Advanced Fiction Workshop professor would call my “crisis”: the event that breaks the main character(s) away from their normal lives and starts the story. My teenage years, as explained in my last post, were a very dark time for me. It was on YouTube, making fan videos and discussing my favourite shows with complete strangers, that I found my solace from the darkness of my everyday life. These complete strangers, however, quickly became my closest friends.

For someone who lives more in “real life” than on the internet, it’s hard to explain how people from different time zones, countries or even continents could be considered my friends. It’s not that I didn’t have friends at school. I had a sufficient amount of school chums. But there was something very freeing about the virtual world: while these people were flesh and blood humans somewhere else, I didn’t have to deal with looking into their eyes when I talked to them. And strangely, that lack of physical presence gave me a lot more confidence to be myself. 

I once told my best friend that I felt more comfortable talking to my internet friends about certain things than I did with her. Years later, I found out that it had genuinely hurt her that I had felt that way. It occurred to me recently how truly hurtful that was to say to someone who didn’t understand my point of view. I loved my best friend, and still do, but she has always been an incredibly social person who has never had any trouble making friends or engaging in conversations with total strangers. (Example: when we went to Orlando for my 21^st birthday, I lost sight of her in a Starbucks, only to turn around to find her chatting with probably the only French-speaking person in the entire mall. That’s the kind of person she is.) I have always been uncomfortable around people. I often say: I don’t make friends, friends make me. I also have always had trouble with words (in the talking sense, obviously not in the writing sense *pats self on back*).  Telling my best friend that I would rather talk to whom she deemed to be complete strangers was, and remains, a really shitty thing to say. Even though at the time, it was the honest truth.

VIRTUAL PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE TOO

The term “real life” is thrown around a lot in contrast when talking about the Internet world. This has always driven me bonkers. The people I talked to on the Internet were just as real as I was: they had faces and hair and insecurities and homework and feet and all that good stuff. They too had problems with talking to people “in real life”. And no, while I have not met most of them in the flesh, that does not lessen their impact on my life. They were an audience for my thoughts and feelings, as well as for my creativity. My internet peeps were my first ever audience for my writing. Until I started university and was basically forced to let other people read my stories, I couldn’t bear the very thought of it. I wrote a story for a school project in college and had to literally leave the house when I finally let my mom read it. I owe what shred of self-confidence I had as a teenager to that wonderful online community of friends. We shared common interests without the fear of ridicule. 

One of my best friends, Vickie, and I on our first vacation together (Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic). We met first on Twitter five years ago. Guess what? She has (so far) shown no signs of being a sexual predator and/or not a "real" person.

GOOD NEWS: NO ONE HAS YET TO TURN OUT TO BE A PREDATOR

Now, I’m sure there’s a whole subset of the internet that is riddled with sexual predators (I’ve seen that episode of Law & Order: SVU), but maybe it’s ‘cause I’m too old for them now, but I’ve yet to “befriend” any of them. While it’s a valid fear for parents to have, I think it’s no longer the primary problem that their kids might face on the internet. I was raised in a time where internet was new and unknown to a lot of people, and Dateline NBC and America’s Most Wanted showed us a pretty ugly side of this new-fangled thingamajig called the World Wide Web. Nowadays (God, I’m making myself sound so old), everyone from a very young age has internet access at their fingertips. The concept of “cyber bullying” did not exist during my childhood, and now it’s a major problem in schools across the world. The anonymity of the web can be used in a really, truly cruel way.

But guess what? It can also be a really, truly awesome thing.

I have gone shopping and gone to the movies with my internet friends. I have gone to dinner and to concerts and even gone on vacation with my internet friends. I have crossed the border to have a sleepover with my internet friends, and spent a wonderful weekend playing video games and telling my internet friends’ parents all about being Canadian. I have gone to my internet friends’ school plays and had them sleep over at my house. I’ve even accidentally set up my internet friends with my school friends. They are real people to me, and not for a second did I ever doubt that they were, and still are, a part of my real life. They impacted my real life in a real way, and that feels pretty damn real to me.

All I Need Are Cats Now (or, Why Teenage Girls Are Awesome)

I know, I know. Teenagers are the worst. I myself refer to them on a daily basis as hooligans. There’s a middle school behind my house, so I see their punkass little faces every day. I also used to work at an ice cream shop near said middle school. Trust me, teenagers, both male and female, are the worst.

But if you really think about it, teenage girls are actually pretty amazing. 

I WAS A SAD TEENAGER ONCE

One could argue that the level of sadness I felt as a teenager was slightly high for the average teenage girl, but the fact that I never thought so was a major problem. It took me seven years of deep emotional troubles before I sought professional help. This was because I thought it was normal to feel worthless as a teenage girl. I honestly believed I was supposed to be moody and insecure. This is what television, film, and dare I say it, books had taught me.

 

Little old me in August of `03 (11 years old), with one of my aunt's 368 badass collies, Hank (RIP, big guy). Oh, how simple of a time it was, when a girl could be obsessed with dolphins (I still have that shirt) and wear really high white sports socks and love herself still.

WHY IS MY UTERUS SO HORRIBLE?

Oh, I know; the “blaming mass media” argument again. But it’s true. There’s this generalized idea of what a teenage girl is in our culture as a whole. Last summer, Always released this amazing video PSA called #LikeAGirl, where they asked several young people to depict what running, throwing, etc “like a girl” looks like. It’s interesting to me how we use comparisons to girls as insults.

In my first year of CEGEP (if you don’t know what that means, click the link), I took my very first women’s studies class. It was an introductory class on feminism. While the teacher had a generally much more radical view of the world than I did, it was then that I first fell in love with the concept of being a woman. One of our assigned readings was Full-Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti. Here’s a glimpse into its genius (this is just from chapter one):

“What’s the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don’t hold back now. You’re probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank. Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I’ve even heard the term “mangina”. Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Now tell me that’s not royally fucked up.”

It’s interesting how being a “man” is considered a compliment, but acting “like a girl” is an insult across the board. Notice also that we don’t really use the word “woman” as an insult. We focus on demonizing young women. And as Jessica Valenti says, it’s royally fucked up.

I AM A RECOVERING TEENAGE GIRL

In the Always ad I mentioned earlier, they asked those same questions to pre-pubescent girls, all of whom ran, kicked, fought and hit at full force, completely care-free. Yet girls just a few years older depicted the stereotype of the flailing, high-maintenance shallow girl. I’m still baffled by what a few years can do to one’s perception of the world, of others and of oneself.  Being a teenage girl really sucks. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

 Speaking of the Always brand...Oh, yes, I am about to talk about periods. Boys, avert your eyes. 

Ain’t nothin’ more terrifying than basic biological functions. 

Somewhere around thirteen years old, your uterus decides it’s gonna give you the option to grow a baby, if you want to. Now, if you don’t want to, as (hopefully) most thirteen-year-olds do, said uterus is gonna reward you with monthly bloody discharge and terrible cramps. ‘Cause nothing motivates a girl more into not becoming a teenage mom like pain, mood swings and constant aversion to light-colored pants. On top of starting that complete load of hormonal garbage, people start to completely disregard your feelings/opinions by chalking it up to “being that time of the month”. I cannot count the number of times people (and by people I mean boys) have accused me of being on my period any time I had some kind of heated opinion and/or emotional breakdown. Essentially, what I learned really quickly was that because of a biologically-occurring phenomenon that not only did I have no control over, I didn’t even want to partake in, my feelings and opinions did not matter. 

Another thing happens to teenage girls, that is arguably worse than periods: teenage boys. (Oh, wow, okay, surprise, I’m not defending them. I can’t. Maybe it’s 'cause I’ve never been a teenage boy, but I have a hard time finding sympathy for them. I understand it’s not their fault that they’re all morons, but still.) While they also have their own hormonal garbage to deal with, becoming a teenage boy, from what I understand, is the first step on the road to manhood, which is something everyone (even women) are supposed to aspire to. This is also the time of a man’s life where he’s supposed to learn about how to treat women. Which explains a lot of my self-esteem issues in high school.

Now, I was never picked on by boys in high school because of my appearance. By all accounts, I was basically invisible to boys in high school. I did, however, see the kind of girls that did get attention from boys. And sadly, the only thing I wanted more in high school than a boyfriend was my own room. I definitely compared myself to other girls in my class, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one doing it. This competition for boys’ attention definitely created animosity between different “kinds” of girls. And in the immortal words of Ms. Norbury (portrayed by basically the queen of the world Tina Fey), “You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores. It just makes it okay for guys to call you sluts and whores.”

Now, I am not saying that it’s teenage girls’ fault that teenage boys make them feel bad about themselves. I’m not even saying it’s teenage boys’ fault that teenage girls feel bad about themselves. (Oh hey look, I’m kind of defending teenage boys!) I’m saying it’s kind of all of our faults. It’s just a vicious circle, and somehow, it starts right around puberty. And I have a theory why.

RICH WHITE GUYS ARE SCARED OF TEENAGE GIRLS

Think about it. Who is the most successful band of all time? The Beatles. Who helped make them that way? Teenage girls. Yes, from a fancy music person point of view, I’m sure there are other arguments that would explain their success and longevity. But if you think about it, they were the original Boy Band. Not a boyband, but a hysteria-inducing, used-panty-receiving, riot-causing Boy Band. And what fueled all this? The raging hormones of millions of teenage girls. (Not so lame now, these hormones, huh, men?). The raging hormones of millions of teenage girls made a whole bunch of people a whole hell a lot of money, and they still do today. 

It’s interesting that no one is ever looked down upon for liking The Beatles, yet somehow I am often mocked for liking One Direction. They are but another example of an insanely popular (and rich) band that has become a household name and a worldwide phenomenon thanks to teenage girls. A few years ago, the Biebs was the same way. Before him, the Jonas Brothers. I’m still not sure why we look down on those acts. (okay, maybe I get why we look down on Bieber. He’s a giant tool.) Since I was a teenage girl, I have liked these “teeny bopper” style acts, and honestly, for a short while, I felt shame in admitting it. I attended a One Direction concert last summer, and while my friend and I told ourselves we’d act like mature fans (I was twenty-one at the time, and she was nineteen), within three and a half seconds, we were screaming louder than the twelve year-olds. I think that was the moment I stopped being ashamed of liking what I like, because I realized something really important: in a world overflowing with images and voices and hormones making teenage girls feel like shit, we should celebrate and thank those who can lift them up. No matter how tight their pants are. 

So the way I see it, the world is so afraid of the massive influence of teenage girls, that they have to crush them into a fine powder at a young age so they grow up into confused, weak women. I’m happy to report it seems to be working less and less.

The only living creature who's love and approval I desperately want (other than my own) nowadays is this little lady's. WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME, POLLY? WHY?

 

WHO RUNS THE WORLD?

I can’t say I’m as self-actualized and self-confident as I’d like to be, but when I look back on that sad little girl I was at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and so on, I’m relieved. I survived; not without a good dozen or so scars, but I survived. Mindy Kaling talks a bit about our obsession as a culture with the idealism of being a teenager, as it being the best times of our lives, which I won’t quote here (just go read the damn book, it’s life-changing), but she brings up a really excellent point. At twenty-two years old, I’m hardly an adult, but is adulthood that bad? I honestly can’t think of any time of my life being worse than my teenage years. 

All I know is, I am powerful, because I survived being a teenage girl. If you can get through it, even if it takes everything you’ve got, you’re pretty damn amazing in my eyes. 

Think about it this way: Beyoncé was a teenage girl once. And now she’s, you know, Beyoncé.

Is Everyone Blogging Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

In a desperate attempt to rekindle my fizzling romance with writing, I decided to start a blog. (Okay, yes, I liked that line so much, I made it my blog description. So sue me.) But how does one start a blog? Let’s see if I can figure it out:

A TITLE

I’m currently reading Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) by actual comedic goddess Mindy Kaling, and part of the introduction is titled “Alternate Titles For This Book”. I don’t think any of the titles listed were ever actually seriously considered (and frankly, who cares? They’re hilarious), but it reminded me of my burning hatred for titles. In my own writing, titles are my worst enemy. Never did I realise how important and relevant titles are supposed to be before I began studying creative writing at the university level.  Apparently titling a poem about your dead grandfather just his initials “doesn’t make sense organically”. Because that’s what I want to do after spending two hours writing a poem (well, an hour and half whining about how much I hate writing poetry, and thirty minutes writing the poem): spend more time thinking about how I can make the damn thing more organic with a title. Didn’t you know? Poetry is like an avocado. If it’s not organic, hipsters want nothing to with it. I digress. 

Page 7 of Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

 I actually spent all of five minutes thinking of a title. I racked my brain for a play on words, part of a quote or song lyric or a clever rhyme with my name (for a sad, brief moment, I actually considered calling my blog “Jules’ Rules”. That’s basically on par with Blues Clues. I mean come on). Then my standard lack of caring about titles kicked in and I settled for “A Blog by Jules”. I am Jules, and this is my blog. Makes perfect sense to me.

SUBJECT MATTER (OR, THE HOOK)

Then came the next step: what to blog about? I am not an avid reader of blogs, but the two I read regularly are Oh She Glows and Zoella. The former is a health food blog by a self-taught vegan chef and the latter is written by an abnormally adorable English twenty-something year old with really great fashion sense and really big eyes. As much as I enjoy cooking and watching makeup tutorials on YouTube, I hardly feel qualified to write a blog about it. Granted, I’m sure neither Angela Liddon nor Zoe Sugg felt like experts when they first started out, and they’re now both international bestselling authors. 

I finally decided I don’t need a hook. I am actually super hilarious and charming in a very general sense, and therefore have no need to focus all that hilariousness and charm into one subject. Though I have a funny feeling there are gonna be a lot of posts about cats. 

AND NOW, WE WAIT FOR INSTANT INTERNET FAME

Because that’s obviously gonna happen. Isn’t that what the internet is for nowadays? 

I HAVE A FEELING I’M MOSTLY GONNA BLOG TO AVOID WRITING POETRY

That’s what’s gonna happen. I just know it. Though knowing my poetry teacher, avoiding writing by writing would actually be okay by her. As I stated earlier, I am Jules, and this is my blog. I’m really gonna try to keep things light, charming and insightful, and maybe just a hint snarky. I will definitely try to keep the bitching to a minimum, but I can make no promises.

Also cats. Definitely a lot of cats.