Spay Day!

The second Sunday of every month in Tampa is ACT's Spay Day. This is where with an appointment, caretakers can bring in feral/stray cats and kittens in humane traps to the Animal Coalition of Tampa (ACT), to get them spayed/neutered, vaccinated, checked out for other health issues, given flea medicine, de-worming medicine, and ear-tipped as part of the TNR program (Trap-Neuter-Return), all for only $10. Each month around 100 cats are spayed/neutered on this day.

ACT's Spay Day is made possible by grants and many volunteers, including the awesome Veterinarians who volunteer their time to do hundreds of surgeries for these poor homeless cats. ACT also excepts feral/stray cats Monday-Saturday without an appointment for spay/neuter surgeries and ear tipping for a discounted rate of $25 per cat.

Spay Day as documented by me! :)

Bright and early the cats arrive in traps.

One by one they make there way through the back door and to the first station.

Since these are feral cats and usually not friendly, they have to be given a shot of anesthesia why still in the trap. A fork is used to confine them to one side so as not to hurt the cat. This is for the safety of the volunteers as well as the cats.

About a minute later they are out like a light. This is when the cats are taken from the trap and put on the table for inspection, tagging, and a shot of penicillin.

This is the room that I volunteer in. :)

Even though he looks awake, Mr. Kitty is out cold.

Penicillin shot.

Weeeeee!

Say good bye to the family jewels! ;)

No more baby making for him. And good thing, this guy, Big Orange, is from my hood. =)

Big Orange looks so happy while he is under. I love his little mouth freckles. 

SMILE!

You are getting neutered!!!

My friend Olya holding Big Orange.

He looks like he is awake, but is not or he would tear her face off.

We gave him lots of hugs and kisses while he was out.

This is me!

 Every cat deserves some lovin... even if it is while under anesthesia.

This guy is from my hood too. He is actually friendly, so wouldn't mind my kisses. It very sad that he doesn't have a home, and since he is friendly he was likely thrown out. :( Finding friendly cats outside that want a loving home is the hardest part of being a TNR volunteer, but it's also why it is sooo necessary that we spay/neuter as many as we can.

With every Spay Day comes kittens... lots and lots of kittens!

Unfortunately with so many kittens being born daily on the streets, there is not enough room for all of them in rescues and at no-kill shelters. :( Many of the kittens brought in on Spay Day have to be released back outside like the adults, but there is a program called the Street Kitten Program, where 15 friendly, healthy kittens are placed with St. Francis Rescue Group each month. This is arranged by appointment only, and there usually is a long waiting list to be considered for this program.

The "Street Kittens" arrive in carriers and are given shots of anesthesia while being held since they are friendly. They then go through the same process as the rest of the cats with the exception of not being ear-tipped and they get a few extras since they are going up for adoption.

Here is Olya putting some drops in the kittens eyes.

This is done to all of the cats, it keeps their eyes from drying out during the surgery.

Here is an example of the tag that each cat receives at our station.

It tells the cats number, so they know which trap to put them back into at the end, their sex, and any obvious health issues that need to be looked at. (ie. nursing mom, worms, fleas, wounds, etc.)

Such a beautiful kitten.

Sadly enough, this kitten is not part of the Street Kitten Program, so she has to go live back outside. :(

This is Purrsilla, Olya's foster kitten. :)

We rescued her off the side of the interstate overpass.

It was a bad situation and we have no idea how long she was there, but luckily she went right into the trap for food, and is friendly. There was no room fro her in the Street Kitten Program, so but luckily she was recently adopted out through the Humane Society of Tampa Bay.

This is Tiggie! aka. Kitten Face!

I rescued her from Hillsborough County Animal Services along with her brothers when they were only 1 week old. I just happened to be up there when a lady brought them up in a box, she said they found them under a truck with no momma. I took her and her brothers and paired them up with a nursing mom and my friend Candace fostered them.

Tiggie was adopted out this past weekend! =)

Kittens waiting for shots.

Kitten getting an ear-tip.

Ear-tipping is a process where about 1/4 inch of the tip of one ear is removed while the cat is under anesthesia. This is the universal sign of an altered feral cat. It lets feral cat trappers such as myself know that they have already been spayed/neutered, that way they are not trapped again and put through the process of being sliced open to only find that they have already been spayed. It is also a potential lifesaver if the cat ever gets brought in to Animal Services. Many counties, including mine let feral colony caretakers know of any ear-tip cat that shows up so we have the option of rescuing them and taking them back to their colony.

Here are some females with shaved bellies waiting their turns for spay surgeries.

More females. Including Purrsilla the kitten. :)

Female going in for surgery.

The Doctors in action!

Thank you so much for donating your time!

Spay surgery in progress.

Close-up of spay surgery.

More spay surgeries.

It's much easier to neuter than it is to spay, for both the doctor and the cat.

Female coming out of surgery and on her way to recovery.

Nursing moms getting extra fluids after their surgeries.  

After all is said and done, the cats are placed back into their traps and are ready for their caretakers to come pick them up.

This is my crew in traps recovering after surgery.

I leave my ferals in traps for no less than 24 hours so they can recover.

I change the paper daily and provide food and water in the traps.

This is the safest way of recovering a feral cat for both the caretaker and the cat, as most feral cats are not friendly, but still need time to recover.

This is Pete!

He was not a happy camper once he woke up.

This is Big Orange.

He was even less happy.

But I'm happy to report that he is back to himself roaming my hood without making babies.

This is the friendly boy in my neighborhood.

He is doing great but I really wish I could find him a proper home.

I didn't get good pictures of the other cats I brought in, but I had 6 total adults and Tiggie the kitten on this Spay Day.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That concludes Spay Day as documented by me.

I didn't take the greatest pictures, but I'm not a morning person and Spay Day is super duper early. But I hope you now have an idea of what goes on behind the scenes. It's basically like a kitty assembling line with about 100 cats and tons of volunteers. It's pretty amazing to see in action. Hopefully this will encourage you to get active in your local TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) Program.

To find out more about  the TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) Programs for feral cats in your area,

contact Alley Cat Allies, your local shelters, or google TNR or low cost spay/neuter with your city and state.

There is no such thing as a "responsible breeder"!

Every animal BRED = another animal DEAD!

ADOPT! DON'T SHOP!!!

and ALWAYS SPAY/NEUTER!!!

When life gives you 20 lbs of blueberries, make EVERYTHING!

In my last post I talked about my 3 day blueberry picking extravaganza, where I picked a total of 20 pounds (let me be fair... Loukas picked 3 of the 20 pounds) of mouth watering blueberries... That's ALLOT of berries!  And even though I do enjoy eating fresh blueberries by the handfuls, I also enjoy playing with recipes, so here are a few blueberry inspired things I whipped up this past week. :)

Fluffy Lemon Blueberry Cookies!

I used my friends awesome recipe for Fluffy Lemon Cookies,

but added a handful of blueberries to the batter. :)

They were SUPER awesome. You definitely should try out her recipe!

Mini Blueberry Donuts!

For this recipe, I adapted Lauren Ulm's donut recipe from her awesome book,

Vegan Yum Yum, for which I am a proud owner of.

If you don't have the book, you can find her recipe here.

I basically followed her recipe with the exception of halving it (so I could make sure it would actually work with the blueberries), adding about 1/4 cup of purred fresh blueberries to the batter (i pureed them in my magic bullet real fast like), added a bit more sugar and baking powder, omitted the nutmeg and cinnamon, and added more flour until the consistency was right. I just kinda went with it.

For the icing I used a little bit of pureed blueberries mixed with powdered sugar and a dash of vanilla extract until it was smooth and not to runny. It dried and hardened up nicely.

I was a little bit more nervous with this recipe, not knowing what pureed blueberries would do to the batter. But SCORE! it was a win win for all involved.

Blueberry Pancakes!

When I asked the question, "What should I do with 20 pounds of blueberries?",

one person said i should make 40 pounds of pancakes!!!

I heard you, and I'm working on it! :)

For the pancakes, I used Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's recipe from her book, The Joy of Vegan Baking. It's my "go to" pancake recipe. I just added a handful of blueberries to the batter and some on the top after they were cooked. It's so freakin easy and they taste awesome, you will wonder why eggs were ever used in pancakes in the first place.

This is a great recipe to pass along to Omnivore friends. :)

That concludes one week of cooking with blueberries. But I'm not done yet!

I still have visions of blueberry ice cream and pie dancing in my head.

It's time for me to get off of this computer and make a big ol blueberry smoothie... YUM!

Thanks for stopping by!

~amber :)

Blueberry Picking

I LOVE the simple things in life. One of my favorite things on this simple list is that I live in a small country town, Plant City to be exact, where at any given time of the year I can go down the street and pick something fresh to eat. My favorite things to pick are strawberries and blueberries. And lucky for me, these seasons are back to back in Plant City.

This year I went blueberry crazy, visiting the fields 3 different times, and picking a total of 20 pounds of yummy fresh blueberries.

What would you make if you had 20 pounds of fresh blueberries?

It's all Greek to me

I'm dedicating this post to my boyfriend, Loukas, for it is because of him that I know anything about Greek food. I'm just a southern girl from the small town of Lakeland, located in Central Florida, and never really ventured out of my small town life until I attended college in Tampa. I grew up on fried chicken, black eye peas, and corn bread, and all though I did give up beef and pork in high school which classified me as crazy with the locals, I didn't even know what a chick pea was until I met him. And Tofu... what's that?... we both said. The journey to Veganism has been quite an adventure for this Southern girl and her Greek boyfriend. These past 3 years have been a fun and life changing experience and I wouldn't turn back for all the money in the world.

One of my first missions was to veganize the recipes that Loukas grew up on, because they are a big part of family life in a Greek household. My goal was to make them taste good enough for the whole family to eat and not just Loukas and I. Little did I know that Loukas' mom already had a plan to make a vegan version of the family favorite... stuffed grape leaves, also known as dolmades to the Greeks and koupepia to the Greeks in Cyprus, aka the Greek Cypriots. I know that the stuffed grape leaves are already vegan at most Greek restaurants, but Loukas' family comes from Cyprus, and the family koupepia recipe he grew up on contains beef and sometimes even other meats.

I asked Loukas' mom to write down the recipe for me... but that didn't work at all. I had to actually make it with her to decipher some kinda of recipe, because asking a Greek lady with broken English to write down a recipe for you is quite the comic relief, it consisted of random words and no measurements... hehe... gotta love her. So in true Greek recipe inspired style, I give to you a recipe that has no real measurements or form, but tastes amazing. I hope you enjoy!

Here is some funny entertainment to illustrate how to make koupepia the traditional way. You can choose to try and follow their directions using Boca crumbles instead of the meat, or follow my recipe, and use all veggies! Either way, it is a funny watch. Loukas was listening to the man and laughing in the other room. Note to self... must learn Greek so I can laugh too. :)

Behold... It's Vegan Koupepia!

Chop up about 1 cup of the following: carrots, zucchini, onions.

And about 2 cups of tomatoes.

And don't forget the parsley!

You need about 1 cup of it as well.

Pour some Olive Oil in a medium to large pot and set to medium high heat. Add the veggies and cook to soften them up. After the veggies are softened up a bit and the tomatoes are nice and juicy (maybe 10 minutes or so), add in about 1 cup of rice, you can use white or brown, or even orzo if you want. Stir and let simmer until the rice is about half way cooked. There is no real science behind this, you just don't want it all the way done because it will cook more later in the process. Squeeze in the juice of 1 or 1 1/2 lemons, add some salt, pepper, and greek seasonings to taste. You can also add some mint if you choose. 

You can usually find grape leaves in jars like the above in the olive section at your local grocery store. Or those of you that live near a Greek or Middle Eastern store, can get even bigger jars that usually have better quality grape leaves inside. You will need 1 of the smaller jars as pictured above. Or if you are trying to feed the whole village of Tochni, like I usually am, then you can adjust the recipe up to 2 cups of everything. Again, it's not a perfect science, don't be afraid to improvise.

Next, you carefully remove the grape leaves from the jar, rinse them, and put them in a small pot with boiling water for about 5 minutes. Drain the grape leaves, take the veggie and rice mixture off the stove, and get prepared to start rollin... you might wanna move this operation to your table so you can have a seat, because it takes a while.

This is How I Roll!

a grape leaf of course... ;)

the above video has a good example of grape leaf rolling

• Spread your grape leaves out onto a flat surface.

It's easiest to just do one at a time.

• Spoon on a small amount of the veggie/rice

mixture to the middle of the leaf.

• Fold the bottom part of the leaf up and over the mixture,

tucking in the leaf as needed.

• Fold each side over.

• Then roll up slowly, tucking in the leaf and mixture as you go.

• Keep going until you are out of leaves, or out of your mind.

• Apply for a job at a cigar rolling factory, because you are a pro now!

Next, stack all of your stuffed grape leaves snugly into a pot, fill the pot with water to the level of the grape leaves. Cover the pot with a small plate or something that can sit right on top of the grape leaves, holding them down so they don't float and unroll, it doesn't have to be fancy. Put the lid on top if you can. Turn on medium high heat and cook until the water is absorbed. It works best for me when I cook at medium high for about 30 minutes or so and then turn the heat down to let the water finish absorbing.

After the water has absorbed, put your serving dish upside down on top of the pot of grape leaves and then carefully flip the pot over so that the grape leaves fall neatly onto the serving dish.

Opa!!!

Stuffed grape leaves are served!