We have our own personal good news this week. We adopted a kitty from the Humane Society. Her name is Nimue Caledonia. Nimue for the Lady of the Lake in the Arthurian legends and Caledonia for the ancient Roman name for the Scottish areas that my family hails from.

As you can imagine I’m very VERY happy to have this new addition to our family. My husband surprised himself and me being also happy about the cat. He has allergies to cats and couldn’t be around my old cat Ani for very long at all, but given we have the filter and the allergen reducer on the A/C unit and tile floor and I found a light haired cat who wanted to come home with us we thought it might be okay and so far he hasn’t had any allergy attacks despite the fact that she’s a very lovey-dovey kitty and likes to climb up on everyone and lick and nuzzle with them.

Nimue had a little bit of a sad story before coming to us. She wasn’t abused by any means but she was born at the shelter and had been taken home by another lady and then brought back. The lady had been calling the shelter and her vets office every day complaining that the cat was too noisy and was keeping her up and couldn’t they do something about the fact that she meowed too much. The workers at the shelter told her that perhaps it was best if she just brought the cat back to them and they would hopefully find someone else to take her. The munchkin and I came in two days later and she came up to the bars and stretched out trying to touch me. The workers had been telling me about another cat called Tigger who we had met on the previous Friday while visiting but he had longer fur and I felt that we were meant to have a female cat.

When “Angelina” as they were calling her came up to the bars and I found out her name I had a feeling she might just be our cat, and then when I heard what had happened and saw how lovey and gentle she was that was it. She came home with us.

I’m always amazed at how much good work the humane society does. Leesburg Humane Society is a no-kill shelter, which means if an animal doesn’t get adopted they’re at the shelter until they die of ill health or natural causes. The shelter is often over crowded because of this as most people want to adopt puppies and kittens or will go to a shelter which does kill the animals because they’re saving them.

I also know from working there that they take a huge loss on every pet they adopt because they charge only $50 for dog adoption and $40 for cat adoptions no matter what age the animal is. They have either already spayed and neutered the animal or will give you a certificate to get that done for free from your local vet, and cover all the animal’s shots for the first year, which means on each animal they adopt they lose at least $150 dollars. Add to that the fact that the shelter operates entirely on donations and it’s really hard for them to keep up.

They do have a thrift store in town which sells clothes and other items (like a Goodwill does) to help with their financial upkeep but that’s all they have other than people’s generous donations. They would have closed down a few years ago were it not for a very kind man giving them a stipend out of his will.

They have a large area of land and as well as rescuing cats and dogs of all shapes and sizes also rescue larger animals and farm animals. When I worked there they had a huge boar, two shetland ponies, several goats and a horse, right now they have two horses, rabbits, birds, cats and dogs. Many of these animals will never be adopted but remain at the society where they’re loved and cared for until the natural end of their days.

I don’t normally catch the morning news because I’m usually running around like a mad thing or the munchkin and I are watching educational programs after breakfast, but this morning was a late start because my husband and I had been up talking until 1 a.m. the munchkin had woken up and hubbie had taken care of him and had Fox 35 news on when I came into the room.

They were talking about a school in our area and showcasing all the good things that that they’re doing for their students. Apparently this is a weekly feature that the news broadcast does as part of their morning line up, and I thought that it was such a great idea, too often the news bits that I catch are really downers, students going on rampages, schools losing money, parents going on strike and CPS being called on them, but this is a wonderful feature and I was happy to see them complimenting both the students of the school for their attitude and intelligence but also the teachers for the important work they do for the community.

Teachers are so often in thankless jobs. I have several friends who work in teaching and they tend to get a lot more abuse from both students and parents than they do compliments, which is a shame, and here the news broadcast is making sure to boost everyone’s attitude about both learning and teaching. I thought that was wonderful. Fox 35 Cool School of the Week program features Lyman High School in Orlando this week, and has voting up for next week’s cool school.

I thought as the broadcast came to an end how this was also in line for the program that my friend Skeet does weekly, her “Share Some Good Stuff” meme.