After another delicious meal with a view at the cafeteria at Angel Village, we went to Cat World HQ to start our afternoon shift. Both An and I love and own cats, so we were looking forward to being able to work with them. We were pointed in the direction of Jill's Diner, a 4-run cat habitat that sits right behind Cat World HQ.

When we got to Jill's Diner we were greeted by Teresa, the caretaker. She explained that Jill's Diner was a place for special needs cats. Cats with diabetes, FIV and various other kidney, liver or heart problems lived there, and we were going to help clean up their runs. We started in the diabetes cat run, and we brushed off the beds, cleaned all the surfaces, swept, mopped, and dumped the litter boxes out.

One of the FIV cats investigates my shoes

All around us, cats were being nonchalant and snoozing in the sun or dangling from the rafters like jungle cats. The enclosures were really cool, and just ideal for cats. There were walkways everywhere, and a lot of them were made out of thick branches or tree trunks that were connected together, so they served as both ramps up to the rafters and scratching posts. In the upper levels of the enclosure there were cat beds, cubby holes and even a litter box in some cases. The cats were free to be as social or as anti-social as they pleased.

It took a while, but we got the diabetes cat run cleaned up, so we moved to the next run. These were the cats with various issues like heart, kidney or liver problems, missing an eye or a paw, that sort of thing. As soon as we entered, Ash was already demanding our attention. Ash was super friendly, and he even jumped up just so his head could reach our hands. We gave him some petting time, then we started cleaning up all the beds, and sweeping and mopping everything. It took a while to get all of it done, even with two of us doing it, but eventually everything was cleaned up. Of course we took some kitty breaks in between.

Scrubbed-down litterboxes dry in the sun

After we were done with those, Teresa said we could go into the FIV run and give them all some treats. So we did that, and most of the cats came down and sucked up the treats like little furry Roombas. They were great, I had a couple of them coming up to me to sniff my shoes and sit on my lap. We sat with them for a while and enjoyed their company. It was a little past 3:30, and we decided we needed to head over to Dogtown HQ in order to get a sleepover dog for the night. We went outside and found Teresa, and we talked for a bit before we left for Dogtown HQ.

We learned that she has to do all that work, in all four runs, by herself every day if there are no volunteers. We were a bit surprised at that, because it is really a lot of work. Admittedly we might have been able to do it faster if we had been more familiar with what needed to be done, but it was still a lot of work to be done every day. I'm glad that there are people like Teresa who care enough to do the work necessary to ensure the animals have a clean and healthy place to live, and get the care they need.

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“Most of the cats came down and sucked up the treats like little furry Roombas.”