Week 3: Caring for Cuddly Creatures

Being a family of five that includes three lifelong vegetarians and one member who's meat-free 93% of the time, it's safe to say we are mightily in love with animals.

In addition to us humans, we have two dogs, a handful of chickens, and a pair of tanks that a couple of fish and snails call home. The kids and I hike and sit quietly observing animals pretty often, leave out food and water for a neighborhood mouser cat who, as of the date of this blog post, has been too shy to allow us to get close to, and we use baby voices to talk to every pet we meet or see being walked (and sometimes make up another voice for what we imagine they'd say back to us; that's on the spectrum for normal mental health, right?).

As I was saying, we love animals.

So, when we were brainstorming areas we wanted to spread kindness to, cuddly creatures was a no-brainer.

This week, my kids and I headed out shopping for loads of toys for dogs, kittens, rabbits and guinea pigs, along with a few bags of food, and visited our local Humane Society.

After dropping off the donations we headed back to spend some time with our new furry friends.

My youngest daughter fell in love with a 6-month old kitten named Alfalfa. Despite being fully aware of multiple family members being allergic to cats, she still begged and pleaded for me to bring her home.

Regretfully, she did not find her forever home with us. But I have no doubt she'll find one soon; I'm not sure many will be able to resist her spunky personality and adorable face!

I'm thrilled to announce, however, that this adorable little pup *did* get adopted while we were there!

I spoke to a young man who came to see about another dog on their website, but upon locking eyes with this little fella, "he put his paw up on the glass and I just knew he was the one," the man told me.

If you're looking to add a furry friend to your family, I hope you'll first visit your local Humane Society or shelter. There are so many sweet babies just waiting to give you all their love.

It was an honor to give them a little bit of ours this week.