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Archive for February, 2012

Our Wonderful Blog Designer, Vicki Watson, is Also An Animal Lover and Author!

The Plain Druggist blog site and the web site for Black and Orange Cat Foundation are the results of the wonderful efforts of Vicki Watson of VWeb Web Design. I get a lot of compliments on how nice both sites look and I have Vicki to thank for that. Vicki has done a spectacular job and I can’t thank her enough for all her help.

Vicki, however, is not just a web designer. She is also a homeschool mom who creates educational software for homeschoolers to use in their daily studies at her web site, Interactive Study Guides. She has an exceptional study guide for Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.

As shown with her study guide for Black Beauty, Vicki is a horse lover and many of her other endeavors focus on this love. At her Christian Cowgirl web site, Vicki offers devotions, Christian horse book reviews, and horse movie reviews.

And on her Sonrise Stables site, Vicki dons the hat of author with her Christian Horse books for children. The first two books in her Sonrise Stable series, Rosie and Scamper and Carrie and Bandit, are currently available with updated artwork by Plain City artist, Becky Raber. The third book in the series, Clothed With Thunder, will be available in the Fall.

Vicki grew up around horses and cats. She always keeps an eye on the cats I have her post on B and O’s home page and she was especially interested in the story of Sparrow, who was the featured kitty in January. Sparrow was the cat that was shot with an arrow and taken to the Humane Society of Delaware County where our beloved vet friend, Dr. Kim West, saved her life (you can read the blog posting about Sparrow HERE). Vicki plans to do a book, available by the end of the year, that will tell Sparrow’s story. She wants her fourth book to touch on the many cruel things humans do to animals to teach the next generation to be kinder and more humane. The theme for the fourth book will focus on treating animals with kindness, based on Proverbs 12:10: “A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel.

Sparrow’s story will be a side story in the book, which will explain the fates of foals born to “nurse mares.” In case you don’t know about nurse mares, here’s the scoop. When an expensive thoroughbred horse gives birth, the owners will sometimes take the much wanted thoroughbred baby away from it’s very valuable mother and have a nurse mare raise the thoroughbred foal. Because the nurse mare must have milk, she will have just given birth herself. Her true baby is of no value and is often killed.

Luckily, there are rescues that take these unwanted “products” of the thoroughbred industry and find the babies homes. One of those rescues is Last Chance Corral in Athens, Ohio. Vicki recently visited Victoria Goss, who saves these horses, to get information for her next book.

As soon as Vicki’s fourth book, featuring these wonderful horses and Sparrow, is available, I will let you know.

Vicki lives in Marysville and attended Jonathan Alder schools. Joe and I always love to support local businesses and animal lovers! Happily, Vicki is both!

Visit Vicki’s Facebook page HERE.

Fish Fries at St. Joe’s Parish Activity Center (the PAC) Start February 24!

It is that time of year again. Time to enjoy a fish meal each Friday during Lent. Once again Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church and the local Knights of Columbus will be holding their Friday Fish Fries beginning this Friday, February 24, and continuing through March 30. The Fish Fries will at the Parish Activity Center (the PAC), 670 West Main Street (behind the firehouse) from 5:30-8 pm.

Meals are $7 for adults and $6 for children and seniors. Besides either fried or baked Alaskan Pollock (please request the baked fish if you would like it), the meal also includes soda or coffee, cole slaw, and fries or macaroni and cheese. Additionally, you can purchase homemade desserts for a $1 donation that benefits the St. Martin de Porres Society. Last year the St. Martin de Porres Society made almost $900 for charity from the desserts that were sold. This year they are hoping to make over $1000 by enticing your sweet tooth!

Carry out service of the meals is also available.

So please come out this Friday, February 24, and support the Knights of Columbus with their first Fish Fry of the Lenten season. Join them each Friday (March 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30) for a delicious meal and lots of enjoyable socializing with neighbors, friends, and family.

For more info, visit Saint Joe’s web site HERE.

For a complete Lenten Fish Fry Guide that lists churches throughout Ohio hosting fish fries, go HERE.

Milford Center Looking for a Few Good Cats.

If  you live in the Village of Milford Center, the Union County Humane Society wants to know if you’ve “GOT CATS?” That’s because the shelter recently received a $9600 grant from the Kenneth A. Scott Charitable Trust to fix 300 cats in Milford Center in 2012. The surgeries will be performed for stray and feral cats at no cost and include an ear tip.

Ear tipping is a universal symbol that allows people to know, just by looking, that a cat has been spayed or neutered. It requires cutting a small “tip” off the top of one ear. A cat that is ear tipped does not have to go through the stress of another trip to the vet if they are caught in a trap. They can be released immediately, because it is obvious they have already been sterilized.

One of Plain City’s finest cat trappers, and a volunteer with Black and Orange Cat Foundation, Allen Young, has been involved in helping to trap cats in Milford Center. Since he started trapping in January, he and another volunteer have already taken in over 30 cats to be fixed through the shelter’s grant program. But more cats are needed if 300 are going to be spayed and neutered by the end of the year. If you are caring for cats in Milford Center and would like to get them fixed for FREE, please contact Carol Martin by calling 937-243-1618 or 937-642-6716.

Allen had told me that there have been some problems with the trapping process as traps have been stolen and also set off so that cats could not go in them. I want to assure anyone who has cats in Milford Center and may be worried about this project–the cats are not being harmed. They are being fixed and then returned to the same area where they were caught. Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) is the process that is being used for this project. Cats are trapped in humane traps that do no hurt them. They are then transported to the shelter for surgery and released back in their own territory after recovering.

Alley Cat Allies, the national organization supporting TNR, endorses these methods to humanely reduce the cat overpopulation problem. No new kittens are born. The population remains the same over years and years until older cats die off.

This is a wonderful opportunity to save the lives of cats and keep unwanted kittens from being born in an area already overrun with too many felines. Please contact the shelter if you would like help getting your outside cats fixed.

You can read the original article in the Marysville Journal-Tribune reporting that Union County Humane Society received the grant to fix stray and feral cats in Milford Center HERE.

You can also read the article in the Marysville Journal-Tribune about problems with the cat trapping process in Milford Center HERE.

And access the Village of Milford Center Facebook Page.

“Welcome Risen Jesus” is Companion Book to Local Author Sarah Reinhard’s “Welcome Baby Jesus.”

I first told you about Sarah Reinhard’s book Welcome Baby Jesus last summer in a blog posting you can access HERE. With the approach of the Lenten and Easter season, Sarah has a new book of reflections for families that focuses on this most holy time of the year. A companion to her Advent and Christmas reflections, Sarah’s Welcome Risen Jesus provides a way for parents and children to pray together and think about the true meaning of the Easter holiday.

Beginning with Ash Wednesday, each day leading up to Easter is given a page that begins with the challenge, “Think,” and explains the meaning of many things that children may not understand about the season and rites within the church. After explaining why certain things are done or why we are called to behave in certain ways, Sarah asks the readers to take action on what they have just read in the “Think” section. With suggestions that are divided up under “Act,” “Fast,” and “Pray,” each day of Lent offers simple ideas that children can do, but which also work well for adults hoping to give this holy time more meaning. The three steps focus upon doing good deeds, sacrificing something of importance, and talking more to God. The suggestions are easily followed. Under “Fast” on the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, Sarah offers: “Give your dessert–or the favorite part of your snack–to someone else.

Lent has always been one of my favorite times of the year. For some reason, it seemed magical to me with days given strange names: Ash Wednesday, Fat or Shrove Tuesday (also widely known as Mardi Gras–and occurring before the start of Lent on Ash Wednesday), Maundy or Holy Thursday, Palm Sunday, and Good Friday. Reflecting on the importance of those days can only make the season even more magical and holy. Welcome Risen Jesus will help families also find special meaning for those quiet days without the strange and beautiful names.

To buy your own copy of Welcome Risen Jesus, visit Sarah’s blog, Snoring Scholar HERE.

To read a nice review in the February 19 edition of The Catholic Times, click HERE and scroll down to page 22.

Also just in time for Lent, Sarah has a pamphlet, Do I Really Have to Give Something Up for Lent? that helps to explain why sacrifices can bring us closer to God during this journey toward Easter. My grandpa always liked to joke each year that he was giving up chewing tobacco and watermelon–both things that he didn’t use anyway–making it very easy for him to stick to his Lenten sacrifices.

To buy your copy of the pamphlet, go HERE.

Sarah also has a new book called, Catholic Family Fun, coming out in April. I really like the subtitle to this book: A Guide for the Adventurous, Overwhelmed, Creative, or Clueless. That pretty much describes everybody in our crazy, stress filled world! You can read more about it HERE.

You can also visit Sarah on her Facebook page.

Have a lovely Lenten season.

Lions Club Pancake Breakfast, Saturday, February 18 from 7 to 10:30 am.

Join the Plain City Lions Club on Saturday, February 18, from 7 am to 10:30 am at the Plain City Presbyterian Church (231 East Main Street) for an “All You Can Eat” Pancake Breakfast. There will also be sausage. The cost is $6 for children 6 and older and for adults.

Advanced tickets can be purchased here at the drugstore, at Schrock Automotive, and at Yoder’s Hardware. Or you can just pay at the door.

In the event of a snow day, the Pancake Breakfast will be moved to Saturday, February 25.

So come out with your appetite and support the Plain City Lions on February 18. We hear that Roger Weeks will be flipping pancakes and he is a tremendous cook! YUM!!