Gryph

Gryph

@lfgryph.com

Minnesotan in SC, daughter of Yooper. Sisu. Bi. ADHD. She/her. Writer. Early 40's. Animal shelter worker. TNR. Many cats. :) Links: https://linktr.ee/gryph42 Cat Sanctuary wishlist: https://throne.com/sarahgryph

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Hello! I'm Sarah (Gryph) and I work in an animal shelter. My partner and I own four cats, used to have a dog, and we TNR in our neighborhood. This account is mostly cat pics, as self care and because that is the candle I hold in the darkness. ❤️ Also occasional gaming and book talk. 🙂

Hey all, if I haven't been posting it's bc I was moving. I'm still in Charleston and staying with the shelter, Lumi and Hamlet are with me. Chessie is not - I love her with all my heart, but she is a thriving community cat who's already been relocated once and I want what's best for her.

I don't really want to get into a lot of details publicly, but if mutuals wanna message that's fine. ❤️ Responses might take a bit is all!

Important announcement: At work today for I think (?) the first time, *I* was the one able to successfully leash a stray dog who had gotten loose. Go me! (Pup was super friendly, just very fast and having a heckuva time watching the humans try to catch him.)

Ohhey, other than having a birthday in there, earlier this month I also hit 5 years sober. Especially considering this last summer, I think I can take a second and be proud of that. My Reddit Cake Day is pretty close to the date, that's what reminded me lol.

Another vacation kitty! I don't know anything about this one, he was a new arrival while visiting the shelter my mom volunteers at. He looks like he's had an IV placed recently, and I love him. That's about all I know. ❤️

Some people survive shelter work by being careful with their hearts. I fall in love with all the broken ones and then accept the consequences. ❤️ I'll likely never know his story or what happens to him, but while I was there I told him he was VERY handsome and that I love him very much.

One of my favorite genres of Youtube video is "Person just finished reading House of Leaves for the first time and will now discuss it for 4 hours." ❤️ (I also like "Person first read it ages ago, and will now discuss it for 4 hours.")

I don't remember everything about the first time I read it. But I do have a super clear memory of being on my grandmother's couch, with mini post-it flags, navigating my way through footnotes, determined not to miss a single one by backtracking wrong.

I also met Binx while I was visiting my family. Binx might be the most expressive tortie I've ever seen, lmao. This pic is *after* she started warming up to me. She bites when you cross her boundaries, and I stan a woman with firm limits. 😁

Have a celebratory kitty. This is Simon, 18lbs of former community cat. It's hard to tell in this lighting, but he has light blue eyes. ❤️ Gentle giant of a cat.

Back from visiting my mom, my brother, and his fam. I actually really love flying itself - I just hate airports. Not exactly an uncommon feeling but ye gods the overstimulation and too many people, blargle.

Y'all don't know how badly I need this vaca. ❤️ The thing with shelter work is it's incredibly intense emotionally, physically, and mentally. The animals of course, but also any members of the public. You're often meeting with people on the worst day of their lives, and everything can feel emergent.

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It's that line between I recognize the shelter as a whole can and will run without me. My ego isn't that big. But I'm also not self deprecating enough to NOT realize I fill a pretty key role and feel a lot of responsibility around that. Great for job satisfaction, bad for letting go lol.

I still don't actually know how I made it entirely through my summer this year due to it being especially difficult for Reasons. I have a couple really good friends at work who got it, my boss was legitimately amazing, and I'm part Finnish - we don't leave hard things halfway through.

Y'all don't know how badly I need this vaca. ❤️ The thing with shelter work is it's incredibly intense emotionally, physically, and mentally. The animals of course, but also any members of the public. You're often meeting with people on the worst day of their lives, and everything can feel emergent.

Add that to being severely understaffed, then training a new team, along with assorted other stress from work and other areas and I've spent a LOT of time on high alert (while managing other people's stressed feels at the same time) since like. May. That will mess with a person.

It's honestly still not like the best time for me to be gone, tbh. But I've had this scheduled since January and both myself, and thankfully my boss as well, realize I need it. I actually probably needed it sooner, but it's hard for me to take time when I'm needed. 🙃

I'm flying out to see my mom tomorrow, but I worked yesterday to help cover some people who were out. So today is ADHD packing day. I just spent ~3 hours looking for my Switch case. It was inside the one bag that was not with my other bags where it should have been. Bc of course it was.

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Barney headbutted me so many times he turned his own ears inside out. Once I got done snickering and taking a photo, I did fix it. Don't worry!

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I’m so sorry mama Rainy to have to squish you in the kennel with your very large & fat, greedy babies but it’s only for 24 hours ;-; I did sit with them to make sure she remembered & accepted them & that she didn’t seem too stressed to be stuck with them all. There’s still one left to trap.

My murder baby is two today!!! Happy birthday, Chessie. ❤️ I'll link the thread I made last year about her. bsky.app/profile/lfgr...

Gryph@lfgryph.com

On a more cheerful note: Guess who turned 1 year old today?!!! (At least by shelter records, which are approximations, lol.) My angry little murder baby, Chessie! ❤️ Thread and more pics incoming, unsure if I'll finish it tonight.

It's been a year since we lost my work bestie, Amos. ❤️ He was the best grumpy old man feral ever, and my special boy once I got him to trust me a little. ❤️

Sheltering geekery: I have one course left to complete the second track of the Maddie's Fund SCS classes and I started registration for CAWA today. Bc no, I don't actually know what a break is. xD (ADHD: If I'm not learning something useful, I'm going to be learning something random instead.)

Legitimately just playing the music from inside your house in Welcome to Elderfield as background at work today. It's just perfect lofi vibes, idk what else to tell you.

Y'all, Welcome to Elderfield is so good I'm not even multitasking with a video in the background. That doesn't happen often even with games I really like. xD

For Olds like me, there are some charming hints of Earthbound at times. Nothing direct (that I've seen so far) but just something about the vibes are so on point for it at times. ❤️

Didn't have a lot of time since I work tomorrow, but pleased with Welcome to Elderfield so far. I found a cat to talk to in record time, 10/10 GOTY. 👍

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It’s time to show me pics of your sleeping cats and to pay your weekly BlueSky cat post pic tax at the same time. I’ll go first: this is Miss Pretty Petunia SnowFlower sleeping so peacefully. Did you know that cats sleep on the average 16 hours per day? #Cats #Sleeping #CatsOfBlueSky

Charlie having an ADHD bath. ❤️ (Video: Cow kitty taking a bath but he keeps switching which paw he's cleaning and is just generally scattered about it.)

Chessie, for those who don't know, came into my shelter as a super feral little ball of rage as a kitten. I managed to socialize her to Me but not to People In General, and she eventually came home with me to acclimate in with my community cats when she started running out of outcome options. ❤️

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So ANGY. Loki spat at me twice, so I cleaned the blankets and this is the face she pulled 😂😂😂 I then gave her some good crunchy treats and she deigned to sniff them while I still held them!

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I am allowed to rub Loki's ears if I approach very gently and ask politely. She is so impossibly soft, like a kitten, and I feel very privileged to be allowed to touch her. Loki is probably a littermate or cousin to Ahsoka. Same colony, same backstory.

I don't usually repost, but it's been a while since I did many pics. And wrapping up August is kind of A Thing for me this year.