I was surprised to see Cushing's name in the Town Square here. I've known Tom for about eight years. He was one of the original subscribers to my San Ramon Observer website and got me started in animal rescue with Tri Valley Animal Rescue (TVAR) back in 2005.
I adopted a cat from TVAR in November of 1999. I was told she was about 1-1/2 years old. In 2005 she started looking sad, so I took her to Dr. Gene Nagel at the Dublin Veterinary Hospital. It turned out she was much older than I was originally told. She died of cancer later that year.
I told Tom Cushing I wanted to adopt another cat. Cushing fostered dogs for TVAR and was also involved with Border Collie rescue. "A lot of them end up in rescue because they need daily stimulation or find their own," which often meant creative and/or destructive ways of exiting their homes.
I offered to be a cat foster for TVAR, so that's how I got into the cat rescue business. A few years later I shifted to Safe-Cat Foundation. When Tom needed experience with cats for a job opportunity in Nevada, I connected him with Safe-Cat to foster a mom cat and her kittens.
Tom got the job as Associate Director of the Nevada Humane Society, which he describes as "a great no-kill shelter," but after six months he and the Executive Director didn't quite mesh, so he left Nevada and came back to Danville. He's working with a volunteer group to set up a small, volunteer-run shelter in Alameda now, but he's also managing his legal recruiting business from Danville.
So how did he wind up writing a blog for the San Ramon Express? Well he didn't initiate it. He was asked to write "Raucous Caucus" by Editor Jessica Lipsky, who had read some of his more insightful and inciting comments in Danville Express blogs. She asked him to comment on "National and state issues with a local spin."
Tom's introductory blog effort is on the Death Penalty in California and whether or not the State and tax payers are getting our money's worth. According to Tom more prisoners died of natural causes than execution despite millions invested in keeping them on Death Row.
Tom's blog in the San Ramon Express has four replies, two by me and two by Tom. I agreed with him, but that didn't make him happy. He wanted something a little more in line with the name of his blog, "Raucous." He's too used to the raucousness in the Danville Express, where the same blog has 14 replies with varying positions on the issue.
I told Tom that I often answer my own blog entries because there are no other replies, and no I don't use a nom-de-blog to spice up the discussion. In San Ramon we have polite, blah blogs, and while I'd like a little more attention paid to mine too, I'm not going to complain about them being TOO polite.
