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• Post #4496460

  Today at the SPCA I walked Roxy, Rainbow and Sheebie. Sheebie is new to the adoption block. She's a young German Shepherd, rather nervous and a bit mouthy. I think she's had some bad experiences, she's very wary. The grass was dry today so I sat on the ground in the dog run. Sheebie immediately came and excitedly licked my ear. Then, to my surprise, for she's an energetic dog, she lay down and put her head on my lap. After a few moments she gave a great big sigh, closed her...

• Post #4291914

  Today at the SPCA I walked Roxy, Rex and Fran. Fran is doing much better! She's much more confident. A volunteer was walking another dog, a small brown puppy called Scooby, and the two of them played through the fence. Just running up and down and doing play bows. I think that's got to be so good for them. Scooby was fascinated by one of the cows in the field next to the dog run. The cow was interested in him as well. Scooby kept running at her, sometimes barking, and she&amp...

• Post #4291913

  It's done. All the family letters and photos have been sorted. I started on the 9th of May!

• Post #4291912

  Aren't they *gorgeous*? This is Stormy and Smokey's last night with me, their mom is coming home from holiday tomorrow. I've washed and folded all their hammocks and packed their bag. I put my hand inside that hammock and both of them immediately started giving me a gentle manicure, holding my fingers firmly between their little paws and nibbling on my nails. Big, soft, warm, good natured potatoes. #rats #RatFosterDiary

• Post #4291911

  Said goodbye to Smokey and Stormy this morning. Their mom came to fetch them. They silently (to my ears, anyway!) protested being in the carrier. #rats

• Post #4291910

  New non-apology variant I noticed today: "About that thing that happened the other day: It's a pity that we had such different perceptions of events. " 😬🫠🤪

• Post #4206491

  Smokey and Stormy enjoying their supper. Their owner gave me some extra money to get them fresh food so they're eating extra well! They're such gorgeous boys. They're enormous too. Two big, chilled dudes, very affectionate.

• Post #3893493

  I've been having such an odd experience, I think it might be a migraine thing? I feel a physical sensation that's really familiar. But when I try to name it, I can't. Maybe it's dizziness? Maybe it's something I used to feel in my childhood before I attached words to sensations? It's like a mixture of being very sleepy and also spinning in a swing for too long. My brain goes "Ah yes, I'm feeling.... [gropes for term]"

• Post #3786038

  All my books are on sale at Smashwords right now. Some of them are free! I write creepy-cozy, hopeful stories about people doing their best to look after one another, and care for this strange world we live in. Fantasy and science-fiction. Direct link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Masha+du+Toit #FantasyBooks #SciFiBooks #AfricanSciFi #Bookstodon

• Post #3633531

  Latest read: "Convenience Store Woman" by Sayaka Murata. I loved this book. It's translated from Japanese, quite a short book about a young woman who is completely fulfilled by her work in a convenience store. She seems very autistic! A lot of sensory detail and descriptions of masking as she figures out how to seem normal. It's tonally very odd, seeming very quiet and almost cozy, and then boom, there's be something really disturbing. It ends a bit abruptly but that se...

• Post #2206158

  I think the writer of a short story I just read might not be familiar with analogue clocks. They refer to the clock's hands as "clock arrows". Which kind of makes sense I suppose!

• Post #2206157

  One of the other foster-rat people just shared these photos of the baby rats they're looking after. They are TINY!!!! And I'm going to meet these little guys on Monday. I can't wait. They're not coming to me, I'll be visiting the person who's fostering them. I'll be dropping Peanut and Raisin off with her, and she'll take them to the courier, who'll ship them to their forever home in Johannesburg. In other news, Raisin...

• Post #2206156

  Peanut and Raisin are telling ghost stories this evening. #rats #RatFosterDiary

• Post #2039001

  Today at the SPCA I walked Roxy-Lee, Matty and Trudy. Sophie's been adopted! Roxy-Lee seems sad and a bit stressed. She didn't want to play with me. Trudy is a gangly puppy, about 6 months old. Wire-haired, white with brown splotches, medium small and fine boned. I realised quickly that she's an ideal candidate for agility training (constant focus on me, and very food driven). So I tried to get her to run over the little A frame in the dog run. At first she was s...

• Post #2039000

  I've just heard that there's someone wanting to adopt Peanut and Raisin. She's in Johannesburg, so these two little hooligans will be travelling via courier. I'm going to miss them. The last few days they've really started to trust me. #RatFosterDiary #rats

• Post #2038999

  I don't know if any one else will find this as funny as I do. This is the colour dialogue of a kaleidoskope drawing app. It reminds me of the "web safe" palette so many years ago, and its many shades of virulent green. (the app is called "Doodle Kaleidoskope" and it's a lot of fun, if very buggy. It's my favourite way of calming myself at the moment. So sooooooooothing) #ActuallyAutistic

• Post #2038998

  Today at the SPCA I walked Roxy-Lee, Matty, Trudy and Sasha. Trudy still has an "applied" on her board so her adoption is still in progress. She remembered how to run over the A-frame from our last walk, and went through the tunnel a few times too. Sasha looks a lot like Trudy. A rangy, coarse-haired white dog with brown spots and standy-up-floppy ears. But she's bigger and more intense. She charged around the dog run at top speed, clearly needing to burn off a lot...

• Post #1720324

  People always say grief is unpredictable. My feelings about my father's recent death have been shadowing me for the last few weeks, and today some of them have caught up to me. His memorial is tomorrow, and I want to share some of the tributes people have been sending in. I'll be making a thread. My father was Andre du Toit, a professor of political studies in South Africa. #SouthAfrica #AndreDuToitTributes

• Post #1034037

  AuDHD psychologist Dr Megan Anna Neff has published a survey, she's looking for AuDHD people who are willing to complete it. Self diagnosis accepted as valid. Dr Neff's site, Neurodivergent Insights has been the source of much compassionate, accurate and balanced information so I am very excited to hear that she's doing this research. She says: "This survey is part of the research for my upcoming book, AuDHD Unlocked, which explores what it means to live at...

• Post #1026299

  For people out there who are starting on the "am I autistic" journey, and are feeling the bite of imposter syndrome. Does it help to replace "autistic" with "a person who is allowed to say what their needs are, and claim those needs without having to apologize" ? You're allowed to do that even if you're not autistic. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter whether or not you're autistic. It does! You need accurate information about yourself. Don&#...

• Post #990721

  I tried to do a photo shoot with the foster rats, get some cute pictures that would help get them adopted. This was the only picture I got of Peanut that wasn't just a blur, and Raisin refused to come out from under the bed. #rats #RatFosterDiary

• Post #886739

  Peanut is just ridiculously cuddly. She loves being stroked. But she also knows how to set a boundary, see the video 😊 https://youtu.be/rWnymZa9AuE?si=mF8asdlaunNMcTxw #rats #RatsOfMastodon #RatFosterDiary

• Post #727537

  Today at the SPCA I walked 3 dogs: Duchess, Brandy and Bobo. Sort of. I've walked Bobo before with no problem, but today he started barking aggressively at the dogs in the kennels next door. He was in "drive" and when he saw my hand move above him he lunged as if to bite me. He's a big dog and strong. I decided that it would be a bad idea for me to walk him further. The choice was to go back to his kennel through a corridor with dogs barking on both sides,...

• Post #710747

  *Someone* placed this silk cloth near the rat cage. *Someone else* dragged the entire cloth through the bars into the cage. This is a great mystery. (Luckily the cloth is mostly undamaged, just one or two small holes.) #Rats #RatFosterDiary