JCN shelter day 9&10

Well, let's just say it's been an eventful couple of days.

The good news is that I have excellent friends. I asked for people to come help me clean up here, and people did. I had one friend stay for the weekend, and another two come up on Sunday to help out as well. They assisted with several projects that needed to get done, and now have been. They were also a huge boost in morale, particularly mine. I am so thankful that I have friends who are so selfless and kind and will work so hard simply because they know there is work to do.

There is still a massive amount of mess and disorganization in the shelter. Honestly, no matter how much we clean, it always feels and looks like we did very little. That's the scope of this disaster, though. Every level of upkeep has been neglected, and so we have to clean and reorganize down to nearly the very foundations.

Fortunately, I am no longer the only person who recognizes that.

The details of the last twenty-four hours are long and convoluted and not for public distribution. But suffice to say, our situation is now being taken seriously. A volunteer from the Kyoto program was sent up to Inawashiro on an overnight bus, and within an hour she could see the utter lack of organization or cleanliness in the house. She comes from a place that is very organized and structured, and it is a huge relief to have her on-site to give advice about how to set up a work schedule for volunteers both present and future. It's also a huge relief to have someone on-site from within the JCN program who agrees whole-heartedly that this shelter is in distress and needs a lot of help. For the last week, I've felt like everyone in upper management has been blissfully unaware of the situation, and has dismissed reports of excessive mess as the exaggerations of young people far away from home who can't deal with living on their own.

Unfortunately, young people who are far from home and can't deal with living on their own have been exactly what lead us here. Because people who are far away from home and have never lived on their own do not understand the sheer magnitude of constant work that it takes to keep oneself alive and one's own surroundings clean. This unending cycle of daily tasks is added to the work necessary to care for animals. When you try to put young people with no innate sense of responsibility and no experience in being responsible in a position where they have to take constant initiative to be responsible, the situation like what we have here is what happens. Moreoever, if young people who will not take initiative are left unsupervised by management, then you get a catastrophe.

The house is still a mess. But now, finally, I am not the only person saying it. People outside JCN are talking about it. People within JCN are aware of it, whether they like it or not. And now, finally, action is being taken by JCN to assist with what will undoubtedly be the slow and painstaking process of cleaning up and organizing this gigantic mess.

At the end of this, I hope, will be a much healthier environment for the animals. Which is all I want. I have not been very friendly, patient, quiet, or understanding these last few days. My patience ran out on my first day. I stopped caring whether anyone liked me, whether anyone respected me, whether I ended this endeavor with friends or with people talking behind my back and calling me an obnoxious bitch. All I have cared about, for the last week, is getting people to see what I see, to listen, and to actually take some kind of action to fix things. And nobody was ever going to listen to a calm petition for extra support. We are past that. We are at the point where unless someone plants their feet and says, "No, we are going to fix this NOW," and leads the charge, nothing is going to get done.
(I have planted my feet so hard that I genuinely cannot walk around on one for very long without it starting to throb. I've taken to wearing slippers around the house. I also basically sat down all of today.)

I don't usually cause commotion about things. I don't like rocking boats. It's dangerous and can end with big consequences if you're wrong or you're up against people with more power than you. But when it comes to the happiness and health of animals, all bets are off. Because a shelter should not just be a place that's a little more comfortable than the outdoors. It should be a place of healing and refuge. It should be warm and kind. A living room that's too cluttered for the dogs to stretch out comfortably and a bunch of rooms that are layered with old litter and matted fur and that smell like cat pee are neither warm or kind. They are simply a better option than being out in the cold.

I want these animals to be happy.

They will be.

JCN shelter day 7&8

I'm just really tired. I've been working so hard all day for over a week, now. I really need to take a rest. Probably will on Monday. Although I forgot we're having a new volunteer arrive tomorrow, so I'll have to make sure they get settled in and know what's going on.

Oh my god I'm going to be so tired just forever.

JCN shelter day 6

I want it to feel like a home. Maybe not perfectly, but I want the living room to be a warm and cozy place. Not a storage space, not a temporary space, but a home. I want the dogs to feel like they have room to move, to explore, to have fun, to be dogs. I want it to feel welcoming and warm. I want it to be a soft place where they can cozy up to people and just be happy and safe and loved.
It's always going to be a shelter, but I want to clean up the living room so the dogs can imagine what it's like to be in a real home.

JCN shelter day 4&5

Okay so. It sounds like the lack of communication about what to do and how to do it has been going on for a while. Apparently there's a manual for how to do things around here? Who knew? I didn't. The girls here before me didn't. There's a notebook on the messy desk that says "Volunteer Manual" but honestly, that desk is so full of paperwork and receipts that there's no way to know what's relevant and what's as expired as the canned food.

The good news is that I have good friends in Japan, and some of them will be coming around this weekend to help me clean. One of the housemates left this morning, but the remaining housemate swept, vacuumed, and cleaned the floor of Cat Room B with a bleach-water solution, so at least that particular room smells less like cat pee than it did before. I'm making a dent in the (dis)organization of the living room, pulling out stained futons and airing out cat-fur-covered blankets. I have actual sheets on my bed, now. Chacha, one of the dogs, likes sleeping on there with me.

I also finally got to talk to the house manager, who is new to the job but thankfully very knowledgeable and responsible. Having someone promptly respond to emails and FB inquiries is a relief. (I emailed two other lead members of the organization about Kit back in June and never received a single reply.)

There's still a long way to go in getting the shelter clean. The main problem is that nobody knows what supplies we have or where anything is, because there's so much stuff that it's nearly impossible to have an organized location for anything. There's no possible way to do inventory when I'm finding paper towels, trash bags, bleach, and various other items in random closets and cupboards around the house. How can we say "we need more toilet paper" if we can't even be sure how many we've got? Every time I open a new drawer or open a box, I have no idea if I'll find something useful or something rotten and full of bugs. We're also not allowed to just throw things away or sell or donate them, because some things are shelter property. Which things? The moldy futon by my bed? The twenty-odd coats and jackets hanging up in the living room? The ashtrays in the kitchen? The expired Mott's Apple Sauce stacked several packs high in three different rooms? Exactly when do I, or any volunteer, get to make an executive decision and say, "Yeah, this needs to go"?

It's ridiculous. It can't stay like this. The current system allows for mess to pile up without accountability. Who knows what was here before and what was just left behind? If you can't see the system, who knows if you're following it?

I'm going to get there, though. I'm going to make a dent in the chaos around here and clean up all the filth that's been living in its corners. I'm going to leave behind something structured and clean and organized, something that even foreigners with no clue how anything works can understand and adapt to. I'm in the fortunate position where I've been in Japan long enough that I understand a lot of the particulars of keeping house in Japan. I've had to research the cleaning supplies and futon care, and I've seen how my co-workers and various Japanese acquaintances organize their homes in a structured and systematic manner. I am in the perfect position to get this place back on track and organize it in a way that will help new people settle into it without trouble and keep things running.

I'm five days in, with fifteen left. I'll have helpers coming this weekend and in August, and hopefully the new volunteers in August will have a work ethic and share my desire to put this place back to rights. When I leave here, I want to leave something that JCN can take pride in. I want something that feels like a home.

Tomorrow I'm going to try to fix the vacuum, clean out the loft, and prepare the rooms for the people coming this weekend.

People keep telling me I don't have to work so hard, but this isn't obligation. This is me feeling alive.

JCN shelter day 3 (morning)

The dogs don't know how to play.

They have no toys. They sit around all day. They don't investigate food, they don't get excited about new things in the house. They accept change with aplomb, not with intrigue. They enjoy walks and they are clearly desperate for stimulus, but they don't expect it.

I contacted someone in JCN and let them know about the utter disgrace that's going on around here. They'll alert upper management. I'm also going to see how many people I can recruit from my networks to come up here for a few days, or a few hours, or anything, and just help me organize and clean. I honestly just want a few dedicated people to come up here, sit down with me and help make a plan, and then help me clean. There's just so much to do and the current occupants are spending more time in their alcove or out with a friend than they are in the house with the cats and dogs.

I cleaned one of the kitten cages the other day and it was filthy. "Oh you know, you clean it and they just make a mess again." BECAUSE THEY'RE KITTENS, ARE YOU STUPID?? If a baby shits its diaper, do you say, "Oh you know, if you change her diaper she'll just poop in it again." Duh??? You didn't sign up to take an easy vacation, you signed up to volunteer.

They've been here seven months and they haven't bothered to try making a dent in any of the mess around here. They didn't even try to clean out the fridge. Any time I mention doing something, they say, "Oh we have to ask the manager." You do not need to ask the manager before you take a broom and some wet paper towels and clean out all the filth in the cat rooms. You do not need to ask the manager before you sort through the piles of discarded laundry and make decisions about what's too old/dirty to keep and what should be washed. You do not need to ask the manager before you organize the dishes, before you clean the rat poop off the shelves, before you organize the canned food by expiration date, before you contribute the basic daily maintenance that would hypothetically be a no-brainer for anyone who has lived on their own.

What's gross is that even the bare minimum of cleaning that would be done in one's own home has not been done here. The human living spaces are just as disgusting. I don't trust the kitchen.

I'm doing a lot of ranting, but I am really frustrated. And due to that frustration, I am ridiculously motivated to change everything. There has been almost zero percent accountability around here and I am going upgrade that to 100% accountability. You don't get a day off when you have pets. You don't get to give up because it's hard. You are the only person they have, and you have to carry on for them. There are maybe 20 animals in this house who need me, and you better believe I am going to carry on for a month straight until this place is livable again.

JCN Shelter day 1&2

I have not written in forever but I am having a time of it cleaning up after other people's mess, so here we go.

Long story short, I volunteered to volunteer at the JCN (Japan Cat Network)'s animal shelter in Fukushima for a month this summer. I arrived yesterday. It is a disaster.

Imagine several years worth of temporary vacationing foreigners coming through and not giving enough of a shit about the state of the house to be proactive about keeping it clean. They don't organize, they leave their old food (and meds, and clothes, and toiletries, and blankets, and utensils, and literally everything else) behind. It piles up. Months and months of temporary foreigners couchsurfing the place and only doing the bare minimum to keep the house (and the animals) going.

This is what I have walked into.

There is dry mouse poop in the pantry, on top of cans of food that expired in 2015. Every cat room smells like pee. Little bits of random trash can be found on almost any given corner of the house. There are bins and boxes lying around with dust on them, full of god knows what. There are bins with labels that don't contain any of the things written on them. There is a porch with blankets flung over the railing that just sit out in the rain, getting old and gross. There is no place to put anything, anywhere. Most everything is old and worn, and none of it looks like it's been touched or gone through or disposed of in years.

This is what I'm going to try to tackle for the next month.

I'm sure some good people have come through here. I'm sure they want to help animals. But the video tour from 2014 is no longer remotely relevant. The house itself is holding up well, but it needs at least half a year's worth of hardcore cleaning (from people who are actually dedicated to cleaning it). Old stuff needs to be disposed of. Inventory needs to be taken. Everything needs to be organized and labeled.

I've cleaned out the fridge, wiped down most of the shelves of the pantry, organized the food by year of expiration (most of it is in the 2015 and 2016 pile) and amassed three bags full of assorted trash. I've started doing laundry with any decent looking blankets and towels I can find. I think I'll go into the nearest empty cat room and start sweeping up as much cat litter as I possibly can, and take out any blankets or towels that look gross and wash them. (Or trash them.)

The two girls who live here have been here for several months, and they said that the other housemates' apathy towards the work made them give up. Which, fine. Whatever. If you want to leave dirty dishes on the table at night and not toss your soy milk when you're done drinking it and blame it on "giving up" because of other people's actions, fine. But I tell you what, the older I get, the fewer fucks I give about other people's actions and the more I care about taking care of what matters. And what matters is this house, these animals, and their health. What matters is the work. It doesn't matter who does it. If you have to pick up someone else's slack for a bit for the sake of caring for animals who can't, then do it.

I've got a little under a month to see how much I can get done. Let's see how much I can get done.

(And god help any foreigners who come through in the mean time expecting a cheap place to crash, because you are pulling your weight or you are OUT.)