Letting it all out . . . just this once.

Update: Justin contacted Buzzfeed and asked them to take the photo down.  They complied!  So if you follow the link below, now you will read about a man who was "beaten, robbed and stripped naked on a first date."  Much funnier!

I try to keep my facebook and the blog relatively "rant-free."  I tend to get worked up when I read other people's rants on facebook, mostly because I completely disagree with whatever they are ranting about and sometimes it is so hard to keep your mouth shut. . .

But I feel like I have to at least respond to Justin's picture being on buzzfeed.com.  You can see the article (if you can call it that) here.

Or maybe you've already looked at it via my facebook page.  Justin is featured as No. 18.  And Amy wasn't the first to point it out to me - another facebook friend private messaged me about it this morning.  My first reaction was to laugh.  Seriously, I thought it was really funny. Anyone who knows Justin and I will attest that we both have great senses of humor and not much can phase us (our favorite tv show is "It's Always Sunny in Philadephia" after all).

However, as the hours ticked on today, I started to get ticked off.  I felt the need to stick up for Justin.  I definitely feel no need to stick up for the state we decided to move to, because it is often the laughing stock of the country and we have already made our peace with that.  Florida has some great attributes and it's sad that those don't get featured very often on a national level.  But our lawlessness is not always something to celebrate.  While we like that we never have to get our cars inspected or the emissions tested (EVER), we don't like that our county thinks that "feral cat colonies" are a good idea.  What is a feral cat colony?  Well, in our county, anyone can register a "colony" as long as they promise to spay/neuter the cats.  No one checks up on them to find out if they are doing this.  They are not required to get rabies shots, or treat for fleas, or anything else really.  As of right now, we have 535 registered colonies in our county.  If each one has at least 10 cats (and that's lowballing), then we have 5,350 wild cats running around.  Do you think any county would let this fly if it was 5,350 wild dogs?  Oh hells no.  Not to mention that cats that are part of these feral colonies often die of very inhumane causes - getting run over by cars, fights with other animals, etc.  They also mess with the ecosystem because it's not "natural" to have wild cats.

I also feel like I should stick up for Justin because now this little blurb of No. 18 on a list completely misrepresents the situation.  He becomes the butt of a Florida joke, when really he was working his butt off trying to protect his family - his pregnant wife and our unborn child.  We had a really hard time when we first moved into our house.  Imagine the first day you move in to your supposed "dream home," and your dog immediately gets fleas, you realize the house is infested, and you awake to the sound of a feral cat fight right outside your bedroom window.  Yes, that happened on day 1.  As the days went by, we realized that we were surrounded by "feral" cats. (Feral means wild by the way).  30-40 of them by our counts.  They were pissing and pooping all over our property.  If I opened the kitchen window while I was cooking, I would find 10 cats meowing right outside.  We couldn't leave the garage door open ever because they would come right in.  Cat feces is extremely dangerous to pregnant women - so dangerous that it can cause miscarriages.  Pick up ANY baby book and they will tell you that by no means should a pregnant woman even be near their own cat's litter box.  The other thing about this that really gets me is that it makes it sound like we live in some crazy ghetto disgusting area.  Instead, just four houses down from ours, homes on the river are selling for seven to eight hundred thousand.  We live 0.8 miles away from the beach.  We live in a nice area.  But no one would know that from the crap we were going through.  There were many days when we weren't sure if we weren't going to be able to continue to live in the house.  Justin started doing his research and met with the county commissioners.  Local news sources started interviewing him because we live in a small town, where feral cat colonies are big news.  Hence, the picture on buzzfeed.  Justin spent hours upon hours researching, making phone calls, taking off work to attend county meetings . . . he put his heart and soul into fixing our problem.  And he succeeded.  We no longer have any wild cats next door.  And no one will ever know that about "18. Justin: Doesn't like cat colonies."

As for No. 37, I don't know what his excuse is.  But who knows, it may be a great one!