Captain Huckleberry Finnegan: Where is he now?

Hey everybody, long time no see! We've decided to pop onto the blog to answer a recurring question: where is Finn these days?

When we found Finn in October at a park near Mark Twain's historic residence in Hartford, CT, we weren't one hundred percent sure what we'd ultimately do with him, but he was malnourished and hungry for affection, as well as full of worms so we figured giving him food, love, and care would improve his situation no matter what. Ultimately, as the end of our adventure neared and we made our respective plans, it became evident that living with either of us was not the best option. Kelsey moved into an apartment in Portland where she simply couldn't have pets, for starters. Tressa could have a cat in her new Los Angeles studio for a $250 deposit, but Finn was so lively and adventurous she felt hesitant to take an adventure cat and reduce his world to 450 square feet. Letting him outside in the busy, dirty streets near the apartment was out of the question.

However, Tressa's aunt, who was one of our very first project contributors and an avid animal (especially cat!) lover, mentioned to Tressa one day that she was considering acquiring a friend for her cat, Lunita. Sis lives on a big wooded hill with Tressa's other aunt and grandma, and their two dogs. They all agreed to see how Finn fit in, and at first things did NOT go well — Lunita was not happy with the prospect of sharing her domain with another feline and would make some wild sounds and chase him down when she saw him. For a while, we worried that things wouldn't work out. But as time has gone by, we are happy to report that our little ginger cat is adapting quite well, and has successfully persisted in trying to befriend Lunita.

Finnegan now has access to many trees, which he has learned to climb up AND down finally, and has taken to demanding snuggles from all human residents of the house. Tressa has been back to visit, and he trots up for butt scratches and treats but seems quite at home, playing outdoors and wrestling with Lunita. He is even bigger than Lunita now, and appears to still be growing. What was once a skinny little worm-ridden kitten is now a big, healthy, well-traveled and feisty teenager cat with vast stomping grounds and a loving family.

Before: Finn the day we found him.

After: Finn & Lunita today.

Our enormous thanks to Sis for taking in our little orphan — we know he couldn't possibly be in better hands!

Adventures in Domesticity

It's been a little over a month since we've returned from our road trip. Here's what we've been up to:

TRESSA 
Coming back to California was a bit of a whirlwind for me. Once we got to LA, Evan and I began apartment hunting and soon signed a six-month lease for a studio in the downtown/Koreatown-ish area. Our apartment is in a pretty rough part of town, but it’s cute and I’m enjoying the sensation of nesting for the time being, although in some ways being stationary has felt a little challenging. Evan is going to school at CalState LA and in the mean time I continue to do social media work from home and from coffee shops, and have been looking into working with animals and possibly volunteering at a local rescue or shelter. Of course, I also have quite a bit of writing and even more editing to do as I sift through my notes and impressions from the trip and begin to put together the pieces.





                                                                  KELSEY 
Slightly over a month after the culmination of our American exploration I’m sitting in a clean, amenity-ridden, third floor apartment in Portland surrounded by gray rainy skies, the pervasive scent of bacon and onions and donuts, and bustling downtown streets. Instead of wondering which can of cold soup to eat or when I’ll be able to shower, I wonder how low I should set my employment standards and what to expect from the expensive photography marketing course I’ve just enrolled myself in. I’ve been challenging the cozy, comfortable routine of sedentary life by running on drizzly forest trails, acquainting myself with my new city, and dreaming of the next adventure.







US
Now that we’ve had some time to get past the holidays and situate ourselves in our new home bases, we’ve started developing a system for working collaboratively from long distance. We’re using shared Google Docs to collaborate, breaking our journey down into small segments of time and scheduling to-do lists and weekly meetings for ourselves to discuss our goals, edit, elaborate, and continue building our photographic and written narrative. What you may not know is that we have a LOT more material that has not gone into the blog or onto our Facebook, in fact a lot of our favorite things we've saved for the final project.

We will probably not be updating the blog or social media accounts nearly as frequently since the work we are doing is a lot less externally tangible and exciting, but we’ll let you know how it unfolds and will definitely share more when we are nearing a finished product!