Project MEOW trappers like to make certain that their feral cats are well cared for during their spay or neuter surgery. Here’s Merlot, a newcomer to an established colony, being held in a warmed towel while he recovers from anesthesia. While PAWS is often used for local feral cat spay and neuters, The Spayed Club in Sharon Hill will hold feral cats overnight, which helps trappers make certain their cats are mostly recovered before being returned to them.

If you have too many unowned cats on your block, why not consider getting in touch with some of your neighbors and getting involved? Project MEOW can show you how to trap, may be able to provide transportation and recovery, and has traps to loan with a small deposit. It takes a team, and a lot of like-minded neighbors to solve a problem, but if many people volunteer to trap on their own blocks, very soon you will begin to see a lot less stray cats and kittens wandering around.

Project MEOW volunteers have reduced the numbers of kittens born every year on their own streets, often working alone or with one other neighbor. Want to stop the tide of spring kittens? Contact info@projectmeow.org to see how starting now can make a huge difference during the 2014 “kitten season.”

(Project MEOW’s Tracylea Byford contributed to this post. Photo credit: Dr. Sarah Alexander of The Spayed Club in Sharon Hill)

Editor’s Note: West Philly Local is proud to present the third in a series of vignettes of local block captains drawn from Them That Do, a multimedia documentary project and community blog by West Philly-based award-winning photographer Lori Waselchuk. Check Them That Do for more information, updates and additional photos.

Anita Harris’ inspiration to become block captain didn’t seem particularly ambitious when she started. “I needed something to do,” she explained.

Anita was already working fulltime as a secretary and raising her two daughters.  She simply wanted to make her block of 5300 Wyalusing safe and clean.

But I’ve learned to listen closely to Anita, because behind her efficient language is an ocean of commitment.

Early in Anita’s term as block captain, she met Skip Wiener of Urban Tree Connection. Skip’s organization was working with residents in the Haddington neighborhood to plant flower gardens and trees to rehabilitate crime-ridden vacant lots. Anita joined their efforts and was able to help build several gardens on and around her block.

Five years ago, Skip told Anita that he wanted to start growing food.  It was then that Anita devised a monumental plan for the ¾ acre abandoned lot behind her house.  The lot was once a construction company’s storage site, but it had been abandoned for over 30 years and still contained buried drums of oil and other hazardous construction waste.

“Why don’t we build a farm?” Anita asked as she showed Skip the property.

Skip remembers seeing the lot for the first time. “It was a nightmare. You couldn’t see a foot into the property because the weeds were so high. The space was being used as a chop shop, there were fires, nighttime prostitution, and drugs. It was a very dangerous place.”

For five years, Skip and Anita worked with residents, the city, volunteers, and organizations to clear the lot, remove the waste, replace the soil, and build an urban farm.  It has been slow and intense work, but The Farm at North 53^rd and Wyalusing is fully functional with three greenhouses, a packing shed, cold storage and compost stations.

The Farm produces and supplies fresh vegetables and herbs that are sold to Neighborhood Foods farm stands throughout Philadelphia. Anita spends her Saturdays picking, packing and selling the produce at the vegetable stand on the 600 block of North 53^rd Street, right around the corner from her home.

The 53^rd Street farm stand will open once more this year on Saturday, November 23^rd from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. to help families prepare for Thanksgiving.

Preparations have begun for the Bartram’s Garden Greens Sale, which is on Saturday, Dec. 7 (more about it later). Volunteers are sought who can lend a hand to help support this popular annual event. Volunteers are needed from Sunday, Dec. 1 – Saturday, Dec. 7 for a variety of tasks, including decorating wreaths, assisting in the Garden Shop, and greeting visitors. Click here to sign up to volunteer.

Please note that volunteers who share their talents for 10 or more hours in one calendar year can receive a complimentary Bartram’s Garden Membership. Click here for more details.

(Photo courtesy of Bartram’s Garden)

SEPTA has unveiled a very cool subway car today – it is fully wrapped with a colorful mural! The project is a collaboration between SEPTA and the Philadelphia Mural Arts program. This moving mural is titled “We Are All Neurons” and was designed and created with the help of local students participating in the Mural Arts Local Emerging Artists Projects (LEAPs). The students worked with the mural artist Benjamin Volta to “visualize their own brains as interconnected idea machines.” They drew hundreds of neurons, and they worked together to design a colorful vinyl wrap for a subway car.

The car with the “moving mural” was launched this morning at 69th St Transportation Center and will be used on Market-Frankford line so we hope you’ll be lucky to see it and ride in it.

A West Philly Local reader, Katie, spotted a tan & white female Pit Bull around 9:30 this morning trotting east on Spruce street and then turning south and heading down 46th street. “She had big half-perked up ears and had a power cord  knotted around her neck that it looked like she had chewed through to escape,” Katie writes. Another reader, Madeline, reports via our Facebook page that she saw the dog by the Shop N’ Bag at 44th St. at around 8:35 a.m.

If you have any information about this dog or if you see her, please post in the comments below.

Kalachakra (The Wheel of Life) colored sand mandala.

Don’t miss the chance to see the Tibetan artist, meditation teacher, and former Buddhist monk Losang Samten at the Philadelphia Folklore Project (735 South 50th St). He returns for his annual residency at PFP from Monday, Nov. 18 to Friday, Nov. 22 and will be working daily from 1 to 7 p.m., to create “The Wheel of Life” mandala in colored sand. All are welcome to stop by and observe Samten through the spiritual process of creating The Wheel of Life. The program is free. Please visit this page for more information about Samten and his project.