A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon a group of people on Twitter who referred to themselves as “Ani-pals,” whom I discovered were people who tweeted on behalf of their pets and had made friends with other like-minded individuals. Hence, they had become animal pals, or shorten to Anipals because when you’re limited to 140 characters or less to express a thought you abbreviate . . . a lot. (and yet another reason the English language and grammar is doomed, but that’s another rant for another time.)
I bring this up for a reason, through the process of gaining followers on Twitter and reciprocal follow backs, I have swapped tweets with many wonderful people, many of whom like I and my husband had gotten into animal rescue “accidentally,” having been seduced by the precious face of one of God’s purring or barking creatures. For us it started innocently enough by watching the elderly lady next door and her porch-full of semi-feral cats that she would feed. Not being a cat person, it was a source of amazement to me to watch the cats gather as if by announcement by their own Feline News Network that a snack would be available, and the various routes that they would take to get to her front door. At time it seemed like they had transporter technology because one moment the porch was completely empty and the next they were there. As time progressed, it became apparent that these cats were simply not getting enough to eat so every couple of days, we started putting food out, too.
As this was during the time that the both of us were working from home, I was afforded the time to observe these furry creatures just being themselves from our kitchen window while doing dishes and was able to connect the dots so to speak and make correlations between cats and how they treat us and how we treat our Lord and Master. A paper came out of it: Curious about Kurios and Cats where I discuss my observations and how we became cat people.
Now to the subject of Thursday nights:
….having been introduced to this group of people and reading their tweets, I discovered that not only were they animal lovers but they supported animal rescue charities as well and held fund raiser events on Twitter. They called them “Paw Pawties” and used the hashtag of #pawpawty in their tweets so other people could sort and follow what was going on. I “attended” my first one in April. It had a Science Fiction theme and was a birthday pawty for Boris Kitty’s human dad. It was a little intimidating as most of the group had been pawpawtying for over a year and they had their own lingo and talked about things like Niptinis and Bacon! Beer, but with a photo-shopped picture of our Obi-wan Katnobi as his namesake for my avatar and watched and learned. An actual PawPawty itself is best described as a virtual reality gathering of like-minded individuals either tweeting on behalf of their pets or as themselves, (the majority are pets) and carrying on as if they were at an actual party. (Think LARPing but online.)
The following month, someone had a brilliant idea to create a weekly ‘pawty’ gathering where people could hang with their friends in a more casual manner, relax and have a good time like the 1980′s TV series Cheers …and #nipclub was born. since then, as my work schedule permits, I pop onto Twitter and chat and share a virtual cocktail and have had the privilege of meeting some of the nicest “folk” around.
You can read a fantastic article in the Anipal Times about Nipclub’s origins here.
Nipclub is getting ready to celebrate it’s 2nd birthday on May 12th and I’m glad to be a part of it.