Dropping In

I haven’t posted here recently….I’ve been busy, busy.  Crazy busy.  Mostly I have been chasing money around, a colossal bank snafu that has left us confused, angry, frustrated.  I sent Pet Connection $7,500 through my debit card and the money has vanished.  It’s not in my account; it’s not in the Pet Connection coffers.  What happened to it?  

Melody and I have been calling each other, calling the bank, the bank calling us.  We’ve talked to various people, with no clear solution in sight…and $7,500 on the lam.  We are completely stumped as to how a bank can totally mishandle money in this fashion.  We dismally shake our heads at the puzzlement and annoyance of it all.  Melody has a business to fund and run and I want to help out, and we both find this fiscal run-around rather ludicruous.

Cats

We go through all this stress for the animals….that is the bottom line.  Saving the animals. 

Animals — the very word rings with life and vivacity.   It comes from the Latin word animālis, which means “living, animate,” and is equivalent to anim(a), which means “air” and “breath.”  Anima is also another word for “soul.”  According to the Lakota Sioux cosmology, breath is sacred, and anything that breathes is holy.  Animals are sacred and holy; they are the perfect, pure creations of God.  I also see animals as angels who come to teach us and protect us.   They enrich our lives:  these very mortal creatures who are exuberant and innocent.

Animals not only fill my life with their busy presence, but they inspire my creativty.  Here is a poem I wrote about my cats. 

My Cats are Clowns

My cats have
sharp Egyptian heads
with gem-bright eyes,
and small, serious chins.
Their spines are elastic,
their tails sinuous,
their paws as dainty as
an infant’s fist. 

They sleep together,
bunched in dog beds,
or stretched on furniture,
gray, white, black and orange,
bodies elegantly twined,
soft, satiny coils of fur,
thrumming warmly.                                                                            

Crazy, curious acrobot cats!

My cats are clowns,                                            
comic Stooges,
that caper and carouse
and collude,
tumbling on the floor
like Chinese acrobats.
They stalk the dogs
and ambush them.
They attack feet,
and capture shoelaces.
They launch and land,
knocking over lamps. 
They decapitate mice
and haul in small birds,
feathers spilled like ash.
They pounce on crickets, moths,     
and autumn leaves.
They dart around corners
and swoop through
doors.

They greet guests like
a pack of happy dogs,
teeming.
They curl around ankles,
leap into laps,
and rub triangular cheeks
on the elbows of strangers.
Friendly, busybody cats,
who swarm and separate,
a herd,
a flock,
a school of foolish fish,
these animals who own earth
like pagan gods,
the simplicity of their lives
balanced against my
complicated one.

When I lay on the sofa,
cats congregate like crows,
perch on my chest and legs,
warm, weighty bodies,
soft bags of guts, skin and bone,
placed on me like poultices that relieve
the damage of my middle-age,
the disaster of my day.

They purr and my heart slips into
the rhythm of their comfort. 
All these cats,
their heavy lightness,
the rough softness,
their humming repose,
the succor,
the sufficiency of
their gentle opulence.

Movin’ In and Thoughts on Community

Will helping to clean the new building

The Pet Connection is on the move, into the new building.  Of course, this requires some work, punching holes in walls to create doors and cleaning up the place.  Will, the young son of the director, pitched in, wielding a Swifter and helping to cart around office and veterinary supplies.  A few animals have been relocated to the new building, though we’ll need to scrounge up more crates and cages to effectively utilize the space. 

I’d like to jump into the new building with paint, but don’t know if I’ll have the time, given I work full time.  Perhaps later I can rustle up volunteers who know how to handle a paint brush and we can whip the job out in a day. 

The Pet Connection takes donations of all kinds, from cleaning products, to dog and cat bedding, to building materials and labor.  They need kitty litter, bleach, paper towels, newspaper, and veterinary supplies.  Last week, an older couple came in who had adopted a dog from the shelter.  The woman measured all the cat boxes so she can crochet beds for each of them.   This is the kind of community interaction that The Pet Connection represents, people helping the people who help animals. 

Animals are a vital part of our community.  When a cat or dog becomes homeless, it is our responsibility, as community, to take care of them.  Of course, those animals are homeless because of a negligent human, one who moved away, or dumped an unwanted pet.  If owners are irresponsible, then animals depend on the community to step in and care for them.   What else can they do?  These animals are domesticated, cannot survive in the wild and we don’t want our communities menaced by their depredations.  So the animals come to us, seeking help from the ”community.”  Dogs, as social animals, fully recognize the importance of community in their lives, as do cats who, if not feral, understand community means “care.” 

Moving in supplies

You argue, “but people need to be responsible for their own pets.”  If we could make people behave responsibly, we wouldn’t need prisons.  That fact is, people will and do fail in their duties, whether it’s with taking care of pets, or raising children.  When that happens, the community works to take care of its more vulnerable members. 

Melody and I share a rescue experience that does not involve pets:  we have both rescued children.  I took custody of my niece, Alison, when she was ten, and Melody adopted her sister’s two children, Will and Neveh, as toddlers.  We both rescued these children from unstable environments and inadequate parents.  Sometimes, whenI fretted and worried over my niece, who tore through her terrible teens, I cried out like Job, “why me, god, why?”  I always recalled the answer:  because I care about my family and my community and I will take care of those who most need it. 

If an entire community take responsibility for the vulnerable ones, then it makes the task of caring for them easier to accomplish.  It also provides a support network for each of us.  I met many, many people who helped me raise my niece, who supplied me with unstinting support.  This community helped me parent a person — a valuable, intelligent, loving person – who had been abandoned and neglected.   Can’t we also do that for our pets who are like children:  innocent, intelligent and loving… and dependent on us adult humans for care?

I can only say this about my rescue experience of both animals and person:  it has made me strong, it has provided me with community, and it has set my moral compass on “full speed head.”

The Community of The Pet Connection: shelter employees at a weekly meeting

Last week, when I was at The Pet Connection, a pretty young girl came in.  There was a homeless cat in her apartment building and she needed help  re-homing it.  She worried about the cat’s welfare and didn’t want it get hurt, or to be left on its own.  The Pet Connection could not take the animal in, but we urged the girl to get the cat vetted (using our low-cost spay/neuter services) and gave her suggestions on how to find the kitty a home.  I did not feel our response was adequate, but The Pet Connection is overrun with adult cats and they are slow to adopt out, one cat leaving for a new home every other week or so.   We needed the young girl to help the cat in ways we could not.  That’s community.

Community reminds me of Bev Cox, who rescues cats. This Thursday, I happened to see her at the barn where I keep a horse (a rescue animal).  Susan Duncan, the stable owner, houses homeless cats in her several barns and Bev was there to check up on some new arrivals.  Bev and her friend (the name escapes me) asked me for fund raising help — writing grants, particularly.  They asked for The Pet Connection’s help too.  I agreed to help, because we are community.  Bev certainly is community, having taken care of abandoned cats as long as I can remember. 

Reba, my rescue horse: Horses, as herd animals, also understand the importance of "community"

I am kicking around ideas for fund raisers and have devised a good plan.  I’ll let you know about it in a later post, after I talk to the appropriate people and get the idea on the move.   For now, I will continue the blog, hoping that it teaches you something about animals and ourselves as humans who live in a complicated, but connected world….the next installment later this week…..

Building!

The new waiting room at The Pet Connection vet clinic

The Pet Connection moved in their new building on Wednesday, September 3.  I will be driving over there later to deliver crates and puppy pens and will snap pictures and post them here.  Please read Melody’s comment posted under “About” about the move.

Let me tell you a bit about Melody.  I met her years ago at one of my first Adopt-a-Pets.  At the time, I was new to rescue and volunteered to hold dogs at these events.   I remember Melody as an intent, committed rescurer and, to be honest with you, I felt a little intimidated by her.   A rookie at animal rescue, I soon learned how dedicated many rescue folks are….I can name so many people who taught me how to rescue.  Melody Kelso is one, Shirley Allen another, Margo Miller, Pat Munn, Mary Crafton, Connie Foster….so many big-hearted people who have devoted their lives to saving cats and dogs. 

Melody had been involved in rescue for several years and knows much about animal behavior and health issues.  She taught me a lot, and still teaches me a lot…her knowledge and the energy she applies toward animals continues to amaze me.  

 I eventually graduated from dog holder to dog foster home and, since I lived on 5 acres, set up several kennels.  I developed a strong liaison with Melody, the then Director of Animal Haven, and fostered a massive amount of dogs from her at one time.  I remember arriving at Animal Haven — a small,

The sad face of a dog in the shelter

 cramped building filled to its rim with barking, mewling animals – with my SUV full of crates.  Melody and I would walk through the shelter and pick dogs for me to foster.  I specifically remember a cattle-dog mix named Patches who needed to “disappear” to keep her away from unsuitable owners.  Patches was a clever and inventive girl who could jump fences and liked to test her owner’s intelligence in a variety of ways.   With Patches, I learned each dog I fostered taught me something new about canines, and Melody was always on hand to answer my many questions on how to solve their various problems. 

For the past several years, I fostered 5 to 15 dogs at a time, on top of my own crew of 7 dogs.  Eventually, I gravitated to brittany rescue and Melody left Animal Haven and began, on a much smaller scale, The Pet Connection, but we still networked in saving animals.   In another post, I will tell the history of The Pet Connection, from its beginning as a small rescue center in the mall to a busy, urban shelter that operates a low-cost spay/neuter clinic.

I do want to tell this story:  years ago, Melody helped me to save a small brittany mix puppy I had taken out of the St. Joesph shelter.  I got the puppy home, noticed she wouldn’t eat, then she began to vomit.   Melody swiftly diagnosed parvo.  I had heard about the disease, knew it killed quickly and cruelly. 

Puppies....these precious beings often do not survive disease in a shelter

 Melody supplied me with IV fluids and showed me how to inject them into the puppy.  I isolated her in a bathroom, put a heat lamp on her and for the next several days injected her with fluids.  Melody patiently coached me through this dire, but necessary process.  The poor puppy was so sick, her diarrhea laced with blood, her tiny body shivering.  She did survive, my first parvo puppy, who we named Millie Millipede.  The parvo stunted her growth, but she became a healthy adult dog who was adopted to a family with young children.

Melody and I would go on to save many more parvo puppies; some, however, we couldn’t save.  There was the time when we took in too many puppies at once and parvo killed half of them.  I will never forget hefting trash bags of these puppies’ corpses into the trunk on Melody’s old white Lincoln, and me driving them to Rolling Acres, who agreed to cremate them for a low cost.  I still visualize face of one dead puppy, a German Shepherd mix who had the grizzled black muzzle of the breed. 

In dog rescue, there is always heartbreak.  You cannot save every dog and cat.   You try and try, and they still die.  They are always dying in high-kill shelters.  As long as people do not spay and neuter and as long as they move and leave behind their pets, Melody will continue to exist, taking responsibility for animals who, due to human disregard and neglect, are thoughtlessly abandoned.  How many dogs and cats has she taken and rehomed?  I would guess thousands and thousands.  No kidding.  I’ve seen her work and her capacity for saving animals makes a huge difference to those forgotten pets fortunate to find her.

Touch a Pet

This morning, as I check my email before going to work, my “bumble bee” kitty, Liddy Kitty, hops into my lap.  She’s a chunky girl, with damaged hind legs that makes her hop and bobble about the house like a little bumble bee.  She came to me that way, a tiny, injured kitten, years ago, from the Independence, Missouri shelter.  I don’t know why she is crippled, but that doesn’t stop her from seeking heat and human contact.   Her loud and constant purr makes up for her rear legs that wobble and both drift to the right in a sideways gait.

Liddy Kitty, aka Bumble Bee, Cripple Kitty

She jumps in my lap and snuggles against my side as I type on my laptop.   I pause to rub her head and ears, and she tilts her head back in the bliss of an itch relieved.  I realize that this small, short activity prepares me for my day, a nurturing act that  trains my hands to perform in kind, gentle, supportive ways.  I am a teacher, so this prepatory activity is important to my interaction and success with students.  

 We all need generous hands, nurturing hands, gentle hands:  hands that belong to us and that we extended out to others, and hands that belong to others that are extended out to us.  Pets train our hands to become soft and smoothing; they train our hearts to become compassionate and caring.

If we pet our animals, they prepare our hands to behave calmly and beneficently.  Our pets teach us things simple yet significant to our emotional and moral well-being.

Liddy-Kitty purrs loudly as her neck is scratched

Saturday at the Shelter

A board member of The Pet Connection, I have decided to spend one day at the shelter each week so I can depict, in this blog, the trench warfare of animal rescue.  The Pet Connection is a special place:  you walk in, see cats lounging around like ladies of leisure.  They snooze on top of printers, curl in chairs, and lie draped on shelves.   A quiet, little dog wanders the lobby; he’s  a permanent resident, the shelter mascot.  The humid air rings with the smell cleansers mixed with animal odor, the fruity fragrance of shelter life. 

Stroll in and notice the makeshift furniture, bottles of hand sanitizer and post-it notes stuck to things.  There are crocheted blankets for cats to snuggle in and the door glass is smudged with fingerprints.  The  place reminds you of the comfortable but cluttered house of a large, warm, active family.  Indeed, The Pet Connection is a family:  a thriving community of animals and the people who help them.

Melody guides shelter volunteers

Today, Saturday, was my first day to work at the shelter….and what a day!  I had been warned that weekends were hectic at The Pet Connection, a lot of foot traffic, cats, dogs and humans coming and going, volunteers helping out, people dropping in with pet problems and families crowding in to view adoptable animals.  I walked right into the middle of the melee.  Phone ringing, cat meowing, dogs barking and human voices chatting….the energy level here is high octane, like a flood, a river, a pulsing sea.

I threw myself into the rushing current and bobbed along, trying to learn how the shelter operates.  My first task, though, was purely as a board member:  I sat and talked to Melody (the director) and Jason (shelter manager) about funding the acquisition of a new building in which to move the vet and spay/neuter clinic.   The new building sits directly behind the shelter and formally housed a sandwich shop (Gyros, Philly Steaks).  If we lease the building, we can rescue more animals, particularly those with medical problems. We can set aside space for parvo puppies and treat them, and we can take in injured animals and heal them.  The new building is a good thing and everyone, shelter employees and volunteers, are very excited to be getting it.  

But, of course, there is a financial side to all this.  I wish I had deep pockets so I could buy the building and hand it over to The Pet Connection, free and clear.  But a divorce and a battle with breast cancer have left me on a tight budget.  Nonetheless, I have money in savings and can secure a loan with my 700+ credit, so I agreed to come up with $7,500 to put toward first month and last month rent, and to pay the first rent payment.   We get the building September 1, this Tuesday, and we first heard about the building last Wednesday, so it’s all happening quite fast.

The building, designed as a restaurant, has ideal space for a veterinarian clinic.  It looks small on the outside, but inside it’s spacious, with a big area for reception (a former dining room), a side portion for exam rooms, a back section to be used as the spay/neuter room and a very expansive garage to be converted into an intensive care unit for sick and recovering animals.   We’ll need to paint, repair some ceiling tiles, knock out some walls, but otherwise the place needs minimal work.   I will be arranging some fund raising events to help defray the costs of acquiring the building:  it’s just too valuable of a space not to snatch up.

The front of the new building

Acquiring this new building will also allow the shelter to utilize its current space more effectively.  We can build more dog rooms and add to our catery.   It will also direct all vet traffic to another location and free up the shelter staff to handle pet adoptions and animal intake.   Actually, when I look at this building, I am rather amazed at how The Pet Connection has grown since my first association with it.  There’s history there, and I’ll tell that story later, for it’s a long, complicated one.   Melody and I go way back, both of us very committed to animal rescue….and there is a treasure of stories between us, each animal a story, and there are always animals, hundreds of them. 

Anyway, we worry the building may have a leak in the roof, and the lease requires we carry 2 million dollars insurance on it (we carry 1 million on our current structure).  These issues are still to be negotiated with the landlord, but we don’t see them as overwhelming and can certainly come to agreement on them.

Sitting with Melody, I ran fund raising ideas by her.  She liked my idea of putting together a wellness package of a yearly exam and vaccinations and raffling them off with virtual raffle tickets (can a raffle be held in cyberspace???).  I did learn that the microchipping and vaccination clinics bring in a steady stream of significant money, so I will organize a few of them north of the river.   We wrapped up our conversation discussing how the shelter makes its money by furthering its mission — community outreach that helps both pet owners and animals.

Ingrid gets out for a walk with her handler

The shelter volunteers really add a lot of activity and energy to the shelter.  Today, the community service kids came in, most of them boys who walk the dogs.  I saw them out today, leading their charges, and later they congregated in the dog room and played with some of the bigger mutts.  A bunch of youngsters horsing around:  natural and healthy for both two-legged and four-leggeds.  Barbara, the volunteer coordinator, does a good job overseeing these kids…more about her later.

Girl Scouts arrive to help take care of the animals

 Girl Scouts from Blue Springs also showed up, and handed out treats to the dogs and cleaned up after them.   Cute girls, though a few of them wore impractical sandals and flip flops.  Shelter work really requires beat-up sneakers, something that keeps the toes dry (and out of feces). 

Hopefully, these young kids, both boys and girls, will learn key lessons from the animals, and understand how important it is to take good care of them, not to abandon them, and to deal with them responsibly and with compassion.  I was raised with animals and cannot imagine a childhood without them. 

I remember when I was 11 or 12 a friend snubbed  me.  Painful, since I did not understand why I’d suddenly become an outcast.  I went home and sobbed on my porch.  My little black-and-white dog, Little Bitty Buddy, wedged his head in and licked my hands and face.  At that point, I realized how loyal dogs were and my heart forever went over to them.  They never snub me, make me cry, or treat me cruelly.  They always happily greet me no matter my mood.  To date, I value loyalty, having been taught its worthiness by dogs.  Are these kids who volunteer also learning to cultivate loyalty and kindness as lifelong values?  Dogs remind us again and again that loyalty is the nucleous love, kindness the staunch, sturdy legs of love.

The animals, of course, are the heart of the shelter.  I have developed an affection for Ingrid, a boxer mix who is so well behaved and ladylike that I want to take her home and keep her forever.  Another dog who has taken root in my

Noah gets out for an afternoon outing

heart is Noah.  Noah’s starved and sore-spotted body shows neglect and abuse but he is a calm, confident dog who loves car rides.  He’s an unusual looking creature, a German shepherd head with shar-pei skin.  I took him out for a car ride and walked him in the park.   Noah walks very well on the leash….kids ran by him and he wanted to go with them, but did not tug or bark or fuss.   He has a power stride, a macho dog who cruises the park as if he’s on an important mission (which includes strategically placing himself so that he can thoroughly mark a tree trunk, a plant, a bench leg).  In the car, he is content and mellow, sticks his nose out the window without thrusting out his entire head (it makes me nervous when dogs do this…I worry they are digging holes in my upholstery with their claws as they try to  balance themselves with heads full tilt to the wind — Noah’s happy to rest his nose on the edge of the open window and sniff the air).  

I’ll keep driving Noah around, walking him in the park, until he gets adopted. 

Well, it’s getting late.  I have more to tell of my day, but will pick up the tale tomorrow.   Please keep reading the blog and, if you can, click on the Pay Pal button on the Pet Connection website.  Send a fee to help sponsor Noah’s care, or drop a small donation to help out with the opening of our new vet clinic.  The blog will chronicle the move into our vet clinic and its Grand Opening.  Ta-ta for now…..

Inside the Pet Connection

This blog exists to provide you with an inside view of how an urban pet shelter rescues and rehomes animals.  Here we will feature the stories of pet rescue, the people and animals who are involved.  This blog not only seeks to reveal the inner workings of a busy shelter, but to educate you on animal welfare and care.   The Pet Connection invites you to often visit and view our stories as we work in the trenches to save the lives of animals. 

We appreciate your comments and, of course, your donations as we work to provide shelter, medical care and low-cost spay and neuter to animals in our community.  Please click on the link to the right to learn more about the Pet Connection and its mission.