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…..
The Blog Dog
