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April,
2006 |
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Dear friends,
One of our
supporters found the above picture and article in the Boston Herald and mailed
it to us, and it impressed me so much that I wanted to share it with you. Yes,
pit bulls are NOT what everybody makes them out to be, many of them are very
gentle and kind creatures. I have met more dangerous dogs among smaller breeds
than among those so misunderstood animals. So please, keep an open mind for
them! Sigmund Freud, the psychiatrist, would have probably stated that it was
all a matter of upbringing in one’s childhood.
From pit bull
to Easter bunnies is a bit of a far jump, but I can’t think of anything right
now to find as a connection between the two. Anyway, Easter was a nice one,
weather wise; all the snow was gone in Limestone, being the almost most
northern
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part in
Maine. Cathy O’Connor, the lady who is also very much involved in the
rescue of mostly cats, - acted as the Easter bunny and brought cookies
for the dogs. I had found a bunch of vanilla flavored ones for them
which were on sale, too. We also received extra cash and a couple of
Wal-Mart gift certificates to buy much appreciated treats, so all was
well at our Shelter. And I have no problem giving some human food to
them every so often, when I think that one of my own dogs was almost 17
years old when he died, and was fed lots of table leftovers, chocolate,
cookies and so on because he thought he was a person and would not eat
dog food. Well, it can’t be that bad!
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A
couple of months ago, when I said in my newsletter “It's raining dogs,” one of our supporters, Barb Anderson, sent me this card, saying she
could not resist it. Very funny. Not so funny is that it was really
raining dogs again in the week prior to Easter. First we took in a
German Shepard girl, 9 month old, scheduled to be euthanized the next
morning. Her crime was that she chased the horse of her owners and kept
escaping out of the fenced yard. She is not spayed; so another vet bill
is looming over our heads. Then we had a very disturbing call from a
lady who is also into rescuing animals, mostly cats. You may remember
that we had taken in several dogs from a Shelter in Dexter, they were
living there under really horrible conditions. Well, this lady called
saying she just pulled out three dogs, which were also going to be
killed, would we take them? So Ruthann picked them up. They were three
very nice, non-aggressive dogs, which should be easy enough to place.
Two of them had to be groomed the next morning. They were in such a
filthy state that there was no way for us to get them cleaned up. The
groomer is very nice to us and gives us large discounts.
THANK YOU to
Glover Lucky Pet Grooming! The next step is that all of them have to be
taken to the vet, none have shot records, and none are neutered or
spayed. Two of the dogs are chow-mixes, a mother and son. The 3rd
dog is a hound. The next day we came up on another bad situation: a
corky-mix, a fairly small and stocky built dog that had been locked in a
basement for the |
last
six months. The woman only let him out for a short walk every evening.
And, you guessed it –he is not neutered either.
So
these five new ones will have to be taken back and forth to the vet.
They have to get check-ups and their shots first, than we have to wait
several weeks before they can be spayed. We are bursting out of our
seams again – every single run is occupied. Thank God summer is coming –
as soon as the ground dries up enough we can put most of the dogs back
outside in the summer-runs.
With
all the vet bills hanging over our heads, and Mary who is also having
high expenses with a couple of cats, I am worried to the point where I
wonder how we are going to continue at the Shelter.
Donations have been steadily declining – we always had to make do with a
lot less money than Charley had, partially because I am not the type of
person who can call up our donors, begging for help, and partly because
your expenses are just as much on the rise as ours. We took in 20% less
money last year than the year before, this year started off even worse.
Our heating bills are at an all-time high, as are yours too, I am sure.
For five consecutive months we had to pay between $800 and $1000 each
month to keep the Shelter buildings heated. Our last invoice for the
month of March was $1006.47 and I had figured on half since this was not
a very cold month. Electricity went up 11%, and even though Ruthann
hardly uses the clothes dryer, but hangs the blankets on clotheslines
across the hallway in the Kennel, the average electric bill is between
$250 and $300, each month. Naturally when it rains, it pours; our
building insurance which we are required to have, fire and so on, went up to
$1600 yearly. And I don’t even want to talk about the vet bills. We are
getting a big break from Dr. Slack, our dog-veterinarian. One of our
dogs had to be taken to the Animal Neurological Clinic in Portland for
an examination, and even though we had never been there before, the
Doctor cut her fee in half. Instead of having to pay $119 she charged us
$65. We were very grateful for that break! Anyway, I am really afraid to
see what the future brings for our animals. With the cost of living
going up and up, support of the Shelter will be declining more and more.
I have no idea what we will do in the years to come about the heating
oil; it is just getting too high. And it’s not like we are wasting heat,
55 degrees is the highest setting on the thermostat in the kennel. So
unless someone wins the megabucks and sets up an oil-fund for us, I
really dread the future . . . |
CAT
REPORT – April 2006
Three pieces of good
news this month! Emery lets me pet him; at the moment, none of the cats
is sick (though Brook was – more about that later); and Baby is in what
seems to be an excellent new home.
Baby moved at the
beginning of the month to live with a couple about 15 miles from here.
Another cat I’d been fostering for someone else went with her, and the
people are pleased to have one cat for each lap when they relax in the
evening. They tell me Baby’s being good about taking her heart medicine
for them, as she was for me. It sounds as though all four are happy.
Brook, who’s almost 19
now, started feeling lousy and not eating. I took her to the doctor on
a Tuesday, and she had a thorough looking-over and blood work. The
report was fine – all her systems seemed normal, and the doctor thought
she was in excellent shape for her age. The only problem was she still
felt awful and wouldn’t eat. We went back two days later and this time
an X-ray showed her stomach full of hairballs. Laxatives solved the
problem, and she’s back to normal now. Because she’s a short-haired
cat, I’d not considered that possibility, though she does have a thick
undercoat and she sheds a lot (don’t they all?). Brook will let me comb
her for a short time. Purina/Meg, the last cat in the house who lived
with Charley before he died, and Black Peter, one of the funny-foots,
have similar coats, and neither of them will put up even briefly with
being combed. |
The other thing the
doctor found was a lump on one of Brook’s hind feet. That discovery
started me thinking about how seldom I pay attention to hind feet.
Heads, back, sides and tails frequently get stroked, and sometimes
chests and stomachs on a lot of the cats; and of course when the claws
on the front feet sink into my leg, front feet get attended to.
J
I’ve started trying to inspect hind feet, but I don’t get much
cooperation.
Emery, you may
remember, is the untamed black-and-white cat who came to me with Evita
and may be the father of Kennebec, the survivor of the litter she had a
few days after I took her in. Kenn is increasingly civilized, even
letting me pick him up and purring while I hold him. Evita, poor baby,
was never taught to groom herself; she’ll tolerate a small amount of
combing, though not happily. Emery used to duck whenever I reached a
hand to him, and if I persisted he hid under the bed. But two evenings
now he’s let me run my hand down his back three times while he eats! I
figure in another 10 years or so he may be a friendly cat. He likes to
hang out with Robin, our super-friendly black-and-white who sets a good
example for him….
We have real spring
now, with robins, peepers, daffodils, forsythia and today the first
dandelions. A bunch of cats have spring fever, or maybe it’s the full
moon that’s just past – anyway, they’ve been giving their toys lots of
exercise, staying out on the porch all night, climbing the screens and
generally acting like lunatics. It’s nice to have them so energetic.
Special thanks this
month to Jennie Bering for a donation that will help with the vet bill
and to Carol Jarosz for dry cat food. The Charles’ cat continues to
send canned food (when her humans went on vacation, she had them make a
double delivery before they left), and Teresa and her family provide
various kinds of support. And thanks, as always, to all of you who help
keep the place solvent.
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But
none of our trouble can compare with the heartache one of our supporters,
Janice Solimine, has to go through: Janice lost her daughter, Diane. All
of our people at Charley’s Strays are sending their condolences to you,
Janice. We received donations in memory of Diane, from Nancy Capone and
from Joanne Bonner. THANK YOU!
And
another one of our supporters, Sandra Nicholson, lost someone close to
her- her son-in-law, Paul Sommers . He died in December last year.
Shortly thereafter we received a donation in his memory from his wife
Debbie (Sandra’s daughter). It just took me a couple of months to unwind
the who’s who and why and so on. Since it had come from a foundation, I
had no idea who was behind this donation, which |
helped us
to catch up on our Vet bill.
THANK YOU so
much! Our Vet is smiling again, when he sees us.
Not all
was bad this month: Thanks to the following people who helped us
tremendously, be it with sending us much needed stamps, a package here and
there with goodies for the critters, a couple of gift certificates, and
the much needed MONEY to help buying and paying for the necessities of the
animals, we made it, again, through a very turbulent one: |
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Alice Winston, Swampscott
Carole Parker, Stoughton
Cindy Houston, Woburn
Cristine Cardello, Melrose
Dale Critchley, S. Weymouth
Dante Bartolomeo, Temple
Dorothy Andrews, Warwick
Dorothy D’Alessandro, Ossipee
Dorothy Eckstein, Medford
Elizabeth Johnson, Sanford
Enid Hayes, Halifax
Francis Archer, Canton
Harriet Snyder, Brockton
Iris Martinello, Tewksbury
Jim
LaVita, Dennis
Laureen
Alden, Stoughton
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Irma Simon, S. China
Jackie Lowney, New Bedford
Janice Clowes, Milford
Jenny Bering, Lynn
Joanne Bonner, Wakefield
Joe
D’Alessandro, Tuftonboro
Jon
& Barb Anderson, Augusta
Josephine Ford, Holden
Josephine Smith, Woburn
Judy & Al Smith, Belmont
Judy Rohweder, Northport
Linda Merriam, Dresden
Lorena & Harry Clark, Beverly
Marcia Smith, Bucksport
Roberta Chaves, Westport
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Marian Delarue, Woburn
Marie O’Brien, Pawtucket
Mary Klayda, Winchester
Nancy Capone, Wakefield
Naomi Teixeira, Jay
Priscilla Cote Piper, Windsor
Rust Pappathanasi, Swampscott
Ruth Willis, Braintree
Sandra Nicholson, Beverly
Susan Culver, Wayland
Sylvia Cohen-Bell, Newton
Viola McDonald, Woburn
Joseph Arouca, Ormond Beach
Lesley Tucker, Reading
Mildred
Walker, Presque Isle
Marlene
Kaplan, Melrose
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A big
THANK YOU goes
to Tom Parent, who not only helps Mary and our cats in many ways, but also
spent a lot of his time setting up an envelope-printing program for these
newsletters. This will make life much easier and cheaper. Not only are we
saving on buying labels, but also on spending time to affix them to the
envelopes.
THANK YOU
also to Colleen, who works in a local
hardware store (Galusha’s) and who paid for the 15 water buckets Ruthann
was going to buy to replace some of our old ones!
This
brings me to the end of April’s news. Wishing you a perfect sunny and warm
month of May |
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