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| Sydney and Piper, and Big Bro Rudy |
I know the dates are bit behind, but we had a good outpouring of love to feed a cat for Christmas. So, we keep going! But today is actually New Years Eve, and I have been reflecting:
Another Year Over... And we have done
well.
Still so much more to
do.
I say ‘we’ because without the support you have given to me
none of this could have been possible.
To begin with the homeless and feral cats of some of
Rochester’s inner city have been fed and sheltered. The donations of food,
shelters and straw have been critically important. Every morning those starving
mouths are waiting for me. I can never really know what they think of all this
food that comes around for them but I do know that without that food their
lives would not be as comfortable as we have been able to make it.
Then there are the cats that have been trapped to be taken
to Rochester Community Animal Clinic. Returning them to the streets is always
extremely stressful but sometimes I find a cat that can be successfully adopted
and placed into a loving home. That is why we are a rescue organization.
My Saturday mornings are invariably out on the roads
delivering my rescues to these homes. So often I would love to be at home
cooking up some new recipe but this final moment in the rescue process is the
completion of what is a very long road. This is why we are a rescue
organization.
We are a rescue organization like few others. No one is
assigned a job and asked to report back to a meeting a later time. Without
being asked people do what they can to help out. By donating food or fixing up
a shelter or by donating money and in so many other ways somehow it always
seems to come together.
Many years ago when I first started doing this crazy little
thing I was truly shocked by the number of homeless cats that were out there.
It was not unusual to come across a place where there were 20 to 30 cats.
Through sheer hard work and persistence the numbers
have been reduced to a point where I no longer have to go and feed cats at
those places. But cats breed and they breed extremely quickly. Kittens have
once again been a prominent feature of our rescue operations in 2018.
It’s no longer good enough to stand by and just accept this.
Government does have a role to play. Allowing cats to breed uncontrolled on the
streets is not acceptable. The City of Rochester has a huge role to play here
as does the County and the State.
Abandoning your cats and forcing them onto the streets should be an
offense. Yes it is difficult to enforce but just letting everyone know it is
not acceptable to abandon a cat. Animal cruelty has become a top issue for so
many of us but we cannot become complacent. The fight keeps going on and on.
So another year is over and to the question, ‘what have you
done?’ we can answer, ‘we’ve done a lot to ease the suffering of these not
quite forgotten cats. We have so much more to do.’ Let’s make 2019 an even better year.Happy New Year! XOXO
