I’m Vincent D. Cat and here to make you happy! You are HEROES! You work hard every day and you deserve to smile every day! Those of you working to save us animals hear so very many very sad things. And there’s lots of very glad things too and that’s what we talk about here! All pawsitive all the time! I want my friends to be happy and smile and know there’s a lot of good - including YOU - in this world!! Be kind and pass it on! Please send me your Good New and Fun Stuff to share, personal or global. Let’s keep it fun and interactive!! After all, if we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane! Vincent@RikkisRefuge.org 
It’s Friday and it’s Free Food Friday num num num
send an email to Giveaway@freekibble.com with the subject "Shelter Giveaway" on Fridays to enter PetCo’s drawing for a $50 PetCo Gift Card every weekend. A winner will be chosen at random every Saturday. It may as well be YOU! http://www.freekibblekat.com/giveaway.asp
My Favorite Quotes, Today
"Never worry about numbers.
Help one person at a time,
and always start with
the person nearest you."
- Mother Teresa
And remember, person is a non species discriminatory word!! It does NOT mean a hooman, it means any living breathing soul!!!!
"Alone we can do so little;
together we can do so much."
- Helen Keller
No kidding! Just look at what you’ve accomplished working together at Rikki’s Refuge!!!
Refuge News
You didn’t get a Good Morning Good News yesterday cuz you got a Hairball !!!! My paws were just too tired to type any more!!!!
Wednesday Rene came out to bring supplies, Dennis brought food, num num num, and Mary spent the day working in the office and diligently logging in your tax deductible end of year donations. Do you have a check sitting there that you wrote on December 31, 2010 so you can get a tax deduction and you just forgot to mail it? That’s ok - get it in the mail quick, and it still counts. Rikki’s Refuge, PO Box 1357, Orange VA 22960.
Mom and me made a road trip to pick up three more of Ellen’s kitties. Remember my friend who died and left behind some outside semi feral kitties? Mom let me drive part of the way but I kept stalling out in the middle of intersections so she made me get back in my car seat and watch how to do that clutch and brake and gas - that’s really hard, three peddles with only one leg! I hope I get the hang of it soon or winter is over and we can start using the truck with automatic transmission again. I think I need to be an octopus to drive a stick!!
Cindy Lou got adopted and is really really happy in her new home. She’s a young very healthy cattle dog and lab mix. Really nice. She came to Rikki’s a few months ago hoping to be a mascot, run around doggy. But she just couldn’t get used to the chickens so she never earned her running rights. She got really fat the few months she had to live in a kennel and only go on walks with hoomans.
Now she’s in a home of her own with a hooman who’s home most of the time and with a nice big back yard too. Just get a progress report this morning and she’s doing great!!!!
Help us help others like Cindy Lou!
Help us help others like Cindy Lou! I’m hoping one of our self service volunteers can come to help today. Nobody came to help us yesterday or yet today!!
Watch upcoming events for Volunteer Training!!! It’s the best way to spend your time. Whether you have a couple hours or a couple days - volunteering at Rikki’s Refuge is the way to go! And if you live too far away to physically be here - there’s lots of things you can do from where you are - anywhere in the whole wide world!!! Just let us know where you are and we can let you know what to do to help us save animals. Rikki’s isn’t just local, it’s global!
Soon as I send this to you mom and me are going to go pick up medicine at Culpeper Animal Hospital that helps some kitties bladders work better. It’s really good for the ones who’ve been in accidents or have birth defects and have trouble peeing on their own. In some cases it means they can potty on their own. And for others it means expressing their bladders is easier and more comfortable.
Then we’ll go to Culpeper Pharmacy and pick up syringes for insulin for the diabetics. We need really small syringes for that cuz we have to measure out itty bitty bits like 1 or 2 units for some of them.
A friend of mine ran across this the other day and sent it - it’s a story about us from 2007!
HELP needed at Feral Cat Speuter Clinic
The next VFA Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Clinic will be on Saturday, January 15th, just a little over a week away. We still have several volunteer stations that are not fully staffed. Can you help us on the 15th? We still need volunteers for:
**Anesthesia Transporter
**Surgery Prep (Shaving)
**Spayboards
**Afternoon Recovery
**Trap Cleaning
**Vet Assistant
**Friday the 14th Set Up from 4 to 6 PM
**Clinic Clean Up from 3 to 5 PM
**Laundry
We need your help! Please let me know as soon as possible if you can volunteer on January 15th. Dian dian1021@hotmail.com Also, we have a few available spaces at the clinic for cats from Charlottesville/Albemarle County. To make a reservation for these, please call: 434-979-1200.
With your help we're able to save ferals that end up in pounds and to help with TNR projects.
Live from Vincent Video
Meet Lena
and see her making up my medicine! I won’t eat my gunky medicine if she crushes it up and puts it on my food. I’d starve before doing that! And the pills are big and when broken into a little part of me the edges are sharp so it could hurt my throat. Never mind about how my teeth could hurt Lena’s fingers! So Lena crushes up my meds and puts it in capsules that are easy for me to swallow. Lena, you better not tell what my meds is for!
Discipline
Yeah yeah yeah, that’s what they say I need when I see the platter of nums go down. Ha! Not me!! But it is what it takes to keep Rikki’s Refuge running every day. Discipline to do the same job over and over, our litter box will never be clean, the trash will never be gone, the floor will never not need mopping. And it’s over and over and over again. As long as we’re alive, we’ve got to be cleaned up after and pampered. Yeah!!! Pamper me!!!
Even when they’re feeling a little sick, or tired, or board, my hoomans have the discipline to keep at it and come back and do it again and again and again. Cuz they know it’s not really about cleaning up one more pile of poop. It’s really about giving us life and love! The poop is just incidental!
Stick to it ness is really important in keeping Rikki’s Refuge going and all of us happy. That’s why no matter how hungry I am, I always try to stop eating long enough every day to write to you!!
Tails of Trivia?
January 7th is international “I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore Day”. So I’m putting my foot down - I won’t eat nothing but Fancy Feast until ..... well until ... well until I get hungry enough, so there!
The placement of a donkey's eyes in its' heads enables it to see all four feet at all times.
---- Well now can’t most of us see all our feet? I sure can? Can you?
The reason firehouses have circular stairways is from the days of yore when the engines were pulled by horses. The horses were stabled on the ground floor and figured out how to walk up straight staircases.
---- Now I can understand that! Copper was our first horse and he thought he was a doggy. He followed us all over and he tried to get inside the 9th Life Center all the time. Our current horses would walk on over to the neighbor’s horse farm so they have to stay in their fence in their neighborhood, called Horsey Haven.
Music and Motion
Oh no! Look what mom is threatening to make me learn how to do!
I think we need a doggie trainer to come teach Duke some of these tricks!
Good Times in the News
Even I gotta admit this is a cute doggie!
Disabled son and mother changed a neighborhood, touched lives
Dayton Daily News, By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer
Jeff Neargarder never graduated from college.
He never held a job.
Never spoke a word.
Yet if you asked me to name the most influential kid in my childhood neighborhood, I would say without hesitation, “Jeff Neargarder.”
I wouldn’t have thought so at the time. A tumor damaged Jeff’s brain when he was 6 months old, leaving him unable to walk and talk. Yet Sandy and Jack Neargarder saw to it that Jeff, the third of their six children, was just another one of the neighborhood kids.
We didn’t understand what a gift we had been given, not only by Jeff’s cheerful presence, but by the way his family integrated him so seamlessly into the neighborhood.
Back then, special needs kids were rarely if ever mainstreamed into neighborhood schools and classrooms. My generation of kids missed out on a lot.
But we didn’t — thanks to Jeff and his family.
Sandy wasn’t offended when one of her children’s friends asked, “What’s wrong with your brother?” or the neighborhood kids lamented, “Why can’t he come out to play?” She seized upon it as a learning experience.
“He can’t come out and play,” she explained, “but he likes it when you say hi.”
She would take the kids for a spin in Jeff’s wheelchair. We thought it was great fun, until Sandy said, “Just remember, he can’t get out.”
Added Sandy, “I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for Jeff. I learned patience and love and how to fight and be an advocate for your kid and his needs.”
In the process, the Neargarder family taught an entire neighborhood how to embrace a child with disabilities. He inspired my sister Beth, who frequently babysat for Jeff, to become an occupational therapist. She now works with special needs children at Aaron W. Perlman Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“Jeff was my first special needs child,” she reflected.
Father Chris Worland summed it up in his eulogy (he passed away at the age of 48 last month) at the funeral Mass.
“Jeff couldn’t talk,” he said, “but he could motivate. His mother told me, ‘Jeff was put on this earth to teach us how to love unconditionally.’ ”
Great Purrchases / Donations (that we need this week)
Metal Pitch Forks (2-4 of them, the plastic ones are breaking while shoveling frozen dung!)
Paper Towels (we need about 6 rolls a day, it’s more sanitary and sterile than sponges)
Canned Cat (we need 16 cases a day) - anybody near Waynesboro? Barbara can get us stocked up on 5.5 oz cans of good food for only 25 cents a can. Martins in Culpeper also has cat food at that price.
Canned Dog Food (we need 4 cases a day) Martins or Aldi is Culpeper has the best price
Laundry Detergent (we need to do 22 loads a day)
30 Gallon Trash Bags (we need 26 bags a day)
Dish Detergent (we need about 16 ounces a day to wash to wash 317 bowls, plates and platters)
Donation Drop off Noon - 2 pm every Saturday !!!
Can’t make it out this weekend but still want to help? Upcoming Events
January 8 SATURDAY PUMPKIN PICKING - 7:30 am meet us with a truck or just to help pick up and put in our trucks. Miller Farm is just past Fawn Lake about 20 mins from the Refuge. The address is 12101 Orange Plank Road, Locust Grove, VA 22508. Contact Katarina to help out: katarinagalvin@yahoo.com
January 8 SATURDAY HOUND DOG DAY - In honor of the birth of Elvis Presley on January 8, 1935 we celebrate all Rikki's Dog's Birthdays today. Come and honor Rikki's Hound Dogs, bring them treats, take them on walks, adopt one.
January 8 SATURDAY SINGLES DAY - 10 am - 4 pm - Something for everybody. Come and do a day of service at the refuge and meet like minded souls.
January 8 SATURDAY Donation Drop off, noon - 2 pm, got something to drop off quick? The gates will be unlocked. No tour at this time, just drop off. Donation Drop Off will be available every Saturday from noon - 2 pm in 2011
January 8 SATURDAY TURNIP PICKING - 2 pm with or with out a truck, you can help pick up and load. Sneads Farm address is 18294 Tidewater Trl Fredericksburg, VA 22408. Contact Katarina to help out: katarinagalvin@yahoo.com
January 9, SUNDAY TOUR THE REFUGE - NOON Sunday mini tour, take a walk around and see the animal facilities. Every week on Sunday you can join a mini tour where you can walk around from animal neighborhood to neighborhood, from Piggy Paradise to Horsey Haven and see the animals. One tour only, starts at noon. Please be prompt.
January 9, SUNDAY ADOPT A REFUGE DAY - help clean up the refuge like others clean up the highways. Sign in and get your garbage bags. Who ever can fill the most from debris that's been blown about and has migrated from the woods, wins.
Lots of Love,
Vincent
PS You tell me what you want! Email me at Vincent@RikkisRefuge.org with instructions to change your subscription: additions, deletions or modifications! Subscriptions: Vincent’s VIPs - up to the second alerts about issues at Rikki’s Refuge for those who care and want to be intimately involved. Scheduled as needed. Good Morning Good News - a little something to get you going in the mornings, for those of you who want to keep smiling with us! Scheduled daily. Hairballs - so you know what’s coming up at Rikki’s! Scheduled weekly.
Rikki's Refuge, supported solely by private donations, houses over 1200 animals of 22 species. On line at http://bit.ly/Give-a-gift-to-Rikkis Checks, money orders, cash, items at Rikki's Refuge, PO Box 1357, Orange VA 22960
Rikki's Refuge is owned and operated by Life Unlimited of Virginia, Inc., an IRS 501(c)(3) not-for-profit Virginia Corporation, tax-id 54-1911042. Combined Federal Campaigns #77674, Commonwealth of Virginia Campaign #3163, PetsMart Charities #1377. A financial statement is available upon written request from the State Office of Consumer Affairs.
Learn more www.RikkisRefuge.org and help spread the good word, tell everyone you know about Rikki’s Refuge
