Rikki’s has gone to the
birds !!!!
Once again this year ....
spring is upon us .... and so are the birds .....
Being the only un-fixed critters about (the
complications and risks due to their anatomy make us choose egg removal instead
to prevent babies) .... when the nights get shorter and the days
get warmer .... they have one thing on their mind.
We’ve always known the
peacocks and emus were non-discriminatory .... if you’re in the wrong place at
the wrong time ... or take on an “acceptance stance” ... like squatting down in
the Emu Estates .... well ... the boys think they got an invitation .....
This is the first year we’ve
had a turkey with no species discrimination .....
Aside from Mr. Turkey’s undying attention .... World Famous Photographer Wayne H. Morris had a great time at Rikki’s Refuge. So great in fact that a one day visit turned into two .... and then three and then .... he ended up staying a full 8 and a half days playing with and photographing the animals !!!
Vicki Gielen from Yarra Junction, Victoria, Australia was also visiting, and fell head over heals in love with Opie .... and Opie and all the animals with her!!
Aside from Mr. Turkey’s undying attention .... World Famous Photographer Wayne H. Morris had a great time at Rikki’s Refuge. So great in fact that a one day visit turned into two .... and then three and then .... he ended up staying a full 8 and a half days playing with and photographing the animals !!!
Vicki Gielen from Yarra Junction, Victoria, Australia was also visiting, and fell head over heals in love with Opie .... and Opie and all the animals with her!!
Vicki traveled further than
any other visitor ever before to meet the critters of Rikki’s Refuge.
Yarra Junction is a small
town of about 2,000 in Victoria, Australia, about 35 miles east of Melbourne's
central business district, sitting at the junction of the Yarra and Little
Yarra Rivers. The rural setting of
Rikki’s Refuge reminded Vicki of home.
I’ll be sharing Wayne’s
photos with you over the next few days.
Have YOU
voted today ???
Will YOU help me win the contest at the Animal
Rescue Site ???
Australian or not ... please vote for Team Vincent
today !!
It's real easy .... go here http://animalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/shelterchallenge.faces?siteId=3
and enter Rikkis Refuge in VA in the USA and follow the directions ...
it's easy, no information
collection, no spam .... just your vote ---
Help YOUR TEAM round up
votes ... vote daily and YOU can help me win $1,000 to feed my furry friends at
Rikki's Refuge. There are 1295 of us
.... well a couple hundred of them have
feathers ... but we feed them too. Vote
every day from every computer you have, home, office, phone and so on !!!!
Yikes
!!!! It’s almost the end of February
and we’re $15,000 short to meet our obligations .... it only takes $1 a day per animals to keep up with the bare
necessities, the food, the medical care, the bedding, the cleaning ..... yet with 1,296 animals ... that adds up ...
and adds up QUICK !!!
The good
news is that YOUR donations add up quick too !! A couple of bucks here ... $10 over there ... $25 here .... or
even $100 !!! It all adds up when YOU
our very own FAMILY reach out to help the animals you love !!!
We’ve
got $1,000 of canned cat food on the way .... the propane tank was just filled
... Vista’s getting older and his dental work was extensive, he lost most of
his teeth .... the rain has kept things so muddy the cows and horses are eating
hay by the truck load .... literally
... and it’s still cold enough all the livestock need grain ....
bedding costs are always higher in the winter .....
Please
.... would you share to care ..... It's easy, use the drop down arrow to let us know how much you can help right now ... then click the donate button. Thank you so much !!!
Thank you for caring enough to share !!!
Great big huge thanks to those of you who have donated to help the animals !!!!
Great big huge thanks to those of you who have donated to help the animals !!!!
| Kristina Zanotti |
| Emily Putnam |
| Karen and Straw Barnett Stanley |
| Wayne Morris |
| Winging Cat Rescue Inc. |
| Shawn Messinger |
| Fran Wilson-Julkowski |
| RoseMarie Romano Crean |
| Nancy Neimeth |
| Elizabeth Mustakos |
| Debra Berry |
| Jennifer Sullivan |
| Jennifer Webb |
| Karen Alcorn |
| Donna Savory |
| Emily Park |
Meet Oscar who's just arrived at Rikki's Refuge
(8:30 pm 2/25/13). He
continued to go down hill at another rescue till they found out yesterday he
was diabetic and they are not equipped to care for that. So we drove over the
mountains to get him last night. He will be seeing our wonderful doc today to
start getting his diabetes under control. He couldn't stop eating and needed
feedings every couple hours all night. He's got a monster case of ear mites,
awful diarrhea, and I couldn't get a purr till he'd downed THREE cans of food.
Poor baby. Paws crossed our wonderful doc can get him fixed up real quick.
We're already $15,000 behind on our February bills .... can you help Oscar
cover his expenses, Please? It only takes a buck here and a buck there to make
it all happen. Thank you http://rikkisrefuge.blogspot.com/2013/02/share-to-care_22.html
Meet Flicka
who's just arrived at
Rikki's Refuge (8:30 pm 2/25/13). This gal is guessed to be 10 years old, she's
rail thin, needs serious dental work, almost certainly has horrible flea
anemia, ear mites, the most awful diarrhea, and still is so sweet and would
rather purr and be held than eat. Though eat she did - all night long - small
feeding off and on and I think she's looking stronger this morning. Paws
crossed our wonderful doc can get her fixed up real quick. Gosh! It's just
figuring out where to start first. She is so weak. We're already $15,000 behind on our February bills .... can you
help Flicka cover her expenses, Please? It only takes a buck here and a buck there
to make it all happen. Thank you http://rikkisrefuge.blogspot.com/2013/02/share-to-care_22.html
Please pray with me that
we’ve gotten these kitties in time to save them. I wish we could help in so many more situations. But we really can’t take on more than we can
care for and more than we can afford.
Doing “rescue” means you’re always on the edge ... but you just can’t
let things totter over the side. We
have over 600 begging requests a day to care for unwanted cats and dogs ...
hundreds of shelters beg us to take their problem cases ... kill facilities beg
us to take there animals on death row.
If only we could do it all
... if only ... if only ....
I really had only room for
one more kitty in need, and I’d agreed to take diabetic Oscar. Little did I know how many other problems he’d
end up having, but hopefully they are all fixable. And poor little Flicka ... the question was “will you just look
at her and tell us what to do”. The
answer was doctor, fluids, meds, de-flea, de-worm, NOW ... But they can’t .. they’re out of funds ...
and so what would happen to her?
What could I do but say, “fine,
I’ll take her.” And we’ll do all we can
and pray for the best. I just hope we’re
in time, though I’m terribly worried about how long she’s been so in need, will
she have the reserves to make it now?
Please God, please let her.
Every penny donated to Rikki’s
Refuge goes directly to caring for the animals and we stretch your dollars
about a mile long .... thank you for your help. And thank you for helping us to catch up this February !!! http://rikkisrefuge.org/donate.php All donations are tax deductible! Thank you in advance and thank YOU for
saving lives.
THE INTERVIEW ... CONTINUED
Yesterday , or should I say Last Chapter, Mom was telling me
about learning about organizations that rescue animals, about the shocking
realizations of the vast number of homeless animals, and that many, back then
even most, were put to death, and about her first foster kitty Justin.
But back to my interview
with Mom. By the way if you missed any
past chapters, you can always look back in the blog to catch up. http://rikkisrefuge.blogspot.com/
Let's hear about what happened when she took Justin home as her first foster kitty.
Chapter 3 Vincent's
interview with mom.
Vincent: in the last chapter you were telling me about how
gut wrenching it was to discover what was being done to homeless animals, to
animals that had no one to take them home, and how looking into Justin’s eyes,
knowing he would be sent to his death if no one opted to take him home made you
become his foster mom and made him your first foster kitty ever. And so what became of Justin?
Mom: It's not that I was kitty-less at the time I made the
decision to take Justin home. I'd been
doing a bit of rescue on my own, not realizing that's what I was doing, or that
there were any groups of people who work together doing it. Stray kitties would show up, probably
because I was always feeding them, people would give me cats they didn't want
or cats they'd found, and I would get them “fixed”, which is what today we call
speutered, and I'd pawn them off on friends, family, coworkers, neighbors.
Before I met my first rescue
group, people were beginning to dread phone calls from me, especially the ones
that begin with, “I’ve found this cat”.
And so ... I arrived home
with Justin.
The Monster was a year or so
older than Justin, the youngest in my household, and a real crazy live
wire. This was the guy who walked on
curtain rods, would leap to the four inch hanging potted plants in the macramé
hangers I once had time to make and became the inspiration that led me to get
rid of all curtains, indoor plants, anything hanging or dangling, knickknacks
and anything breakable, and most anything else that can be destroyed by a cat
!! I'm telling you, this was a serious
learning phase in my life!
The Monster, who I guess by
now, you know how he got his name, was found on a cold snowy day underneath the
car in a parking lot on a busy road in front of the Chinese restaurant. Once again, here's my naivety at play. I’d crawled underneath the car to get this
little kitty, probably five or six months old, who was mewing and acting
frightened and lost. I ran back inside
the Chinese restaurant very excited that I'd “rescued” this kitty. “Oh look!” I said, “I found this kitty under
that car out there, you know who it belongs to?” I mean, of course, every lost kitty, has an owner who's
desperately looking for it right? Did I
detect a snicker from these people as one guy said, “awwl dat cat, he be living
under dat car many years, he have no home, you take him now pleaz.” Silly young thing said, “oh he's just a
kitten, he couldn’t have been living there for years, he must be lost, we need
to find his home.” Yet still, the owners of the restaurant insisted, “sat cat,
it got no home, you take it, you pleaz take it now. OK?”
And so I did. And no one ever answered the posters I put
up describing this wonderful lost kitty.
Well, I may have found out
why, not just because he was such a live wire, but he had a very serious
hernia, that would soon end up costing me quite a bit of money to repair. When my veterinarian said, “yeah, he was probably
tossed out because the people didn't want to pay to fix this”, I thought he
must be nuts, why would anyone deny medical care to help their kitty?
Anyway, back to the day
Justin arrived.
The Monster was always,
always, the first to run and greet you at the door, always, every day for the
17 years we had him. And so The Monster
was the first to meet Justin. And was
he ever excited to see another young guy.
He mewed and he talked and he put his paws in the carrier. When I opened the door, he rushed in to meet
Justin. Justin was a little shy at
first, but very quickly took to The Monster, and began following him
everywhere.
They were inseparable. They played. The Monster taught Justin how to be a naughty little boy. They drove us crazy. They made a smile. They made us laugh. They made our household happy.
Until the next Saturday,
when it was time to go back to adoptions.
Vincent: Oh it sounds
like Justin and The Monster were great friends for that week they spent
together. It’s so wonderful to have
friends. That was one of the things I
loved best about living at Rikki’s. All
the friends .... other cats ... dogs ... even chickens !!! And all the people who’d come to visit and
snuggle me. It’s so wonderful to know
you’re loved! Yes it is !
Tomorrow I guess we’ll hear about the wonderful adoptive home
Justin got !
Love you bunches,
Vincent and Opie
2013 is the Year of the Purr ....
Join the movement ... we’re adding purr to planet earth !
Look! It's a great
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"What Would Vincent Do?"
He'd "Purr More, Hiss Less".
Magnet is $5 each, plus shipping (65-cents for 1 magnet,
$1.05 for 2 for U.S. addresses). For other shipping costs (international, or
for more than 2 magnets) contact Melissa Felts dogslife24@comcast.net with your zip code and how many you
want. Purchase your magnet TODAY
right here http://rikkisrefuge.org/donate.php
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