06/16/2026
After yesterday I’m just laying this on my business page. That little one we found in the lot still needs a home. Bottom line don’t dump your unwanted animals!!! Be the bigger person.
We're breaking the barrier of raw reality today, and fair warning, this is a long read. Audra, one of our managers, wrote this, and honestly? It needs no introduction. It stands alone as a powerful glimpse into our world. ❤
"We've had multiple cats dumped at our gate this month. This is animal cruelty, and you can argue with a wall about that.
We've made posts to make people aware of this in the hope that it will stop. Most commenters understand all the reasons dumping an animal at a shelter is wrong. There are some, though, who have to be nasty, call us names, and claim the people responsible were just doing the best they could. They tell us we should have compassion. We are a shelter, after all. Isn't that what we do?
I wonder where their compassion is for us. For the workers left to clean up the mess from someone who decided to leave their problem outside a gate where wildlife can make a nice snack out of them.
So, because I need to vent, here's a brief look at what a recent week looked like.
Monday:
A cat that had kittens on Sunday suffered a severe, pr*****ed uterus. I had to make calls, coordinate transport, get mom and babies stable for transport, and communicate with the medical team that a cat whose uterus was literally hanging outside her body was being rushed over. Thankfully, it was a Monday and we had a rockstar veterinarian willing to save her life by performing surgery that same day.
Tuesday:
A local veterinarian sent two young girls who had found a lethargic, hypothermic kitten with a severe a**l prolapse to my office to see if we could save it.
This kitten was beyond saving.
I had to counsel these girls that they did the right thing by stopping for this baby, and that the next right thing was to ease its suffering. They cried. I comforted them.
Later, a woman came in with a pathetic waif of a kitten. I was trying to direct her to the correct resources, but she couldn't hear well, so I took a look at the kitten and discovered it likely had calicivirus, which is highly contagious.
She was unable to provide care for it. After a quick conference with the medical and shelter teams, the reality was that we didn't have capacity for this kitten, but we couldn't turn it away either. I did everything I could for it, set it up in quarantine, and spent the rest of the day sanitizing anything that may have been exposed to the kitten's secretions because, of course, she brought it in uncontained.
I asked if she could make a donation. She pulled out twenty dollars. It wasn't much, but for her it was a fortune.
She cried. I comforted her. Then I had to tell her we could not take any more cats from her property because we simply couldn't handle them.
Wednesday:
A relatively relaxing day. I covered in Lincoln for a staff member who was out and tried to catch up on emails.
Thursday:
Someone found bottle babies and was willing to try raising them. I gave them a quick lesson on neonatal kitten care.
Someone else found a cat and wanted me to scan it for a microchip and somehow tell them its entire life story, even though I had no idea where the cat came from.
Then two girls came in with a kitten that was lethargic, hypothermic, not eating, and severely emaciated. I tested it for panleukopenia. It was positive.
I advised them of their options, and they were able to get it to a veterinarian. I counseled them that this is a difficult illness to fight and encouraged them to guard their hearts.
Friday:
I was covering in Lincoln again.
People came in all day. One man brought kittens that someone had given him. He travels for work and couldn't keep them.
Could we help?
Did we have space?
No, not really. But we would see what we could do.
And this was actually a slower week.
There are weeks in July when every single day is an absolute nightmare. We have to make life-or-death decisions, counsel people through heartbreaking situations, and turn away animals we desperately want to help but simply can't.
We see the animals we love in their worst possible states.
While we do this, we are bashed online by the people we can't help. The people who let one cat have kittens and now have a thirty-cat colony they think is our responsibility. People begging us for cat food because they can't afford it anymore. People asking us to take their cats because they no longer fit their lifestyle.
So when you ask me where my compassion is, the answer is simple.
It's with the little old lady who pulled out her twenty dollars to help save a kitten.
It's with the two girls who couldn't save the baby they found on the side of the road.
It's with the nursing mother cat who was on the brink of death but bounced back and is now raising her kittens.
I'm not saving any of it for the cowards who can't even do the bare minimum of coming inside and having a conversation first." -Audra
