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The Love of Gabriel - Appin Cats Advocacy Fund

From The Appin Cats Project Facebook Page:

Preaching to the Converted, with Love to Gabriel

Normally, when the Appin Cats Project posts, we do our best to put a positive spin on each situation, highlighting the good stuff, even when things look grim. Because we spend as much time with our babes as we can, sometimes it's awhile between postings. In order to get the greatest reach and impact, each post tries to be thoughtful, as it will be cross-posted with 3 or 4 local groups to get as much coverage as possible. Today is just for you, our followers; we are in mourning. And we wanted to share with you, those who care as much as we do.
Gabriel finally came into our lives (and our trap) this past weekend, although he was by nature a sweet and gentle soul and didn't require an enclosure. With a little more patience on our part, he would have walked the short distance from colony to home with little more than the shake of a bag of treats. We gave him two of the best nights we could provide, with an overstuffed, clean bed and a soft fleece to lay his tired head. We opened as many cans of wet food as he would eat, and left him alone to decompress as much as we could bring ourselves to. He seemed so exhausted, he needed rest.

On Monday, he went to the Mount Brydges Animal Clinic to see Dr. Sarah. His prognosis was dire. He was dying from advanced liver failure. Our last gift to him would be to end his suffering. On March 8th, 2021, the newly-christened Gabriel left the physical world behind, just as we were preparing to show him the world he obviously deserved.

Our grief is deep, but it is selfish. Our anger is righteous, but won't solve a thing. Our resolve, however, is strengthened, and in his memory, we move forward. In addition to the work that lies ahead of us - continued rescue of our feral colony and the maintenance and rehabilitation of our lovely Project family at home - we need to do more.

In our community, there are currently NO BYLAWS regarding cats - domestic or feral - on how they should be regulated, and most certainly how they should be PROTECTED. If you don't acknowledge that there is a problem, maybe it will just go away. More conveniently, you don't need to allot money to deal with it.

As private citizens ADVOCATING for the humane treatment of these creatures - kind people like you open their hearts and pocketbooks to fix a problem that YOU DID NOT CREATE - we simply enable the ignorant and selfish who ignore the problem and perpetuate it as we continue to clean up the messes created by these PEOPLE. It has to end. You are the converted, you are the kind of heart. If you've read this far, it's not a compliment, it's a statement of fact. You have in some way dedicated yourself to improving a situation that some of your fellow humans have created - the product of an arrogant, self-serving society that thinks being on the top of the food chain gives it the right to shit on every other species. It is quite simply shameful.

We won't solicit all over the place or make a big deal of it, but if you would like to contribute to our legal fund, contact us directly for more information. We require $1200- for a legal opinion and a plan to address how to best move forward in securing proper laws that require spay and neuter, to put the responsibility and requirement of bylaw enactment and enforcement on our local and municipal governments, to expand the rights of legal caregivers (rescues like us), and the necessity of governments to create real plans of ACTION that ensure that there is a standard of care, giving cats status as sentient beings. It's the least that we can aspire to.

This effort is for the memory of Gabriel, as his struggle is everyone's struggle and a valuable lesson to be learned. Gabriel passed needlessly and the fact that he was allowed dignity during his final days is of little consolation. He loved being petted and especially responded to being brushed - a true spoiled cat in the making who never got the chance.

Dr. Sarah has always been so kind to us, young enough to be my daughter, but wise enough to teach us how important it is to have quality of life over quantity, to use our resources as smartly as possible to achieve the best outcomes for as many as those resources will allow, to realize when it's time to say goodbye and, most importantly, that we have a responsibility to be there for those we care for not only during the good times, but during the impossible times, too. This week, it was Sarah, next week it might be Dr. Jamey, Dr. Dorothee, Dr. Jess, or one of the other fantastic veterinarians, or any of the wonderful staff at the clinic. We sincerely appreciate all that you have done and continue to do.

With much love, thank you.
Stephen

https://facebook.com/appincats/

Organizer

Stephen Purple
Organizer
Appin, ON

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