Help Betty Ann Save Her Home and Cats

We are raising funds to help support our dear friend, Betty Ann Weiss, who has been battling metastatic breast cancer for over five years. Despite on and off chemotherapy and other treatments, Betty-Ann has up to now continued to work full-time and spend her free time rescuing and caring for feral cats and kittens in distress. She has never turned away the pleas of co-workers, neighbors, and friends to help out a cat/kitten in need. She has spent endless days and nights patiently trying to capture mothers so they can safely birth their kittens in a warm, dry safe place and then promptly seek medical attention for them including spaying. She has been rescuing cats and kittens nearly her whole adult life, taking her rescues to local shelters and cat shows for adoption in loving forever homes. When a cat wasn't adopted Betty-Ann added to her own feline family until she could find them a good home. Many of her rescues have been sickly and malnourished and she has spent literally thousands of dollars on vet care over the years to nurse them back to health and give them the best possible life off the streets. Putting sick cats down was rarely an option for her - her rescues always got the best of care for as long as their quality of life was good. Vet bills alone have often reached insurmountable amounts but she always somehow skimped and saved enough to pay her debts, often with the generosity of local vet practices who would let her run "a tab" for months on end.

But time has now taken its toll on Betty Ann and her battle with cancer has become quite desperate. She spent the holidays at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and after coding once at home and several other times at the hospital (from cancer complications) she has been literally fighting for her life. While she lays in her hospital bed, her biggest concern right now is not herself but the safety and well-being of her 8 rescue cats, mostly elderly themselves who need daily care and supervision. For now, they sit alone in a dark cold house waiting for Betty Ann's return. Local friends have made sure they have food and water but there is no heat in the house. Betty Ann's illness has seriously hindered her ability to work these past few months and her income has dropped considerably. All that she has in this whole world are her rescue cats and her childhood home - BUT she is three months behind in her mortgage payments (from refinancing largely to pay vet bills and buy cat food and litter over the years) and four months behind in her utility bills. The house needs much work that she can no longer afford - broken toilet, broken basement window...and a new roof (her biggest expense).

Betty Ann's local vet has started collecting her cats to care for them herself at no charge while the doctors figure out her short-term prognosis but it doesn't look promising. She lives alone, no siblings, never married, no children - basically no living relatives to speak of. Her kitties are her family...they love her so much...its heartbreaking to see them separated from their "mommy". Betty Ann did take the brave step last year to establish a legal agreement with the local vet-cat rescue group to will her house and land to them in exchange for her being able to live there until she dies and that the cats will be cared for in the same house by them until each passes of natural causes at their own time. The house and land would then convert to the group for future use as a local rescue center. But now, Betty Ann faces the real possibility of having no livable home for her or them. The vet-cat rescue group will be forced to sell or rebuild and they don't have any money to do major repairs either.

My children grew up in the cat fancy with selfless feline welfare advocates like Betty Ann as their mentors. Her present situation breaks our hearts and if we had the money to help her all by ourselves we would do it. But the situation is now untenable and we would really like to give her and her cats a fighting chance to survive and leave a legacy (the house-land) for her dream of a permanent cat rescue center. Betty Ann hopes that her property donation can be a lasting memorial for her lifetime's devotion to feline welfare (including trap-spay/neuter-release programs) and adoptions for kitties that have the misfortune to be born into feral cat colonies in NYC.

We hope Betty Ann's story inspires you to donate to this very worthy cause and help an old woman realize her dreams and rest peacefully.

Our goal is to raise enough money in the next few weeks to get the heat back on in the house and take care of other immediate needs and bills. I promise your donation will be well spent and Betty Ann will cherish each one of you in her prayers.