Thank you Willy’s Friends’ for feeding Durham feral cats!

Below is a photo of ‘Gerry’ who is one of the older feral cats who is fed daily by Ralph Sacco of Durham. Ralph volunteers his photography skills for ‘Almost Home for Cats’ in Durham and also volunteered his DJ services to the 1st Annual Durham Pet Fair on May 17th organized by Mark Paturzo, Founder of Help Willy’s Friends (HWF).

In June, Ralph and I needed a volunteer to feed Gerry (and his 9 feral friends) for about a week so we could go on a much needed vacation, and Mark Paturzo volunteered to feed the kitties.

We want to thank Mark Paturzo so very very much for not only feeding two feral cat colonies for 8 days, on time, with fresh water and CLEAN FILLED FOOD BOWLS!!! But we also want to thank Mark and HelpWillysFriends for the bags and cans of cat food he gave us after we got back from vacation!!! This cat food is collected from the Help Willy’s Friends donation bins you see around town (some bins are in the Post Office, Durham Vet Hospital, etc). Help Willy’s Friends, www.HelpWillysFriends.org, is an organization Mark started to help feed homeless cats and dogs by collecting food, litter, new toys and clean used towels weekly from the bins.

Please help support homeless animals especially during these tough economic times by placing a few items into the bins every so often. I can’t tell you how much we at Almost Home for Cats appreciate the cat food, litter, toys and linens which we use daily. There are so many homeless pets due to foreclosures and evictions. We see new homeless pets daily, you can see the confusion in their faces when they show up at an existing feeding site. The domesticated friendly cats are very thin, depressed and weak and very overwhelmed by the new ‘feral’ environment. We can recognize the new ones easily and in due time take them in if they are friendly, to find a suitable and hopefully more ‘permanent’ home for them again. There’s soup kitchens and food pantry’s for people, but homeless pets have no where to go to find a crumb to eat.

Thank you Mark for putting a ‘face’ on pet homelessness in our town and thanks to you, they are being acknowledged and fed.

Sincerely,

Susan Dapkus, Director & Founder, Almost Home for Cats in Durham