The Blog Pound

Thursday, May 21, 2009 , late afternoon

When did you first start to become involved in charitable work?

Sigh… another bizarre accusation tossed my way this week came from someone I’ve known for about five years, and who wanted to know why I only helped animals and not people. It’s a stupid question, (surprise!), because about half of the time that I help animals I’m also helping a person. When we fostered those two cats in March and April, it was so their families wouldn’t have to relinquish them to a shelter, and so their daughter wouldn’t have to lose her beloved pets. When we adopted Missy Mae, it was so a woman with cancer could die in peace. When we adopted Chelsea and Jackson, it was so a grieving daughter would know her dead mother’s cats wouldn’t have to be euthanized. When we bottle fed Madison (and the late Miles), it was so the family who found them could stop worrying about killing them through lack of experience, and they looked forward to the day when they could take their new babies home after I’d weaned and socialized them. We once spent a couple of weeks driving 20 miles to a casino on the outskirts of town to try to trap a stray cat for an elderly woman who wanted to adopt it. Animal control was always trying to trap the cat as feral (and have it euthanized), and this 80 year old woman was in love with the cat and wanted to give it a good home. The cat hated our trapping attempts, and they exhausted us, so believe me, I did this to make an old lady happy and not to make the cat happy.

Those examples aside, I find it rather obnoxious that someone who’s known me for just a few years would slap me with the “loves animals more than people” moniker. (Well, I have to say that generally speaking, I do love animals more than people, and every day I’m given more and more reasons to feel that way.) The truth is, I started doing charity work when I was 15 years old, and I helped the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in their fundraisers, and also made regular visits to kids my age who were hospitalized. I have a nice letter of thanks from the CCFF for a special project I developed for them (I hooked up two performing artists I was friends with and together, they wrote and released a fundraising album), so maybe I’ll dig that up and post a pic of it to my Flickr album. I also still have bunches of old letters from penpals who had CF. The problem with working with teenage cystic fibrosis patients at that time was that they all died. All of them. I’d make a new friend, and in a few months, I’d be at a funeral. I met my first adorable boyfriend through CCFF, and still remember my first kiss from him, when he leaned over and kissed me while we sat in his car. I also remember attending his funeral a few years later.

My work with cystic fibrosis gave me good preparation for when I moved to the United States at the height of the AIDs epidemic. I personally provided home hospice care to three men who were in their dying months… all of them I’d known before their diagnosis. They were my friends. I learned how to flush pic lines with heparin and administer bronch treatments and I did a lot of wishing that time would slow down so a cure would be found. Again, I went to a lot of funerals, some extra upsetting because the Catholic church was going through a period when they didn’t want gay men with AIDS to have their funeral mass in the church (at the very least, the Priest would refuse to perform it, and you’d be lucky to get a deacon).

I can think of other work I’ve done only for the benefit of humans. I started a nonprofit agency in New Mexico called “Albuquerque ABCs”, whose purpose was to provide free speech therapy services to under served (i.e. impoverished) families. Going back about twenty years, just after I’d come out of the closet, I volunteered for a gay rights group and gave talks at Toronto high schools about how it felt to be gay and lesbian and not accepted, and how kids could make their closeted and uncloseted classmates feel safer and more welcomed. It was the beginning of the era of teaching tolerance to school kids, and it was quite a lot of fun.

I dabbled in animal welfare issues back in Canada, when I owned my retail store where I sold bird supplies. People often brought me injured wild birds, like doves and jays, and with the help of a vet I learned to patch them up, feed them back to health, and release them. Some were raised from eggs and ended up as odd pets… I had a mourning dove and a sparrow as pets at one time. I never got back into animal work again until over a decade had passed, and I was in San Francisco and had free time on my hands. I’ve just come out of a biomedical program at University and loved medicine, but I wasn’t too sure I was thrilled with human patients (so many of whom cause their own problems). I started to volunteer at the infirmary of the SFSPCA, and I was instantly hooked. All I’ve ever wanted to do since that first day was animal rescue and rehab. My sister is lucky in that she lives near a wildlife sanctuary, and she’s volunteered there often and learned to raise rabbits, deer, raccoons, and even bats (I’m so envious about the bats… I love bats!) When we moved to Las Vegas we deliberately chose a spot on the outskirts of town, near a farm/bird sanctuary, but the setup is quite poor and volunteering is difficult. When the vet started to send us more and more orphaned kittens and elderly cats who needed homes, I figured it was a sign I should just work with cats. I’m happy I listened, because it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. Flippy and I have a lot of stress in our life because of health and financial issues, but every day the cats make us laugh a dozen times or more, and they all keep us up and active.

I saw my parents volunteering from the time I was born, so it seems only natural to me to do. I’ve helped “Mommy bloggers” by designing their websites for free, I’ve helped raise funds to pay medical expenses for people without healthcare. I do what I’m able to do with the energy I have and the skills I’ve developed. In contrast, my parents have been delivering Wheels on Meals to the elderly for years (and they always bring along pet food if they know the person has a pet), and my Mom used to belong to a Canadian group which provided in-home services to elderly and disabled people (services like meal preparation, doing the laundry, washing floors, etc.). My parents’ life is dominated by volunteer work within their community—they make newcomers to the area feel welcomed, they organize day trips for the retirees… they keep busy. I’m really proud of how my parents and family members have given back so much. I think we’d all feel really empty if we weren’t giving of our time in some way or form.

So, what’s your personal experience with volunteer work? When did you start? Were you influenced by your family? Which experience have you enjoyed the most? My “dream charity” is one where I help senior citizens keep pets by taking care of all the grooming/feeding/veterinary expenses and visits, so the pet owner only has to enjoy the company of their pet without worrying about what will happen if an emergency arises. If the pet owner had to be hospitalized, my charity would foster the pet until the owner returned home, and if that didn’t happen, would guarantee to find a new, loving home for the animal. I’m still a long way from getting to a point where I can build a charity like this, but it will happen one day. I’ve made such great contacts just through Wee Paws that the help and support will be there, once I’m settled in a spot where I want to stay. Please share your volunteering experiences and ideas!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 05/21 at 05:09 PM
The Litterbox • (7) Comments • Permalink