No-Kill Finance

Life at a cat shelter is never static.  I went out of town for three days this weekend, and came back to find that eight cats had been adopted and eleven new ones admitted to take their place.  Those are just numbers, of course…it’s rare that we are able to appreciate the stories behind the numbers.  If ever there were a time for me to step back and reflect on the impact of the work we do here, though, it would be this one.

I was in California for a memorial service.  My grandfather passed away last Fall, and the family was only now, at the beginning of Spring, finally able to gather together and scatter his ashes in Monterey Bay.  I won’t go into the emotional impact this trip or his passing had on me, but I will say (and perhaps I should apologize for the cliché) that my grandfather was pivotal in making me the person I am.  Above everything, he valued his capacity to care for his friends and family, and he seldom if ever expected anything in return.

My job in the Tree House Clinic has given me the ability to exercise the values that he passed on to me and to all the people who loved him.  While I am by no means the sort of magnanimous man that my grandfather was, I like to think that the work I do here would make him proud, that by caring for sick and injured beings (even though they may not be human beings), I am increasing my capacity to do the occasionally thankless business of sacrificing myself in some way for the good of others, something he never stopped doing.

Of course, I should temper this high praise for my own work with some harsh modesty:  I often get incredibly tired of my job; I think we all do.  Every day we see illness and death, an overpopulation problem that seems hopeless, a public that largely does not understand or care about the things we do, and an economy that cannot support non-profit organizations’ abilities to operate at anything but a bare-bones level.  It’s tiring, frustrating, and sometimes incredibly difficult work, and I say that not to pat myself on the back for doing it, but to reiterate that these moments when I am reminded of its value are few and far between.

I’m working toward vet school right now, trying to maintain my sanity as I struggle through monotonous science classes, and trying to keep in my sight that some day, as a veterinarian, I might be able to make a difference in the lives of both animals and their caregivers for decades to come.  But as the stress of this hypothetical career path mounts, I forget that, to a lesser extent, I’m already serving that same purpose.

Those eight cats that were adopted while I was away:  some of them weren’t eating on their own in their time here and had to be syringe-fed by clinic workers so they wouldn’t take ill and die; some of them were terrified by humans and had to be coaxed and calmed by Tree House employees and volunteers before they stood a chance at finding homes; some of them had and still have serious illnesses, and wouldn’t have stood a chance at survival if left on the streets from which we took them in.

Those eleven cats that we admitted:  perhaps some of them won’t make it, but they probably all will; they’ll probably live to find homes, to find happiness, and to serve as loyal (if fussy and feline) companions to those who adopt them, and they’ll need our help and patience along the way.

So, in short, I guess the work is only thankless if I make it that way.  I can choose to focus on the negative, as I so often find myself doing, or I can take comfort in the fact that, as my grandfather would have wanted, I’m doing a bit (if only a small, cat-sized bit) of good in the world.