Cat Shelter Volunteers Deserve Praise

The backbone of cat shelter work. The salt of the earth. Volunteers all over the world who quietly work behind the scenes helping rescue cats. I love this sort of person. They truly are the best. They don’t seek praise but they deserve it.

Pat a cat shelter volunteer
Pat Hakanson. Photo copyright Tim (The Western Australian Santi)
Two useful tags. Click either to see the articles: Toxic to cats | Dangers to cats

It was the story of Pat Hakanson in Western Australia that motivated me to write this (reported in the Western Australian). Pat works as a laundary volunteer at Cat Haven. She has been doing it for six years. There are 230 volunteers in total and 150 resident felines.

That is an impressive number of volunteers. Pat has been nominated for WA Volunteer of the Year Awards. She deserves to win I am sure. Pat volunteers because she likes to see the cats rescued and to have something nice to snuggle up to. That is a very genuine statement to make. Pat has given thousands of hours of voluntary work to assist in the rescuing of cats.

Cats Protection in the UK relies on a huge army of volunteers who, as I understand it, are paid expenses but essentially the work is voluntary and done out of a love of cats. Cats Protection is the oldest cat shelter/sanctuary/re-homing organisation in the UK and the largest.

To the many thousands of volunteers at shelters and sanctuaries, I think we have to add the good people who spend a lot of time caring for feral cats working independently and sometimes against the odds because a lot of people don’t like people who care for feral cats.

There are also many volunteers who give their time to helping cats online for instance. Of course they all get pleasure from the work anyway but without them cats would be in far worse position than they are today.

Please search using the search box at the top of the site. You are bound to find what you are looking for.

8 thoughts on “Cat Shelter Volunteers Deserve Praise”

  1. They deserve all the praise and love, as what they are doing what i hope to do once the spca down here has been set up. i want so much to volunteer to give back to community of cats. Thankfully i want be able to adopt any as thats the conditions. To give back to love to injured cats is a great thing.

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  2. I very much admire Shelter volunteers too and there are thousands of them who are unsung heros/heroines.
    I admire anyone at all who helps cats and there are many ways to help them. Everyone can’t be ‘at the front line’
    Michael you do sterling work with this website and have brought many cat lovers together through it too.
    We have some wonderful people here who help cats in various ways!
    In our own little town we have many kind people, it’s quite a poor area but they are very generous in taking in to Babz what they can, to help our Sanctuaries.
    Some give food, some give bedding, it’s wonderful to be part of a community who help in any way, however small, it all adds up.

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  3. Such a nice article, Michael.
    There isn’t enough thanks for people like that. It must be so gratifying for them to know they are doing such good.
    I’m so hurt that we have so many kill shelter volunteers and often wonder why they are there and how they can stand it day after day. I would love to interview one myself just to find out. I sort of did that with an animal control officer one time, and it was so sad. He told me that he entered the job thinking that he could really help animals…

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