Part 4: See this tattoo that says 'sucker' on my forehead?

OK, stop and think: a stray cat shows up on your door step. It's cute and sweet and you absolutely can not keep it no matter what. What do you do?

Do you:

A) take it inside, feed it, worm it, treat it for fleas and ticks, makes sure it is well behaved indoors and has good litter box skills then start calling around/placing ads to find it a home?

B) do you pick up the phone and call someone you know takes in strays and does all of the above?

C) do you call animal control and have them pick it up?


If you do A, you ARE the sucker. If you do B the person you call is the sucker. If you do C it is probably just because you don't B, yet. :-P

Who are these suckers? I call them private rescuers, in home rescuers, small scale rescuers, unofficial rescuers...

We are all over the country and i assume all over the world. We get no help. no money, and we often place for no adoption fee. We just can't stand to see an animal in need and not help it.

This post will not be long, I just want to make one point. We suckers will help you when we can. We will eat Ramen noodles to fund caring for animals that other people abandoned. But we have our limits. We WANT to be able to help you if you need to rehome a pet, help a stray or even if you are one of those twits from the last post who just get sick of a pet and don't want it anymore. But we have our limits. if you call us and we can't help, it isn't because we don't want to help. Don't be mad at US when we have to say no or when we send you the numbers of the shelter and local rescues and leave it at that. We have to know when to say no. We have to know when we have extended ourselves as far as we can. Otherwise we just end up as crazy hoarder people on the news. We get no financial help for cleaning up the messes other people make, and we get very little support of thanks or even understanding for what we do. It is exhausting expensive heartbreaking work.

Having to say no to you hurts. It's heartbreaking having to admit we can't help them all. If you try to guilt trip us or get pissy because we are not able to help you it just makes it that much harder. Please, if all the help we can give you is to say "here are a few phone numbers, maybe they can help you." be grateful for that little bit and don't try to make us help by implying we are too good or too lazy to help you.


I no longer take in cats, dogs, horses or small animals. I may have room for a goat rescue or two. I can't afford to take in any more and I don't have room for any more and virtually everyone I know already has animals they got from me so my built in list of possible homes is full. Every cat I have came to me that way, most of the ones I have now either were not suitable to rehome or were bottle babies and I couldn't stand the thought of parting with them. Do I still WANT to help? Of course. Does it pain me and make me feel guilty to say that i can not? YES! Please, don't make it worse for us suckers by making us feel more guilt when we can't fix everything for you. Just try to understand and be grateful for when we ARE able to help. maybe then not so many of us will end up angry, bitter and jaded about it all.