When I saw a stray kitten all alone, I couldn’t leave the beautiful little creature on the street.
When I saw a tiny puppy all alone I couldn’t walk away and leave the little bundle of joy there full of energy and ready for a life that may not last long.
I was lucky enough to be able to rescue both these animals and give them a chance to experience a long love filled life.
These rescues inspired me to began to feed stray animals out on the streets of China and it quickly grew into a daily feeding journey. Each day it took more than one hour, cycling around with a bag of food to feed over 30 cats and dogs. These beautiful animals grew to know me and we all bonded. It felt like having my own family of pets outside that I could visit and help every night. Over the years doing this I managed to rescue several animals off the streets.
Some survived and others caught deadly disease and died at the vets. It’s heartbreaking when a tiny baby cat or dog doesn’t make it, but you have to try to find a little comfort in knowing you were able to help them experience some love in their final days.
Before I begin to stir up these old memories I’ll get back on topic and give you some idea of how much money animal rescue has cost me over the past few years. I plan to create a page on this website where I’ll share costs and donations each month so you can see the exact figures moving forward.
The month of April, 2024 cost me $483 USD in total animal boarding costs for Ninja the cat, Harley the dog and Lumi the dog. This doesn’t take into account some small costs for medicine and bigger cost of having Lumi’s eye removed. I received $51 in donations this month.
Costs were much higher in the past, when feeding larger numbers of stray animals, buying 10 and 20kg boxes of chicken breast a few times each week, dried dog food and eggs cost well over $150 each month. Boarding costs were often around $500 so some months cost as much as $700.
Boarding costs are high but veterinary bills were much higher. Saving Lychee the kitten meant spending a lot of time in the vets, having surgery twice and lots of treatment. We spent around $10,000 of our own money helping Lychee and received $100 in donations. Other medical bills reached between $250 and $1000 but this bill was by far our highest and most difficult to manage.
Over the past few years we have spent around $20,000 of our own money helping animals here in China. We hope to raise more money and find homes for the three animals living in boarding at the moment, so we can clear costs and work towards being able to help more animals in the future. Animal rescue work is time consuming and there hasn’t been much time to learn how to raise funds and build communities to support our work.
Our dream this year is to be able to share our stories, find homes for some beautiful animals and then begin to rescue and help more animals to live safe and peaceful lives full of love and happiness. Please reach out if you can offer a dog or cat a home, it’s possible to send them overseas from China, it just takes a number of months to arrange everything.
If you can’t adopt but would like to help towards boarding, feeding and medical expenses please use our Donor Box form box below or visit DonorBox directly here. No worries if you can’t donate. Having you reading our emails and stories helps us out too and reading your beautiful email replies inspires us to continue helping animals for as long as we are able.