A couple of weeks ago we encountered two different cases of animal abuse that came into Snowflake.

The first was a 5 month old black Lab that was hit by a car. The owner just chained him up to a post even though the poor puppy was screaming in agony. He refused to take him to the vets and it was only when a caring Snowflake volunteer agreed to pay $100 so that the owner would surrender him we could take him to the vet. He had a broken let and badly bruised neck and face. Fortunately he starting to recover. Although Snowflake is essentially a cat rescue we cannot see suffering such as this without doing anything about it.

The second was the case of a Mom cat and her kittens that came to our attention. The Mom cat was surrendered to a rescuer after the owner was threating to smash her against a wall. When we got her in she was no more than 5 or 6 months and weighed only 5 pounds and was badly bitten by fleas (pictured here a day after she came in). She is called Pixie and is really sweet and doing well in the Foster Home We could not get the kittens at this point. After two had died we finally got the third, but, it was too late. By then the little guy was far too aneamic after being almost "eaten" alive by fleas and didn't make it. Fortunately they experienced love at the end as they died in the rescuers arms. We named him sprite.

We did manage to rescue one little miracle kitten. Someone called Snowflake saying they had found a little kitten with a leg stuck in a hole in the ground in a strawberry patch. He thought the leg was broken. He agreed to take the little girl to our vets, where it became apparent that the leg had been bitten by a snake. After a brave attempt to save the leg, it had to be amputated. Strawberry, as she is not called is doing fantastic and you would never know that she had a leg missing. She is now 6 weeks old and recovering well. The photo was taken just after we got her home from the vets.

It's hard to understand how people can be so cruel to helpless animals and makes one think about how much this really goes on.. It says a lot about them and the world we live in, but, there also so many people out there willing to help which give us the happy stories of those that are rescued.


-Richard