Often “the cost of caring” for others and animals, especially unwanted animals can leave you physically, emotionally and financially drained.
I know too well the “cost of caring” because all my life I have constantly cared for someone or something. After the tender age of five, my grandfather got me a tiny Chihuahua puppy and told me if I wanted to keep it then I would be responsible for its care. So when it was up crying and hungry at 3 a.m. at 5-years-old I was up tending to it.
Over 50 years later I find myself in the same situation, up all night tending to newborn baby kittens every two hours and adding even more abandoned kittens, except now I have a full-time job as well. So trying to do it all can be downright exhausting. But when my family complains because I’m worn out and cranky I ask them “Who else is willing to take on this responsibility?” and suddenly the room is silent.
Caring for people and animals, especially “rescues’’ is not for the faint of heart because it can cause chronic fatigue even if you are compassionate about the cause. I have always gone out of my way to help others and animals. In fact, I currently have four rescue babies out of 15 abandoned and flea-infested kittens and a foster dog that was abandoned on the road with her pups. These poor kitties took a friend and I over six hours to bathe and de-flea and feed and feed again. Not only were they infested with fleas, but they needed to be wormed and their eyes were matted over with infections. While some people may have looked at them and turned away I personally cannot.
Over the years I’ve rubbed off on my kids as well because we all seem to have an undeniable soft spot for all of God’s creatures. And though they won’t stay up all night feeding newborns, they will help put together boxes and blankets for makeshift beds for the feral cats outside as I deal with feeding the babies round-the-clock at crazy hours.
I do this for weeks and months until I can find homes for these poor fur babies. So many weeks there are zero days off and your brain won’t switch off to rest and relax anyways. It seemed like an endless cycle which now I understand to be called “compassion fatigue.” This kind of fatigue takes you to sheer exhaustion and actually “secondary trauma” because your compassion cannot stop. Oftentimes you feel powerless because you cannot stop the suffering. You also start to feel numb and detached to everything else and emotionally disconnected. This is the real “cost of caring.”
In my lifetime I’ve rescued hundreds of animals. Some have gone to fur-ever homes and others we have brought back home after having them fixed at Happy Paws. Many have been part of the TNR (Trap-Neuter-Release) program in our neighborhood. This simple program alone helps cut down on the overpopulation of so many unwanted litters within just a few years and is being implemented in many places.
However, caring for all these animals is very costly, again physically, emotionally and financially. On almost any given day, I feed over 25 animals day and night. I empathize with Kate Paris at Happy Paws who tends to more than that at work and then goes home to tend to even more at her house. Her daughter does the same. Yet over and over again I watch people who make a lot more money than I do simply refuse to do the responsible thing and fix their pet before it becomes pregnant. This is why we want to pull our hair out people – don’t drive Cadillac and tell me that you can’t fix your cat!!! FIX YOUR DAMN ANIMALS! Quit completely exhausting everyone else and every resource we have to care for your animal. YOU BE RESPONSIBLE! YOU DO THE RIGHT THING AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR PET UNTIL IT DIES OF OLD AGE! YOU PAY THE VET BILL AND MAKE SURE YOUR ANIMAL IS WORMED, HAD ALL THEIR SHOTS, HAS ADEQUATE FOOD AND CLEAN WATER AND LIVES A HAPPY LIFE!
FOR GOODNESS SAKES – JUST BE RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE!!! YOU ARE WEARING OUT THE GOOD ONES AND WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THEY CAN’T DO ANYMORE? WHERE WILL YOU TURN?
Please fix ALL your pets before six months. We live in 2025 and it’s not an OOPS anymore. It’s just flat out negligence. NO EXCUSE!
The “cost of caring” is great, but the “call to care” is greater. So get off your assets and do something for a change. Care about something other than yourself and make a difference in the lives around you. This is the cost of caring too much –your bank account runs low, but your gratitude runs high when you find a few friends that hopefully their “Give A Damn” isn’t busted or wasted on irresponsible individuals who don’t really care and you find a way to do something good too and make a difference one day at a time.
