Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Today's guest is Sally Williams. She spent years providing direct assistance to families navigating pet cancer through the Brodie Fund, but her journey led her to a new mission supporting the very people who save cats through Mission Meow. And that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So welcome to the show, Sally.

Thank you so much for having me.

To start off, I'd love if you could tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sure. I am obviously a cat lover first and foremost, and I always say that my journey started when my mom was pregnant with me and our family cat slept on her belly. And so I think from the very beginning, cats were just always meant to be a big part of my life's journey. And, I grew up, always had a cat as a part of my life, and then I started volunteering. I had some health issues in my early forties and had to stop working. And I had an incredible doctor who suggested I volunteer. And volunteering was, what would you wanna do? And I said I'd wanna pet cats. So guess what I did? I went to a local shelter and I pet cats and petting cats turned into falling in love with working with them led me to studying behavior, becoming a behaviorist. And I had a business for quite a while as a behaviorist. And when that was going on, I had my first cat I've had multiple cats diagnosed with cancer, which is not uncommon for those of us who have multiple cats in our lives. But my very first one was my cat Brodie. And that started my journey into the nonprofit world. When he was going through treatment for the first time ever, I heard a term called economic euthanasia. And when I found out what that was, I thought, if I can do anything to, change that in any way I want to. And so I learned about nonprofits. Obviously I'd been volunteering for one, but then I started volunteering for another one that gave grants which led me to asking them if I could start a fund within their fund. And did that for a while, but then decided to take the Brodie Fund out onto its own. And for seven years I ran a pet cancer fund and we fully funded. Cases for families, meaning we didn't cap but we gave, if we had enough to give holy, we gave holy. If we didn't, we found another organization to partner with. And it was an amazing experience. We saved a lot of lives. It was incredibly rewarding but also incredibly heartbreaking because there's a lot of losses too. And within that time I had another cat diagnosed with cancer, Marlin, who is my soul cat. And, eventually, after going through it again and COVID and all these things we said goodbye to the Brodie Fund. We had a big party and we raised a lot of money and we gave legacy grants. And then I took some time off. And in that time, after several months, I realized how much I missed running a nonprofit and started thinking about, okay, how can I help? Cats. I really just wanna focus on cats this time. That's where my passion is. And an organization near me during COVID had to give up their cafe space and pivot, and they were doing more TNR and they opened up a much smaller adoption center. And I thought, wow, if they struggled for a little bit, is this happening in other places? And I started Googling this and cat rescue closing, cat rescue, pivoting like all the different ways I could think about Googling the struggles of small feline centric nonprofits and saw it was epidemic. This was happening across the country. And that is how mission Meow started. And it's funny because fast forward to now, my cat West, so we launched three years ago, October, so we're just over three years old. And when I was trying to come up with a name, I was in the backyard swinging in hammock. And I tell the story in a talk that I do and just having a quiet moment and. Speaking out loud. Okay, what's my mission? What's my mission? And West had incredible timing and he, meowed and that was it. Mission Meow was born. And so we had the name, we had our mission. We filed for nonprofit status, had it in, I think five, six weeks, and we hit the ground running and we haven't looked back.

That's an amazing story. And I especially love how you got your name. That is pretty cool. That's a sign for sure.

It was definitely a sign and was simple. It was super cute. I loved the inspiration of it, that it came from one of my cats. And then obviously there was a lot more that went into launching a nonprofit, but I'm amazed at how smoothly it went. It was just one of those things that if you're spiritual at all and you feel like in life, you're in flow. That's what it felt like. Like it just happened and everything just took off so quickly. I talked to a couple friends of mine, told them what I wanted to do. They were on board right away so we knew we wanted to help small feline centric nonprofits, and I knew I needed to do it in a different way because starting a nonprofit, a grassroots organization, it takes a long time to build a donor base. It's a slow and steady process and it's worthy of doing, but I wanted to have money right away. And in the town next to me, there had been a house fire and it was awful. Obviously tragic, nobody was hurt. But what I thought was remarkable was the way the community came together, which often happens, people do fundraisers. But what was unique to me was the businesses in the town all came together and did different events to raise money and I got a little light bulb moment and I was like businesses because I had a nonprofit and I had also been speaking at conventions. I had met quite a few business owners, so I slowly started reaching out to them and telling them about Mission Meow and what my thought was that the foundation of the organization would be businesses who wanted to give back to a community that they cared about. So we launched with, I think it was 34 business partners who had signed on to give us money four times a year. So we were, and we still are giving grants quarterly, and it just made sense that way. It wasn't a big ask from them. We weren't coming at a company and saying, we want you to give every single month. And so it was just a really unique, wonderful formula, and that's how we launched the organization. And then over time, as we've grown, we have. A wonderful donor base as well. Very passionate supporters. Then the combination of the two coming together is how we're able to give larger grants.

How is it that you came to find all these businesses?

It, a combination of research then phone calls, emails, and getting out to conventions. It's a lot of different ways. I find personally, I like meeting people in person, telling them about Mission Meow, because I have such a passion for it. So I always think face-to-face is the best way. But if there's a company that I find out about that excites me, that I think will align with our mission, then it's just reaching out, whether it's a call or an email. And I would say the thing that's important for me is. It really is about a product that I feel strongly about. Whether it's litter or food or toys or, we have behaviorists. I find it works for me to feel supportive of what they're doing because we want to promote them too. So when they sign on as a business partner, we give back to them as well. We have different ways of promoting them and so we want them to feel supportive of our mission just as much as I wanna be able to be supportive of whatever it is that they are either, whether they're retailers, wholesalers, or they have a company. I think it's important that we align together. So if you look at the list of our partners, they're all wonderful companies and we feel really good about that.

It's clear that you are not a rescue. So what would you classify your organization.

We are a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits. I think that's probably the simplest way. Our focus is giving grants to small feline centric nonprofits to make meaningful and lasting change for them. So our organization helps other nonprofits, and we strictly focus on small feline centric nonprofits. Pretty much their budgets range between 50-250K and their volunteer maybe one or two organizations might have had somebody part-time, but these are the ones that really struggle with getting grants because they're so small, they get overlooked often, and they're the reason why. A, a lot of the hard work gets done, the TNR fostering challenging cats working with towns. As far as strays and ferals these are these small orgs all across the country, and once you start finding out about them and getting to know them. The work they do is incredible, especially when we're talking about, the largest problem in the US is overpopulation. So TNR or TNVR is incredibly important and we are huge supporters of organizations that are heavily doing TNR across the country. But it's not just that, it's foster based groups, it's ones that rescue specifically special needs or specifically kittens. We really try to have variety in who we're giving our grants to because we want to be impacting all the different areas of feline centric nonprofits in the CAT community.

Yeah, and I love the term feline centric, by the way. That's

great. The thing is some of the organizations we help they're feline centric, but because they're such amazing people. If somebody shows up with a dog, they don't turn them away or say a pig or whatever. We have organizations that have started out strictly feline and then have evolved over time just because there is a need in the community. So we won't grant to programs that aren't feline centric or feline focused, but the organizations can be helping in other ways too. We would never say no to somebody who rescues both, but say we help in the organization that has dogs within but they're looking for cubbies for an adoption room. So the money can go there, but it cannot in any way, shape or form. And not that we don't love dogs, but our focus are cats. That's the area we chose to focus on. So the funds have to be earmarked specifically for cats.

Aside from the financial assistance, what other kind of services do you offer to help these nonprofits?

So we also have a program where every single month people can apply for mentorships and shelter, foster behavior, and TNR. And so we have experts in the field, and so people can apply monthly for a mentorship. We think it's really important to be supporting them and helping their growth. And then we have something that kind of evolved from giving the grant. So obviously the grant, the money, the impact that has is first and foremost. But we also found that there was an effect that happened after a small organization got a large grant and we actually call it the Mission Meow Effect. And we didn't know this, I certainly didn't know this going in that once. They're a part of our family because once we've given a grant, we don't just write the check and walk away. We have a Facebook group that they all join and they network with each other. We co-hosted an event with a group. We can make connections for them if they're looking for, we've been able to find low cost vaccines help with food and litter and things like that we don't give grants for. So there's all these things that happen. But what also happens, because we do things how people would look at it backwards, we choose our grant recipient and then we take a whole month and we raise money for them. And within that month, that's when our business partners donate. But that's also when anybody can donate to Mission Meow. You might specifically support TNR or maybe you love. Foster or you just like that we're gonna be giving a van or something like that. So that's where we take a whole month that allows us to give a really big grant. But in that month, we're promoting the organizations that we're working with. We tell them about their missions, we'll tell stories about a cat that they've, helped or something special that they've done, a program or anything. So people get to know these organizations and because we're talking about them so much, we've found that they'll gain more volunteers. Some have gotten board members, we've connected them to new donors. They now have a network of other like-minded rescues, foster groups that they can network with. Because one of the things that we focus on in reading and evaluating these organizations that we're choosing for grants is they have to be collaborative in nature. That's something that's super important for us. So once they all become part of the Mission Meow family, now they're all networking and helping each other. So it became a lot bigger than just giving the grants. All these other things happened. And then formally we have the Facebook group and we're able to help them in other ways with other connections. I know a woman who's a documentarian, her name is Mye Hong, and she's actually traveling. All last year, and she'll be back out there this year traveling with her documentary 25 Cats from Qatar and. When she goes to a town, she looks to support a rescue. So she'll show the documentary and the ticket sales go to the rescue. So I've been able to connect her. I think this point it's six or seven. So it's things like that. We're always trying to think, okay, how else can we be helping? Because the need is so great. Whether it's cat rescues I'm less familiar with dog rescues, but it's really hard. I don't know if people understand how challenging it is to run a small foster group rescue group, TNR group, because most of these people have full-time jobs, so they're full-time doing something else and running a rescue. And compassion fatigue is real. Burnout is real. All these things are real. So all these other areas that we're helping them in are really so important above and beyond the financial.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the compassion fatigue and how you work to help them when they're suffering from this.

Honestly the grants help them tremendously and I can quickly tell you just one example. So very early on, I think it was our third grant cycle, so we were still new and we were choosing grants based off what we thought our fundraising abilities were. But if we raised more money, we were recognizing we could surprise an organization, which we have done regularly. So that particular month we had picked a wonderful organization that was launching a foster program and our money was funding 30 kitten kits. And the program was called All You Need is Love. And this organization gave them everything else. So all you needed was love, but we got this application from an organization that just. Was sitting with me because one of the things they needed was a fire alert system. And I have to tell you, I couldn't sleep at night knowing there was a group out there that needed the fire alert system and I think something had happened and money was spent in other places. Organizations have to do a lot of juggling. And the cats care first and foremost is everything. So what I mean by something happened, they were also applying for ceiling tiles and lights. So something had happened to their ceiling. So I knew that was important, but the Fire Alert system was what really struck me. So I reached out to business partners and several of our donors and said, we have another application. If we can't fully fund the entire 6,000, I want to at least raise the money to cover the Fire Alert System. It's just so important for me. And we did it, and we raised the money and we raised the whole $6,000 and we were able to surprise them and it was so wonderful. There were a lot of tears of joy and relief. And what the interesting part of this is the very next day the director of the organization called me and she said, I had to call you. 'cause I didn't wanna tell you, we were celebrating, but she said we were planning on closing at the end of the year. And I said, why? I've seen your budget. I've seen the work you do like there's no reason for you to be closing. And she said, we didn't think that anybody cared. And we're so burned out because we work and we work, but we don't think that anybody really cares. And that broke my heart. And that's a big part of the compassion fatigue and burnout, is they don't feel recognized for the work that they're doing. And it's invaluable work. It's important work, and they need to be recognized for it. And it can be, it doesn't have to be a huge grant. It could be somebody who sends a thank you who adopted from that. You know what I mean? There's just so many different ways, but we really need to be recognizing them. Also, because we have the Facebook group, they talk to one another and they share stories and they support one another and they're there for one another in a way that not everybody can be, not everybody may understand the toll it takes to be doing TNR. That's really hard work. Especially during kitten season. Kittens are fragile, very fragile, and these organizations suffer a lot of losses and that can lead to compassion fatigue. If you're a small organization, it's hard to say no too. You get phone calls all the time and people, can you please help? Can you please take in, and they stretch themselves sometimes past where they should and so it's important for them to be able to support one another. It's important for us to be there for them and say, it's okay to say no, it's okay to take a break. It's okay to take care of yourself because otherwise if you're burning out to the point where you're closing. We're losing organizations that are doing valuable work, and that's what we really wanna stop. So the influx of cash, the support, teaching them how to support one another too, that, you don't have to be isolated, that you can support each other. I at one point started a group called Rescuing the Rescuers, and it still exists. I'm just not running it anymore because I don't have the bandwidth. But it's there to have, a safe place for people to go and share their rescue stories and not feel judged and just to get things off your chest. It's so important that these people have a place to feel safe and talk. 'cause this work is hard. I'm sure

yeah, definitely. And I love that you have the group too, for people to support each other, but also to share ideas with each other too. Because I'm all about collaboration. 'cause personally I find that there's a lot of fighting going on between organizations and competition between organizations that does not need to be there. My whole thing is it's about the animals. So if I work with you, if it might not be one of my animals that gets adopted, but if I get your animal adopted, then I have done my job.

Yeah, I'm part of another group called One United Paw. It's myself, Sterling Davis. He founded it. And Aaron Lighty. And we speak at conventions and the talk is called Collaboration Over Competition. And we talk about all the different ways that you can be a collaborative and maybe it's initially, so say you're thinking you wanna start a nonprofit and you want to help and rescue, find out in your community what the need is. If there's already six organizations doing TNR, maybe foster, maybe, just do something else. That's a good way to get started. We encourage people volunteer before you launch your own organization, it's wonderful if in a community there's all the different parts of rescue. So if there's a lot of one thing going on, move into a different area. We also talk about, don't have the mindset of it's your way is the only way. There's more than one way to do things and try to support one on another in that. Don't be judgmental of another organization. Be curious, ask questions if you're curious, why. Some organizations, lack kittens, which sounds crazy. Communicate with other organizations in the south, so in the northeast and north center of our country and northwest for a large part of the year, there's not a lot of kittens, so do some networking. So you can have transports and bring kittens in, but it's really all about the communication. I talk about founder syndrome and how it's unhealthy in an organization and you need to have a succession plan. You need to be thinking about that. You need to be. Of the same mindset, collaborative as a founder and president. Don't think that same thing. That your way is the only way. Collaborate with your board, collaborate with your volunteers. That's just such a key. And the fighting is just not necessary. There's just so many assumptions made and judgments made, and it's better to sit down and talk and ask questions and find out why people do things the way, do things, and I see, and I hear about the fighting all the time, and so we really encourage people, and I would be happy to, if an organization, even if they weren't a grant recipient, reached out and had questions, of course we're there. They can reach out to one United Paw, there's an Instagram page, and people can reach out if they wanna learn more and learn more about working together. And we're stronger together for sure. And there's that expression. The rising tide lifts all boats and it's. Certainly true in rescue.

What would you say to these rescues that think that they're competing for the same limited resources?

I am not finding that there's so much truth to the scarcity mindset, and that's what I call it. It's a scarcity mindset. Think of it this way, when we are giving a grant, we are sharing and talking about our organizations all the time. I never think I'm going to lose a donor. And if I lose a donor, I'm gonna

find another donor.

I hope that our donors become supporters of these other groups. And if then in turn they end up I'm gonna choose them. So be it. And I just feel like then somebody else is gonna come in. But I think if you approach everything, having that scarcity mindset, it can become self-fulfilling. I just think of different ways, get creative with how you fundraise. And again, back to if you're thinking about starting an organization, look in your area and think of, maybe I'll go a different route or think, reach out to the organization and say, okay, can we collaborate on something together? Come together to do things. You can always also collaborate with rescues that are in the dog world. I love when I see that, when you see a fundraiser and it's to get dogs and cats adopted. I just think if you're open and you're curious and you ask questions and you don't live in that scarcity mindset, I think that there's a way around that. I really do believe that there's enough out there for everyone. Last year I was a bit pessimistic. I know that a lot of people are feeling that way right now because, the economy can be a little bit scary. And we had an exceptionally good year last year and I think that there's a lot of mentality out there that people are a little bit just, uneasy with the world right now. But one of the things they can do, and it doesn't matter how much, if it's a dollar, $5, $20, it does feel good to give back. And so I would encourage people, and I did hear that, I had people reach out who donated, they said it's something I can do. There's not a lot of things I can change, but this I can do or volunteer. Too, but I do think that there's more than enough room out there for everybody, and I think that working together is a good way, if you have an organization that you're curious about that's near you, reach out. Maybe there's ways you can help one another. Maybe you're different enough that you could do something together.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more with that. I'm of the mindset that there's enough out there for everybody. If you have to change your focus, I do believe there is enough

out there for

everybody. Creative. Yes.

Do creative things. I remember during COVID when I was running the Brodie Fund at the time, COVID was really a challenge for fundraising, right? One of our biggest annual fundraisers for the Brodie Fund was something that we called Santa Paws. Our big end of year. And we did it in a really fun way and however anybody wants to do it, there's no wrong way. I just loved what we did. So instead of just setting up in a space and taking photos of people's and their dogs, cats, bunnies, whatever they brought. We worked with different restaurants and breweries, and it would be a whole afternoon event and you could bring your dog obviously with exceptions, where we would clear out time at the end where people needed to get, dogs that were reactive to other dogs, but if your dog was good or your bunny was good, or whatever, come for the day. And so people came and they ate and they drank, and we did raffle baskets and we made it really fun. And it was a very successful fundraiser. And all of a sudden COVID hits and I'm like, oh boy that's a lot of money we're gonna lose. And somebody suggested doing a giving tree, and I just looked at them. How's that helpful? Because in my experience, a giving tree was something I saw either at a pet store or a bank. And you took something off the tree, right? Like you would take an ornament or something that had a piece of paper written on it and you were gonna pick a child's toy or a dog's toy or food. But it was always where you were taking something off the tree. So I thought, okay, how can we do this and have it be something forgiving, not, giving to us. And in turn then I'm able to pay it forward through grants. And I came up with this idea and it was named after my cat, Marlin, who I lost to cancer, who is really my inspiration for pretty much everything I do in the cat world. He was just an amazing cat. And so I came up with this idea where people would donate a minimum of $10 and we would write the name that they wanted of their pet on the star Dog Cat. And then it turned into, in honor of somebody in rescue or in honor of an organization. And so people were donating $10, but then some people would donate 20 or 50 or a hundred or even more. And so the first year, I don't remember how many stars I hung on the tree, but we raised $5,000 hanging stars on a tree in my living room. And each year with the Brodie Fund, it increased a thousand. So we did it for, I think we did it three years. So it's 5000 1st year, 6,000, the next 7,000. Then I brought it to Mission Meow. First year we did it with 6,000. Last year it was 7,000. This year we raised over $8,000. Me in my living room, writing names on stars and hanging them on a tree. And I think there's just times where you just have to get creative. I never imagined that. It would become an $8,000 fundraiser and maybe in some bigger organizations, that doesn't seem like a lot of money, but $8,000 in my living room I think is pretty awesome. And what's so cool about it and why people really resonate with it and why it grows each year is that it's not that, just them doing that. So I take the time, Monday through Friday, I give myself weekends off so I don't burn out. I sit down, I punch holes in each star, and I hand write each star, and then I make a video so that everybody on that day who has donated stars gets to see me hold the star up in front of the camera, read the name, and hang it on the tree. Especially for those people that are doing it in memory, like the tree is in memory of Marlin. A lot of people do this in memory of for their cats or for a friend and they say, Hey, watch the video tonight. You have to see this. And then I read the name of their beloved cat dog. We've had horses, lizards, you name it. Read the name. We've had people who have passed away that meant a lot to people in rescue who are involved. Their names go up on the tree. So it's become really this beautiful tradition and it's gonna keep growing every year, but it came out of. Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? We can't leave the house. We lost our fundraiser and it ended up being one of my absolute favorite fundraisers. A favorite tradition of mine. I love reading names. I love when people fill out where they're donating and they tell stories about, this is for my cat Oscar, who, you know, only lived three years, but he impacted my, and I get to read their stories and it's so beautiful.

Yeah, that is very beautiful.

It's almost making me teary eyed.

So I think,

yeah, so I think there's always a creative way. Of doing something, you just, I'm a big believer in getting out and getting fresh air and going for a walk when you're feeling stuck, go for a hike. Or if you're in the city, just put your, earbuds in, get out. Crazy enough, some of the best ideas, and I know people get this, they happen when you're in the shower or you're taking a bath, 'cause you're just quiet then, and your mind just opens up a little bit. Or talking to people, I love good brainstorming sessions, so I love getting on a phone call with a business partner or the head of another organization and talking to them for say, an hour. You never know what comes of this. Some of the best ideas have come from brainstorming sessions when you least expect it. And so I think sometimes if you're feeling stuck, you just have to move forward a little bit, find a way, whether it's picking up the phone or going for that hike or, I just think there's always a way.

We've covered the scarcity aspect of that. Now, another question that I have that relates to the whole collaboration versus competition, or maybe you can just offer some advice to this, is something else that I see frequently is like a lot of people fight over volunteers and I'm more in the mindset that if somebody comes and helps me as a volunteer and they go and help another group, that's great. They still came and helped me. So what would you have to say about that? I agree.

I agree. I just, here's the thing. You can only do what you can do as far as volunteers, it's really hard to find good volunteers. That's the first thing. So count your blessings for the ones that you have, and if somebody comes and goes, be grateful for the time that they gave you. But also, sometimes maybe it's good to sit down and talk to other people in your organization say, are we doing enough to appreciate our volunteers? 'cause volunteers, they're giving time that maybe they could be doing something else. So I think there's two things I think that be grateful for the time that they gave, but also maybe be thinking, are we doing enough to appreciate our volunteers? And it doesn't have to cost money, right? Facebook posts, Instagram posts. Emails, phone calls, a handwritten note. If you are lucky enough to have a volunteer coordinator in a volunteer capacity, make sure they're doing enough to let the volunteers know how much they're appreciated and also be clear on what their roles are. I think a lot of times volunteers really feel a bit lost. They don't really have good guidance on what they should be doing. So I think that, appreciate them for when they were there and try to think about how to keep them, what can we be doing to make sure that our volunteers feel valued? And if you've done all those things and they move on to another organization, I would say send them a thank you note and say you so appreciated the time that. They gave. We have donors that come and go and we don't always know why they stopped doing anything, but I think sometimes, donors will stick with you for a year and then they move on to another, you don't know. I always send them a thank you, doesn't matter. I thank them. Thank you so much for the time that you spent with us and for being a part of our family and for contributing to our mission. Always. I'm just grateful for whatever that timeframe is, and it's, whether it's volunteers or donors, just I think showing gratitude for it is a wonderful thing, and I think once you put that out in the universe, the next one's gonna come along.

Great advice. Now to wrap things up, I'm going to ask you just some questions that are gonna be focused on getting the next generation of CAT Heroes involved.

Okay. I'll do my best.

Okay. So for the aspiring advocate. What is the very first step someone should take if they wanna help cats, but they don't wanna start a full-blown rescue.

Think about what is your passion really about? Like where do you see yourself and find an organization that aligns with what you think the direction you wanna take in and start volunteering, find a mentor reach out to people. The best way I'd say before anybody jumps in and doing this, 'cause it's a lot of work. And you know what, I was a jumper, iner, I went all in. But I did spend a little bit of time with an organization before, not maybe enough, but I just felt very strongly about it. But I think if you can find an organization in your community, or it doesn't even need to be, that people shouldn't be myopic in their focus of, it has to be, unless of course you want to interact a hundred percent with the animals, but maybe you don't, maybe your skillset is somewhere else, so widen your search and think we have volunteers from all over the country. So find what you think you want to do, what you're good at, what you feel like. I would feel really good about this. There'll be somebody out there. We have people who help with social media, you know what I mean? So what's your skillset? And find an organization that you really feel good about and if you don't have to be hands-on, it could be anywhere. So make sure you have your search. Be broad.

What about a sanity tip? What is one non-negotiable boundary every new advocate should set to avoid burnout Early.

Don't be afraid to say no. Just don't. Don't ever be afraid to say no. You have to have that ability because if somebody calls you and asks you to do something, of course we wanna give, right? We're volunteering. But you have to be able to set your boundaries right away. So I think one of the things you have to be is practice saying no. Just practicing. No, and that's okay. It doesn't mean you're not a good volunteer not everybody can, be there all the time and that's okay. Longevity is important. So to have that longevity, it's okay to say no.

What is one common myth about cat rescue that you wish new advocates would stop believing?

Going back into what we were just talking about you don't have to be hands on to volunteer. I think that a lot of people think if I can't, be. Petting a cat or active there's a place for everybody. And I feel like, you should know that, there's also no minimum amount of time If you think you don't like, maybe that's a myth where you won't have enough time to give. Trust me, as somebody who runs an organization, it all makes a difference. So there's a place for you, there's a time for you. I don't think that because you have limited time or maybe you think your skillset is atypical or maybe you're super shy there's definitely a place for you.

And then lastly, what is the biggest lesson that your cat, Marlin, taught you about the resilience that every advocate needs to hear?

Oh my gosh. Marlin taught me how to live every day to the fullest. That's the biggest lesson I learned from him. He was a kitty with cancer. But the thing is, and I always joked, Marlin doesn't know he has cancer, so don't tell him because cats it beautifully. They don't know, right? So they're very much in the moment and they very much just live their best lives. And so that's my approach to every day I wake up in gratitude. I try to find one thing to be grateful for every day. And that's something that he definitely taught me. Because they are just so different. We can get really wrapped up in so many things. And I can see his face perfectly right now. And always, I could just look at him and just know gosh, things are just so simple in the sense of you truly live every day to the fullest and you find so much joy in life and so much gratitude in. And I think about him all the time in that.

Thank you so much for joining me today, Sally.

I'm so grateful. I'm so glad we were able to do this. And thank you for giving me an opportunity to talk more about Mission Meow and about rescue and all the important things. And I would just love to say to everybody out there and rescue, hang in there. Hang in there. We know it's hard. We see you. We see you, and we recognize you for the work that you do. And thank you for it.

And just before we end how can people find Mission? Meow?

They can go to mission meow.org. That's our website. We are on TikTok, not that much, so that's not my first go-to. But Facebook, Instagram but directly, just go right to mission meow.org. I'll include some links in the show notes too. Perfect.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

That's it for today's episode. I wanna thank everybody for listening and supporting us. If you wanna take that an extra step, consider becoming a member. We just added this to our website, animalposse.com, scroll down, look for the support tab. Our membership program is going to help us directly support animals in need, whether that be through vaccinations, food or spay neuter efforts.