Welcome to Animal Posse, the podcast dedicated to the people and rescues making a difference in the lives of animals. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Today we are diving into the heart of animal advocacy here in Louisiana. We've all seen them, the shadows moving through our neighborhoods, the forgotten faces of our community. But today's guest didn't look the other way. She decided to build a lifeline. I am joined by Hannah Louviere, the force behind Forgotten Felines rescue of Louisiana. Thank you for being here today, Hannah.

Yeah, my pleasure.

I wanna hear all about forgotten felines rescue of Louisiana. What is your mission and how did you get started?

So our main mission is to pretty much take in cats that have. Just no chance. Same thing with dogs too, but obviously our main focus is on cats. We started off as a TNR program as college students. It was my sophomore year of college. And we. Actually had a feral cat colony on campus and one of the cats actively gave birth in front of us on a sidewalk while we were walking in between classes. And we started off as a group of strangers. We all just came together in an alleyway and sat there and watched this cat do this. And from there, the very next day we formed an organization on campus that helped TNR Cats. Obviously we would rehome kittens that we trapped and we would socialize them. And from there we formed into forgotten Felines Rescue about two years later. And so our, like I said, our main goal was to start off with TNR Cats, cats that people overlooked. Your feral cats, your street cats. And we started taking them in and realizing that it was pretty easy to socialize. Our young guys. And if they weren't socialable, we could always release them. We did every medical care that you could think of for them and release them back into a colony that was monitored and fed and sheltered.

Did you go to college expecting for it to turn into this were you an animal lover before this?

I absolutely was. At the time I was pre-vet, so loved animals. I was a biology student, and it was a group of bio students who did all of this. Did I think that it would. Changed my life 10 years later. Absolutely not. I did not think that it would've engrossed me so much. I knew that my goal was to always help animals in some form. I do remember one of my questions for one of our pre-professional groups was like, what kind of deems you as successful in your job or in life? And one of my statements was to be able to help any animal that I see. And, 10 years later here I am and I am reached out with all kinds of cases. Our main focus as of right now is our shelter cases. So we do have a lot of shelter people who reach out to us about medical cases that basically exceeds their medical knowledge and or their financial possibilities for these animals. And for me, because at this point I'm a surgical technician for, a vet and at multiple animal hospitals right now. And so I have the means and I have the knowledge and I have the people around to help take on these special cases. So we do get a lot of. Cats who need amputations, cats who have weird skin issues eye problems. Ch right now has pretty much taken us over. A lot of people have been reaching out to us about taking in our little ch guys. And and so that's pretty much where we've landed and where we are now.

Yeah, I definitely would like to talk more about that, but I would also like to backtrack a little bit to your beginnings of getting started. Because I'm in a different generation from you and so I'm older than you are. And of course, like we are seeing now, my generation is almost considered the younger generation in rescue because there's very few people that are your age in rescue. And it seems to be like a big problem right now because all these other rescues that are established, they don't know what they're gonna do because they're having a difficult time recruiting younger people. So since you started at such a young age, I would like to get like more insight to that too. Like when you first got started doing the TNR and y'all saw these stray cats on campus, was this something that you were already aware of, that this was a problem? Did you already know about TNR or did you like look for a mentor?

I had absolutely no idea this that was a problem. I didn't even hear of TNR when we formed. I had no idea what that term even meant. And the fun fact, I had little cat knowledge on top of that when I first started. We formed the rescue when I was 19 years old. I was very young and had no idea what I was doing, if we're gonna be so completely honest. But yeah, I had absolutely no idea. So when I found out that basically feral cats and colony cats were a thing, it just hit me and I was like, oh, I'm gonna do research on that. And I started researching it and then I learned about TNR. And then Angela with Purrs of Hope, actually is the one that taught us everything that we know. She really took us under our wing, and was like, this is what you do. This is how you set a trap. This is where you take them. This is what they need in the care, blah, blah, blah. And we went with it and ran with it. Once again at this point I was a teenager and had just little, very little knowledge. It was very interesting to me. So I guess more from like my scientific background of like where I was headed in school I saw it as a science thing to look at. So at the end of the day, they were just animals and how we could fix them. And so I guess that gained more of my interest from that aspect of what difference could we actually make? And if you wanna quote unquote call it a science experiment our first true colony that we were able to. Pretty much contain was the cats on campus. And so that was our main focus. And so once we saw. It kind of dwindling down. So the amount of cats having kittens the amount of cats basically showing up, injured, hurt all of that started dwindling down within a year of us just trapping, spay, neutering, and taking in kittens. And so we saw the difference and so we're like, oh, we can do this in other places. And more people reached out to us we would see a cat and we would go to these random areas and we would just start trapping neutering and repeating the same process and seeing a difference there as well. And so once again, being so young, it was easy in the sense of we just had to worry about school. So we didn't really we all had jobs at the time, but it really was something that could put all of our focus in on. We've also tried to recruit people and try to get people more closer to like our age. I feel like now now that all of us are 30 in the group that we have reached more people to assist us and to spread that knowledge of TNR and taken in cats and not to look over anything and to basically be able to rescue. Of course once again, I am under the full agreement that there are fewer and fewer people going into rescue at our ages. Most of the people that we obviously work around and, have partnership with are a lot older than us still. And so you know, it, there is like that generational break, but we all work together and they've taught us so much and so I get to see what. Other rescues have done who have been in it in year for, decades and take that knowledge and put it under our rescue. And we have a lot of partnerships. One of our good partners is with St. Mary's. Area. So the parish and the Aviary project she is the closest one to our age that we've actually had who started up her own rescue as well. And she does everything. A lot of her focus is basically like getting animals that are in need and she transports them to other rescues as being her main resource. So we actually have a direct pipeline for a lot of neglect cases, hoarding cases animals. With severe medical conditions that are outside the the prospects of other places that would be willing to take them in. And so she reaches out to us and she knows that I'm a sucker and I'll never say no, especially to a medical case. Even when we have no room, no space, we have, little limited amount of funds. If it's an animal in need, like she knows that I'll take it. And so we've worked together and so far she's pretty much the only other person that. Together we have formed our own separate rescues and have watched them grow. And one of the things that I never thought being 19-year-old, me starting this up and doing this in between classes and meeting with people and trapping cats and running cats. To the vet before class and stuff was that we would ever own like an actual facility or a building because I never thought that we would get as big or that any of us would still be in, in the rescue. 'cause it was started off as a school project. And here we are in 2026 and we just basically bought her own building. And so we were working on having an actual facility instead of being foster based right now, which once again, and never in my brain when I first started this rescue, that I think that's where we would end up.

Congratulations on that. That's quite an accomplishment. Thank So is it all

Thank you. It's

still all the same people that are in the rescue as everybody who was originally there still involved.

Unfortunately no. So when we first formed it was four core members and two have obviously, we were so young when we were in college already, so they all had future prospects and what they were going into. So two of the members have stopped and or, doing their own thing and doing their own future. And then there is still the two core members, which is me and Kaitlyn who. Has pretty much. Downsized on what she's done in the rescue, but she's always there, she's always a part of the rescue with decision making and stuff like that. So the newest member of the group would be Alyssa, who I've pretty much suckered into being part of the rescue. She can't say no, and She started off as just a little foster and now she is also one of she's not a founding member, but she has become an actual core member of our rescue. So it really is just the three of us still running this me of course taking in the most and dealing with the most. Helping with like outreach in communities right now. And it's a lot, but we all have each other at the end of the day, whenever it comes down to, I'm too stressed, can you do this? And they're like, absolutely. And they're, on it. So yeah, I miss what we were when we were in college, but I like where we are right now.

Tell me a little bit about the building that you have. So are your hopes is to go fully like foster free with this building?

Yeah, actually I'm sure you know how it is in animal rescue. Finding fosters is not always an option. Some people like to foster for a week or a weekend, and we have animals in our rescue that are here for months, especially our medical cases where they have to be. They have to have surgery, they have to heal and recover. And that takes a long time. And what we have found to be the easiest thing was that one of we have actually managed to be working out of a single building right now that it's not ours at all. But we were kind enough by a couple of people to donate the space to us. And so it is just. Fully under my care with animals. And so it has become very overwhelming. And of course the more social media, interests that we get, the more people that wanna reach out and help, we aren't able to actually allow them to help just because of the circumstances of where we are. And once again, we have a handful of fosters, but they can't always foster. Always taken. We had reached out to a few people and we have very kind, generous people who have said, whatever you need, we'll help you with. And the new building that we have, it is actually two separate buildings right now that we are going to be combining with One single door. But we will have a medical side, so that will be our side for all of our new intakes who are under quarantine. We do a two week quarantine on everybody who comes through to limit any outbreaks or risk of anything going under, outta control. And, any medical cases that we have will be on that side. And of course in rescue, the main things that we see are ringworm, URI. Things like that. So they'll all have their own separate, rooms that they'll be in, and so they can be there. And then our quarantine space will be in a different area, in the same building. And then for all of our healthy cats who have not, been diagnosed with anything or. I have just pretty much recovered fully from whatever they had previously. We'll go on the adoption side and so we will have the adoption side for baby kittens and basically juveniles and adults and they can just free roam and, be happy and not left in cages or anything like that. And of course if fosters come up, then yeah, absolutely, we would welcome fosters and to help out and take home a kitty for a while. But yeah, our goal is to not no longer be foster based, but to have a physical facility where these animals can room free and have as much freedom as they can without any timeframe, without any time limits of us having to be like, okay, they have to be out by this time because. This foster can no longer foster them. So it's reduces the stress on us as well as for them, because they don't have to get moved around back and forth. And which does unfortunately happen a lot when your foster base is, when one foster is out, another foster might step in and then they go to a different house and they have to re acclimate all over again. And us being, a cat rescue, we all know how stressful that can be on cats. Some cats are. Perfect, and they don't care about anything. And then there are other cats where it's the most jarring, life altering thing that they've ever experienced with going into a new environment. In an effort to reduce their stress is give them one space they can be in and, have all of the amenities that they could have for a cat that they could enjoy and have people come by. Play with them and see them anytime they want it and, hopefully get adopted. Fingers crossed. But yeah, I'm very excited for this new space that we're getting not only for obviously for our sake, but definitely for the cats because they do deserve to be in that type of setting instead of being tossed from foster home to foster home. And I know that's a bad word to use, but tossed, but you understand what I mean by just going in between homes until they go into their permanent home.

Yeah, absolutely. How many animals are you gonna be able to house in your facility?

Actually, it's a very large facility now with it being a two, combined buildings. So we don't really have a limit as long as we have space or if somebody reaches out to us, we'll always make space for them. So it's not saying that we're open intake, but we will always make space for any animals in need. So there is truly like no limit. So I do think that based on what we are now, which is limited, that. We could expand a lot more with what we intake and how we intake them and everything like that. So that's also really exciting. 'cause once again, our main focus is St. Mary's Parish right now, because I, we live in St. Tammany and there's rescues and, there's people on every corner that help animals. And not to say St. Tammany does not have any issues with strays or animals in need, but. St. Mary's Parish has been one that we've been working with for almost five years now, and almost every single animal that's in our care comes directly from there because they just have, they have no resources at all, and they don't have. They have very little veterinarian help where they help out rescues. They don't offer discounts a whole lot. And it was one of the discussions that I had with one of my members and I was like, what if we just focus on them and stop taking, from our community, which doesn't necessarily make a hit because there are so many rescues in our area. And really focus on animals that like truly need it, animals with a deadline. Animals that if they do not receive help, will die. And and of course like once we started doing it, we were like, wow, this is great because it actually feels like we're helping it doesn't always feel that way in rescue, which once again, I'm sure you understand, but doing the St. Mary, I call the St. Mary Parish pipeline has really made a difference on what I feel like we have done. And like I said, for about five years now, we have intake. We have taken in probably over a thousand, cats and dogs from them that were either on the euthanasia list or for space or they had they needed surgery and they couldn't afford it, so they were automatically gonna be euthanized. And so we've made a major difference and the lives of those animals for sure. And so that's been very rewarding in that aspect. Yeah, it's all the

rural parishes do need a lot

of

help. Yes.

How is it

that you came to get connected with St. Mary Parish?

That's so funny because I actually don't quite remember. I really feel like Carla Kutone, who basically was working at the shelter at the time, had just sent us a message about a cat. Like it was like. A cat and some kittens who all had such severe upper respiratory infections that at some point they were gonna need. Nucleation, whether it be bilateral or unilateral, their eyes were gonna have to come out. And that is something that it was completely out of. Their financial, what they could pay for these shelter animals that may or may not get adopted. And so of course they would move on to something else that is more adoptable and something they could help with less amount of funds. And so she had reached out. And one thing about me is the highness. sucker for an eyeball. Cat eyeball. Cats are my absolute favorite things on the face of this planet. And it just took one email and then we met once and then once again, it was like campus realizing, about TNR and all of that stuff all over again, where I was like, oh, y'all actually have no help these animals, if somebody doesn't say that, they'll help them, they just die. And she's yeah, pretty much. And I was like, oh, I'll always help you. No, no matter what, even if I can't, like I will help you in some way. And and like it's been a very. Very rewarding partnership with them. And they've always been so kind and they honestly watching them do the hard work of rescuing these animals and some of the conditions that they send pictures in and, I'm like, I'm just happy I can help. I'm happy that I can remove them from that. And y'all have put in the, basically all of the work of rearranging with, police officers because they do a lot of they do handle a lot of stuff with the court and police handlings and all of that stuff. And some animals are basically evidence at some point, so they do have to go into an evidence hold with their shelter and then they can be released to us. And but yeah it took one email and it has pretty much trickled into what we are now and. They have done so much work and I'm always happy to take in anything that they do. And a lot of the, they've gone independent. They did leave the shelter. They do have a good communication, obviously with the shelter, but now their main goal is to reduce animals actually going into the shelter. And so they, with their network, they have managed to deviate animals from even entering the shelter to begin with and getting them straight to us through, a lot of work on their part. So yeah.

Yeah. And that's where the Aviary Creature Rescue is too, right? In St. Mary?

Yes.

Yeah. Yes, I did speak with Alyssa about that, and just some of the things that go on in that area, it is atrocious. Yes. And then it truly

is,

they have these weird laws too that they're trying to come up with where you can't feed cats or can't feed strays. And it just, it's backwards to me.

I could not agree more. And those weird laws is actually what led to us having to form forgotten Felines Rescue. When we were on campus, like I said, it was like a school project. And so we were Campus Cat Coalition for a while and. The president of the campus basically accused us of putting cats on campus and we're like no. We are putting the cats back, but they are fixed and they are healthy, and so they can stay on this campus and if we remove them, you'll create a funnel effect. And we had to, go into all of that. And he basically, we think he'd been it nice, he did threaten our academic careers at the time, and so we of course were scared little college students who were like, if he ruins us, like what's gonna happen? And one of the loopholes that we found was that he can't touch a 5 0 1 C through rescue. If a 5 0 1 C3 is on a public campus, he cannot do anything about it. And so that's what led to us actually forming. Forgotten feelings rescued from there. And they still have a lot of laws that we have had to like loop around. But one of the main ones, and I will never understand it, is not feeding colony cats. I don't understand how that can ever be illegal to feed a street animal or any animal in need in general. If you feed them, they don't become a nuisance. If you starve them, they will become a nuisance. And then that is how sick animals spread disease. If they're not taken care of, if they're not sheltered, if they're not cared for in any capacity, that is more detrimental to the environment and the community. Not everyone sees it that way.

Yeah. That's the same thing that I said when Alyssa told me that, I was like, they're creating a nuisance. Like they're trying to say yes. Oh we're gonna get rid of the nuisance. We're not gonna feed them. And it's no, you're creating the nuisance by not feeding them. It makes no sense.

It truly makes zero sense because if you keep an animal fed. Yes, they will quote unquote, be more familiar with people. And I guess they'll be more likely to come in people's public spaces. But the animals are already there. We didn't put the animals there. At the end of the day, the animals are already there because of an ongoing system that is all over the world of not spaying and neutering your pets, of just abandoning your pets outside because they just think that they're animals. And I don't think that people understand that our pets have been domesticated to. Pets not to be wild animals. And so they cannot take care of themselves. Feral cats are a completely different aspect of that because cats are incredible in the aspect of how they can navigate within, on their own. But but yeah, just if you leave them alone, then you create an entire different problem of animals that are desperate and desperate animals are never good. And you, like I said, you just, you make animals sick by doing that. And the sicker the animal, the weaker immune system, the more likely for disease and viruses to spread among other animals within the community. And once again, people that have higher status don't really see it in that way, which is very frustrating at times. You

did say that you are a surgical vet technician.

Yes, ma'am. Okay. I've been doing it since 2015, so a little over 10 years now. So tell me

about some of the special medical cases that you take care of.

Yeah, absolutely. The current ones that we have it always comes in waves, which we all find funny. Like it's not funny, but it is funny. But we'll be contacted about a cat that needs nucleation or a cat with a, eyelight, a genesis where they don't have an eyelid and which would obviously have to be led to an enucleation. And most of our cases are eyes. So we get a lot of cases where just if you don't treat a cat's eye infection, their body will take care of it in the sense of it will cut off any. Healthy tissue it can, or blood supply to that eye and make it unusable and it can cause a problem later on to them. And so it always comes in waves where we'll get one cat with an eye infection that needs an nucleation, and then we ended up with, 10 cats that are getting eye nucleation. This current go that we have right now was like leg amputations. And so we were contacted by Carla who works with Alyssa and, and she was like, we have this one little mama cat that she got pulled underneath the fence by a dog and her leg is broken and it was such a severe break and this cat was left alone on this porch with her baby kittens that she was trying so hard to take care of with a. Basically a compound fracture in her upper femur. Something that is very difficult to heal. And because she was left alone with it for about a week and a half surgically repairing, it becomes less and less likely to sustain. In the long run. And so obviously when you get a case like that, then a leg amputation occurs. So we had her come in as just a leg amputation and we actually still have her in the rescue. Her name is IHOP and she's amazing. And then the second cat that we were contacted was actually a cat that they've been trying to trap for about eight months. She had been roaming around a neighborhood with a embedded collar that was around her neck and through her arm went over it, so it was also underneath her. Armpit. And it caused such severe tissue damage underneath her armpit area that we tried. It was about three months of us trying to get her arm to heal, but. Just because of the position of, her movements constant, everyday walking and where it was purely positional, we ended up having to amputate her leg as well just because it was not healing the way that we had wanted to heal. It just could not fully heal in itself. And so a lot of leg amputations, a lot of eye nucleation, a lot of ch cases with cats, with cerebellar hyperplasia. We do get those a lot because I think once people understand what they're dealing with when it comes down to CH Cat, then they can then it's oh yeah, we can take care of them. But with you having these overrun rural shelters who just cannot put all of their effort into a single animal they become a case where that's not worth their time right now. And so they end up in our care as well. Especially when they have a lot more case like, severities than some other cases that you'll see with ch And we'll get those. So we currently have two CH cats in their rescue as well. We just had a ch puppy, which I have never seen in my entire life. And she did get adopted and she was really fun. 'cause I've never seen a dog with a neurological problem. Some of the more. Weirder cases that we've had that once again, that most people would just, wouldn't even think oh, that's a thing that can happen. Are liver shunts. We've had a lot of cases where we've received cats with liver shunts because they couldn't understand what was wrong with this animal. It just was off. They had seizures and they couldn't really pinpoint it. With them. Once again, having limited funds is just we can't afford these diagnostics and so we get them in our care and we've had a lot of cases of liver shun and with that we have a a soft tissue surgeon over in St. Tammany. And she's repaired all of them, which has been incredible 'cause it is a very invasive procedure. And she's saved every single one of them. We've had, cases where it gets a little bit more obscure. So we had a case with a kitten, with with an intestinal stricture. And the stricture basically was her body creating a foreign body and within herself. And we actually had to dilate her colon every week. We had to bring her in for her colon to be dilated to the same soft tissue surgeon that did the liver shunts. And and once again, that cat was fine. We get a lot. It's very weird cases sometimes. And so we had one that actually came straight from Alyssa and this one was. This one's not a success story, but it is one of the cases that I've never seen. I've read about it and I've never seen one in real life. And that is one where she had actually had a puppy come into her care and she messaged me freaking out. Of course, because. What do you do? But this puppy was actually born without an anus, which sounds really weird. But there was no way for an output of stool to come out. And so it was basically using the puppies like vulva in order to push that out. And so that was a really. Really weird case that we went with the soft tissue surgeon and she went under a couple surgeries. Unfortunately for her, none of them were successful and we did end up having to humanely euthanize this puppy. But yeah, those are a lot of the cases that we see. We either see something that's super common, like high nucleation and leg amputations, or it's so obscure that you're like, this doesn't actually happen. And then you get a case and you're like, oh, it does happen. And we also find cases of obviously with our dogs and you're pulling them from rural areas is embedded collars. We've had three cases just last year of dogs with little dogs or puppies with 12 pound chains wrapped around their neck.

Wow.

And of course with it weighing them down and them being so weak 'cause they're little it just starts. Just precedent and precedent and their body trying to recover the damage. And it obviously ends up growing over the chain. And so we've had a lot of cases where we've had to remove chains. One of the most, I say aggressive, one that we've seen was a little dog named Destiny. She went through the absolute ringer through everything. And incredible dog, the sweetest little baby. But her chain was so embedded into her neck that she actually had to have basically a tracheotomy. 'cause it was. Into her trachea at that point. And so she had to undergo a lot of surgeries and within her neck and her throat it caused some cervical damage to her neck as well. And that's very limited on what we can do even with our surgeons that we, that have graciously helped us throughout all of this. And yeah, we, we will. There's a lot of the cases that I've seen within their, within our rescue over the last, I would say like year or so.

The cases that you're mentioning, they are truly animals in need. Definitely. There's been a New trend with people just like all of a sudden, oh, okay, I gotta get rid of my 10-year-old cat, my 11-year-old cat. And I know like sometimes there's situations that do come up, if somebody's going as hospice or something like that. And I'm not talking about those cases, but I'm just talking about Like I'm moving tomorrow. I need to get rid of my 10-year-old cat. So do you ever see any kind of those, or do people contact you about those as well?

Every single day. Every single day someone contacts us about an animal that. We don't want this animal anymore. We've had them for 12 years and now we can't provide them a nice, rest of their life with our, with us in our home. We have to completely uproot them and change their whole life. Which is, those are the most frustrating. They actually make me so incredibly angry because I can't imagine, and of course when it comes down to certain circumstances of, this person has a medical ailment, they can no longer physically care for this pet. We were always open to them. When it comes down to people who quite literally have done nothing for this animal and have not gone the bounds to find an actual home, that instead of just going straight to a shelter or straight to a rescue those are the ones that we put them on more of a wait list. We ask them to foster, we ask them to send us pictures we'll up. We are more than happy to update their medical care at the time. But physically intaking them is never truly an option just because you don't want your pet anymore. And so it hurts us knowing that we have to allot our time space to, animals. I'm not gonna say more in need because there's no other animals that are gonna be like, oh, this animal's worth more than that animal. But animals that like truly need us in this moment, in this timeframe, and we need to have space for them. But that's why. Always give them resources. One of the things that we always allot within our finances within our budgeting is community care. People that are willing to accept what we give them. So if somebody has, an 8-year-old dog that they can no longer take care. We can't always take in dogs. But the dog has never seen a vet, has never been spayed, has never been vaccinated, all this stuff. And they're gonna try to find this animal home independently. We always tell them, bring them to us. We'll fully vet them and we'll post them on our adoption sites where we cannot physically intake them. So that's usually what we do with. Those type of public cases where if they're able to at least find a home for them. I've had some cases where they're like, we have a home for this, pet. But we can't afford to spay them. Great. Bring them to me. I'll have them spayed for you and they'll be microchipped and vaccinated. And if you wanna a heartworm test, if you want a combo test, we can do all of that for you before they go into their new home. But. We try to reward the people who do take the extra steps to find a safe place for their pet without it having to go to a shelter or a rescue. And not everyone can do that within their means. And another thing that we do is that we'll provide food if they need the food. If it comes down to I can no longer afford my pet, I'll help you afford your pet. If that means it keeps them out of a shelter or, it keeps them out of the system. And so we do have a few people that will message us every month, and it's the same group of people and we will have food sent to them, or we will tell them, oh, food just came in, or food was just donated. You can come pick it up. And we do that a lot as well. And once again, if you show the effort that you are trying everything in your. Possibly within your parameter of what you can do, we will help you no matter what. And that is one of the ways that has come to limited our burnout when it comes down to owner surrenders, is finding those people. 'cause if you're not willing to take up somebody who's offering you medical care and food, then you actually don't care about the pet. It was never about. Oh, I just can't take care of them anymore. It was never about that. And that's one of the things that, like I said, we do see those every day. We do get a lot of cases, and I'm a, once again, I'm a sucker for a little old animal. And when people reach out to us and like my mom, I'm a grandmother is going into a nursing home and they can't keep their pet and no one in the family can take in this pet, that's when I'm like, I'll go ahead and I'll take that because those aren't circumstances that you endure every single day. That's not something that somebody can be necessarily prepared for. Like obviously we all know it's coming to some extent, but sometimes when somebody ends up in the hospital it's pretty drastic. It's like right then and there. And so we will always take in those pets that. That their owners physically can no longer take care of them, but they love them, to the very end. We had one this past, like probably about three months ago, and it absolutely was one of the funniest stories that we've ever received. But, an older woman as sweet as can be when she got put in her nursing home, snuck her little puppy in. She snuck in a 2-year-old little Yorkie dog and it was not a facility where you could hold animals. And so she snuck her in and, one of the workers ended up conducting us within a month of her entering into their care, and they were helping hide the puppy. They were calling her contraband for a little bit. But of course, once one of the directors found out, they were like. Either the woman who lives here and we take care of has to go, or the puppy has to go. And so of course they didn't wanna reach out to their shelter because it would've been like a whole case and they wanted to keep it under wraps. And I was like, that's fine. They sent me one email and I was like, that's the funniest thing ever heard. Please bring it to me right now. And and they did. And she was the sweetest little puppy. And we always joke that she was, contraband for just a little old lady who was just trying to find, like some solace in knowing that she had her pet with her. She does stay in contact with us, which I find to be the cutest thing. And she's in direct contact with the people who adopted that dog. That was one of my favorite cases last year. And like they, we all have a little group chat and we get to update each other with everything and it's quite adorable. And from what I understand, the new adopters for that puppy. Are able to actually visit with the dog 'cause they do live in the same area. And so the the little old lady has actually seen her dog since it's been adopted. So sometimes you find like really amazing adopters who will, love a story, love anything like that, and will do anything to help keep that connection with an owner who also love their animal at the time. And so that's been really incredible. Yeah, so we do see a lot of those owners surrender cases and whenever we can't help physically intake, we will always help in some other type of way, whether it just be resources of, food or just medical care.

Yeah, that's an amazing story. And I can't believe they were able to hide that puppy for a month

Yes. It's the funniest thing ever. And I was like, and she was little. She was like. Five pounds. And I was like, I guess I can see it, and she's quiet. The dog was very quiet and I was like, I think this dog knew that she was not supposed to be there. Yeah that one, like the moment I heard it on the phone, I was like, yeah, I will help out with that. That is the funniest thing I've ever heard of. Mine's higher life, please bring to me. And that was great case. And it was right before Thanksgiving. It was a very fun little thing to navigate around. Yeah.

Did she get adopted right away too?

She did. Being a little toy breed obviously is a little bit more ideal, if you will, quote unquote when it comes down to like people wanting an animal. But people also really love the story. 'Cause of course we. Her little contraband story and her bio, and we had a lot of people reach out and was like, I would love nothing more to have a puppy that was smuggled. And I was like, absolutely. Here you go. Yeah, she got adopted pretty quickly and the home that she went into, like I said, amazing, the fact that they stay in communications with her previous owner who tried so hard to, keep her basically without having to give her up is one of my, is also just like icing on the cake of what we've managed to help. Both her and the course the animal.

Yeah. That is a wonderful story. That's really good. I was gonna say that you put that in the adoption bio and that kind of almost had to seal the deal because it's a great story Oh to go along with that. So when is your new facility gonna open up?

We're hoping that the adoption side our grand scheme of things is that by March 1st we'll actually be open to the public. It will still be appointment only, of course. But with everything going under the works now with our contractors everything looks like it's gonna be ready in the next couple weeks.

That's great. It was great speaking with you and learning all about what you did. The story of how you got started was really interesting. It's really amazing. Yes. And it's truly an inspiration. So I do hope it inspires other young people to get started with doing this as well.

I hope so too. And once again, for any young people who are interested in something like that, but don't think that they have the means, just know that I did not at all. I was still a broke college student who had no idea what she was doing. And now here we are. Actually having, a 5 0 1 C3 that I'm in charge of and being quote unquote an adult with running it and taking care of so many animals. Once again, I never thought that this is where we would be the 10 years that I've been doing this, which is crazy to say that I've been doing this for 10 years.

Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me, and thank you so much for wanting talk about forgotten felines rescue.

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.