I am not mean, I am frustrated and heartbroken

A friend of mine was here today, and we were chatting,

She made a statement, it was not the first time it was made, and this is not the first time I have written about it here.

“You come off mean.” Yes, I do, and as hard as I try not to, as hard as I bite my lip, I still come off mean. In reality, it is a combination of thirteen years of frustration, anger, stress, feeing abandoned and having absolutely no privacy, no space where I have my little corner of the world. I have nowhere to escape, to de-stress so to say.

Oh, I hear you! You say, well you have your bedroom and the bathroom. You have not seen my bedroom, and if you have you are one of those people who I tell to stay out of my bedroom and go in it any way. The bathroom, well, it belongs to the shelter, I get to use the toilet though!

I do not know what else to do. I have BEGGED and PLEADED for help, for volunteers to help organize fundraisers, come up with one, tell me what you need me to do and run with it, something I don’t have to worry about, something that will be done without me having to nag or keep track of. For people to do what they say they will do.

The shelter needs that building. What is going to happen to the ferrets in this area when I die? Moreover, I would love to retire BEFORE I die. Do not go saying a thing, my oncologist says I am nothing but a ticking bomb, the cancer will be back, not maybe will be. I have an 80% chance of it returning, and if it does, well there is not one thing that they can do for me. The chemo I went through damaged my heart, lungs, and kidneys. Yeah, and I had the hamstring removed, and a muscle removed from my back.

People say, but I do not know what to do, or how to do it. Here is a real news flash for you, neither do I. I research what I can and just do it. The only thing that I keep saying, it must come off professional, and not make the shelter look like unprofessional. Image for the shelter is everything.

I have two years of financials to work on; I have files to work on. I want to be in the background pushing paper and doing the newsletter, graphics, inventory, and things like that. I do not want to do the educational programs by my self all the time. However, I do not want people saying what wonderful pets ferrets are without the down sides, and yes; they do have some negative points. I want my home back, I want some privacy. I want a place to de-stress.

I want someone else dealing with the adoptions, volunteers, surrenders. The shelter needs that building. Right now, the shelter owns land, which needs mowed every other week at the cost of $25 a mow.


I had promises of help with the car show, ok, I need this, this and this done. Sarah was the only one who followed through, she took the list of business I had written to asking for sponsorship or raffle items and called all TWO HUNDRED of them. She even called back when they asked her to, just to give her the run around.

I had no clue on how to do it, but I got on line did some research, asked questions. Everyone one there was impressed, and had fun. Unfortunately, right after we advertised our show for May 12th, Max Hayes had one and they had corporate sponsorship with some awesome prizes, and 35 trophies per category. They had over 400 cars.

By the way, the car show was a resounding success/failure. Success in the fact two ferrets were adopted a couple weeks later, failure in the fact because we had no sponsors, and 90% of the raffle items were purchased by the shelter (bargains for sure but still purchased by us) the shelter lost $700.

So why did we follow through with it? Easy, between the advertising in the cruising magazines, the contract for the DJ (cancellation we would still have had to pay a portion of the fee, cannot remember how much now), the Pepsi Trailer, and food, we would have lost a lot more.

Last weekend was the Morphicon Convention. Tuesday, the brake lines blew out on the wagon, I mean no brakes, use a cement wall to stop no brakes. The wall was about 18 inches high, and the right front wheel went over by the time I slammed it into park, and was hanging three feet in the air. Better than a pole or another car.

After all of the expense of the trip, including items purchased for sale at the convention (by the way we still have 20 decks of the Ferret Tarot Cards) the net total with their donation and sales is $600.00 (Or six weeks of food for the ferrets)

Now I had promises that people would check on the ferrets and take care of things, go have fun, enjoy. Um yeah, it would have been fun if I had some help, so I could do things at the convention, but since my help begged off, I was at a table from 9 AM to 6 PM, usually later, and I had my ferrets as pets seminar to do too.

When I was done, I would grab dinner (BTW $8 a day total for meals, including coffee) go back to my room, catch up with calls and crash. The whole time while I was there, I would stress about people keeping their word and showing up to double check on the ferrets. Husband does check on them, and does playtimes, but two sets of eyes keeps better track.

Remember back in October? When I went to Chicago for the Backer Show for the Pet Industry and the Chicago Ferret Show, which I saved on because I stayed at my daughters and I had promises of help to come home to no one showed up?

It happened again. No one. Jane my dependable volunteer; she has been with me through thick and thin. Jane is the one who cries for the ferrets and me because I cannot cry anymore. She had her hand operated on and did excessively much at the car show, and that Monday, she had a stitch pop and the hand infected, so she could not help, and to be honest, I would have been really ticked off at her if she did not listen to the doctor.

So again, it happens, no one did what he, or she said they would.

Vacations are starting. People want me to board their ferrets, I am asked aren’t you going somewhere to get away? Hell no. First, any money we have goes into the shelter, which we have nothing, so I use the mortgage payment to cover. Second, it would be like when I went to Chicago or to Columbus.

Are we boarding ferrets? NO. Sure, we need the money, but the added stress is something I really do not need at this point. I am at the breaking point.

Add to that thirteen years of seeing animals come into the shelter in various conditions from being abused, abandoned, to well cared for tends to jade you.

Thirteen years of hearing, oh, well I don’t have time, I can’t afford vet care, I can’t afford to feed it, I am having a baby so I am giving up my 5 year old ferret, I am moving in three days, my husband left, my girlfriend left, it was left behind in a foreclosed house, it was left behind in an apartment, it was left in a dumpster, it was turned loose in a park.

Thirteen years of people turning to you for help, support, answers. Who do I have to turn to when I am worrying about how to pay the vet bills? How to buy food? How to pay shelter expenses? (Please don’t say the couple who will help with the building, they are willing to do more than their share, in order for me to get grants written I need the time to finish paper work and work on them)

So back to the original reason for this, I am not mean but so totally frustrated and heartbroken over promises made and broken that I cannot hide it any more.