Support Animal Care - a morning with Pastor Susan

Pastor Susan Lim has always been crazy about animals. She can have the worst day in the world and be grouchy as hell but when an animal walks by, she immediately flashes her 1000 kilowatt smile and softens down. As a result, our house has become an animal shelter of sorts. Currently, we have 7 cats, 2 dogs and a couple of squirrels. Some we had adopted and some had adopted us.

A couple of the cats just visited one day and decided to stay. One of them was thrust upon us because he ran into my friend's house and she didn't know what to do with it. This cat looks like it has epilepsy and when we first got him, he could barely walk as he had very little motor skills. We decided to call him "Dorje" which means indestructible in Tibetan. And he really is! We are constantly amazed that he is still around. He even guards our house and caterwauls at intruders - seen and unseen!

The squirrels just come for the not inexpensive Science Diet cat food and have the glossiest coats I have ever seen. I see my cats lying down and watching the squirrels eat their food. So much for rodent catchers. Talking of rodents, we also had a baby rat stay for awhile, then it left. I think someone must be putting a sign somewhere saying "go to this address for free food". Once i had an sms from Susan telling me that if i came home and saw a monkey, she didn't bring it home. Apparently a monkey also liked to drop by and helped himself to our potatoes and bananas.

Anyway, that is just the background to our menagerie. Recently, Susan has been busy helping the animals at Kechara Forest Retreat. She would go there to help bathe them when she had time. Yesterday, we went to KFR and we saw one of the puppies on top of some garbage pile, we were about 30 feet away but Susan called out to it to get down and amazingly enough, the puppy immediately did! All the dogs came to greet her too. I really think she is a dog whisperer. HE Tsem Rinpoche loves animals very much also so Susan and Rinpoche have this passion and compassion for animals in common. They both have bags of dog food in their car so that they can feed strays.

Susan at KFR with a puppy havng a nap on her lap!

Spaying stray dogs is crucial to curbing uncontrolled animal population growth. This is especially important for KFR otherwise we would not be able to cope. For the past few days, Susan has taken four dogs to be spayed at a vet. Spaying is not a cheap option. For a female dog, surgery would cost an average of RM200-250, and then she would have to board with the vet while she recuperates, which typically is for 10 days. Boarding can cost from RM15-30 per night, so the average cost for a female dog to be spayed is around RM300-400. For a male dog, it is cheaper at around RM250-300. This doesn't take into account driving to and fro from Bentong, which would cost around RM30 with fuel and tolls per trip. Susan is now fund raising for this as there are still many animals which need to be spayed. If you would like to contribute, please let me or Susan know.

Susan needs:

Funds for vets fees (spaying and medical treatment)
Pet food
Animal crates in good condition
Volunteers to help send animals to the vet
A van would be great!

My son, Sean, is also involved in raising awareness for Animal Cruelty and vegetarianism. Inspired by Tsem Rinpoche, he and a group of kids started a facebook page called Animal Befrienders Coalition (ABC) - please do support them by liking their page.

Yesterday, I went with Susan to drop off two dogs for spaying at the vet, then we went to KFR, where Susan collected another two dogs. This morning, I also followed her to the vet and thought I could grab a quick lunch with her before I go off to work, but Dechen, one of the dogs which we took to the vet today, decided to hop over to the backseat of Susan's car (thank god it was Susan's car and not mine) and poop all over the backseat. The blue plastic cover which was supposed to protect the car seats had been put on wrongly so it did not quite cover the seat. As a result, there was poop all over the backseat, which was mashed in by Dechen scrambling around.

After we sent the dogs in, we went to a petrol station nearby to ask them to wash the car but they refused. So I went to Guardian pharmacy to buy a shitload of wet wipes and Susan cleaned the best she could. I hope the carwash near Kechara in Sunwaymas will be more amenable to cleaning it! I just wanted to share this so that people know what goes on behind helping animals. It's not all cute fluffy animals and sometimes it can be pretty shitty - literally. But when you see people happily doing whatever it takes to benefit animals who can never thank them, I hope it inspires people to think what can I do to support. It is great to think wow - these people are doing wonderful work, but let's not stop there. Let's see what we can do - please support Susan in her work.

This is Pastor Susan putting the leash on one of the dogs
from KFR, ready to take them to the vet.