This is Paul

Hi there! This is Paul here at Change One Life, you’ve probably heard my name before and read something about me on some articles about our Cat Sanctuary, the place my wife (Jackie) and I have been running for more than a decade to give shelter to homeless cats (and occasionally other animals as well) that were victims of abandonment as a consquence of the wave of forced evictions due to the 2008 housing market crash and the financial crisis that came after.

At the time, Jackie and I had a so-called conventional life; we both had a full-time job, a rented place and an ordinary social life.

Since we were both big animal lovers, we used to help local animal shelters and cat charities by making donations after learning about all the suffering and cruelty, abandoned animals were subjected to.

But then, at some point, our lives changed drastically when abandonment knocked on our front door.

We found ourselves in the very difficult position of having to decide whether to sacrifice our conventional living to try to save and protect the abandoned cats roaming our neighbourhood that nobody wanted nor cared about, or just look the other way and carry on with our lives.

Living by our values, the latter didn’t seem like an option, so we did not hesitate and made the decision of rescuing them against all odds.

We chose saving the lives of helpless animals even though we knew it meant putting our own lives in jeopardy and gambling away our future. That’s how our cat sanctuary was born in 2013, and the rest is history.

The fact of not having enough financial means and not owning a home, made everything unimaginably difficult, and have caused us to live a life full of extreme sacrifice, renouncement and risk, to protect the lives of those we saved.

Ten years later and now more than ever, this situation affects our everyday life.

The struggle is real, and it has exceeded our mental and physical strength which was already weakened by many years of hard work, our ageing and the lack of financial stability.

Both Jackie and I are unemployed immigrants in our late 50’s who come from difficult family backgrounds.We never had parents or a family to turn to in times of need, so we had to learn to fend for ourselves since a very young age and eventually we had to leave our countries of origin to seek work opportunities and a better future.

Sanctuary co-founders Jackie and Paul with their rescues Oliver, Kitty and Blackberry Melody, now in 2023.

Somewhat paradoxically, it was our destiny that instead of finding a better future for us, we found ourselves in the situation of having to help others; helpless sentient beings that were even more vulnerable than we were.

But today, I’m not here to tell you about our difficult family backgrounds but rather to communicate directly with you and try to explain to those of you who might be interested in knowing, what really goes on behind the scenes of a life project devoted to help homeless animals and everything related to the human side of it, in other words, the caregivers, without whom there would be no project to speak of.

Up until now, Jackie has always been the one in charge of communicating with our supporters through our social media. But over the last few years, especially since the pandemic and without rhyme or reason, Facebook have blocked our audience reach and in doing so it left us without the only channel we had to communicate with our audience and what’s even worse, it completely destroyed the only possibility we had of finding new supporters.

The world is going through a lot these days! War, natural disasters, supply shortage, inflation, sky-rocket prices, financial crisis, not to mention the rise in rent prices plus the fact that 99,9 % of homeowners do not allow pets in their properties, makes it impossible for people like us to find an affordable place we could rent to live with so many rescue animals.

We’re currently in the legal process of getting evicted and it’s just a matter of time that we’ll all be homeless if we cannot find a solution to the housing problem we’re facing right now.

Nowadays, it’s also incredibly hard to find help for animal causes, Jackie couldn’t keep on doing it on her own and that’s why I’ve decided to start helping her get the message across, as part of all the duties I have at the Sanctuary.

My goal is to communicate directly with our followers, reach out to our current supporters and keep them informed about major events at the Sanctuary.

I also aim to find new supporters who could help us and make up for the ones we have lost over the years, mostly due to the global economic crisis that have crushed us and isolated us, making us more helpless and hopeless than ever!

From now on, I’ll be writing and sending you our newsletter every month with topics related to the sanctuary which I hope you will find engaging.

Hopefully, you could also find these reads useful for your own reflexion and self-growth, because in my humble experience, the way we approach animal welfare and how deep we get involved, is directly linked to our personal growth.

On my first newsletter, I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who supported us financially during these last few extremely difficult years, despite their own personal adverse circumstances which I can figure many of you had to go through and deal with.

A heartfelt THANK YOU to YOU ALL, for helping us, as long as you could or whenever you could, to make life possible for everyone at the sanctuary.

Blessings to all, hopefully you’ll read me again next month!

Warmest regards,

Paul

If you wish to help us by sponsoring a rescue for only $5 a month CLICK HERE

If you prefer to help us feed a feral cat for only $5 a month CLICK HERE

If you’d rather just make a one-time donation CLICK HERE

Watch Paul’s activity outside the Sanctuary; he’s been feeding stray and feral cats on a daily basis, since 2013.