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Archive for December 11th, 2009

Guardian Angel places cats left homeless by foreclosure

Who are the victims of foreclosures? Well, families, of course. Children. Working people.

But what about pets?  Not much has been written about that. If a family loses their home to foreclosure, what happens to the pets they may own? Families can move into apartments, or even move in with friends or other family members.  But that doesn’t mean that the pets can come along.

Pet shelters and humane societies have been reporting that their facilities have been strained to the breaking point as families turn in their pets that they can no longer afford, or pets that cannot go along to smaller quarters.

One group on the west coast of Florida is trying to do something about that.  Guardian Angel Cat Rescue and Adoption is based in Hudson in Hernando County, but they serve all of Tampa Bay. Guardian Angel does not have a shelter, but instead places cats in foster homes until permanent homes can be found.

“Our goal is to help cats that are in danger of being euthanized or abandoned due to owners moving, foreclosure, job loss…” their flyer says.

We ran into representatives of Guardian Angel last weekend at the Palm Harbor Arts & Crafts Festival, where they were operating a small booth.  

The accompanying picture shows one of the cats, Termite, who is being being cared for by the Guradian Angel folks. If you’d like to see more, go to www.adoptapet.com and search shelters for Guardian Angel Cat Rescue.  Or just e-mail them at guardianangelCRA@yahoo.com, or call them at 727-859-2208.

Tags: adopt-a-cat, pet rescue, pets, pinellas

Two-Day Palm Harbor Arts & Crafts Festival draws crowds

The holiday season  really brings out the local arts & crafts shows, and this year has been no exception.  If you scroll back you’ll see that we visited a small arts show up in Tarpon Springs a week or two ago.

But the mother of all local arts shows is the Palm Harbor Arts & Crafts Festival, a show that has been a fixcture in Palm Harbor for the past 35 years.  Most of these shows have been held in the Olde Palm Harbior area right off Alt. 19, and that’s where the show was held again this year after a hiatus of several years during which the show was moved up to the St. petersburg College Tarpon Springs campus.

A couple of art-loving Newfoundlands

This year was fun as always, athough it seemed to me that both the crowds and the number of vendors were down a bit from the average. that should be no big surprise, I guess, what with the slow economy and the general lack of disposable income rattling around in peoples’ pockets.  Several of the vendors told us that business was way down this year, and some mentioned that the past two or three years have been something less than great.

Bad weather on Saturday, rain and cold, really put a damper on things on the first day of the two-day show, although things seemed to have picked up a bit on Sunday.

One nice thing this year is that Sunday was Pet Day, a special featured done in cconjunction with the Humane Society of Pinellas. There was a pet parade on Sunday afternoon, and a special Santa was on hand so that proud pet owners could get their pets’ poctures taken with

Dogs love Santa, too...

Santa. There were also adoptable pets on hand, along with a whole street of pet-related vendors selling everything from pet food to leashes, collars and other pet accessories.

Aside from all the official pet stuff, one nice feature was that there quite a few pets simply being walked around by their owners. Not everyone loves animals, but we do, so we really enjoyed the different pets that were on hand.

We also ran into John Mascoll, a very talented wood worker who lives in Safety Harbor. John won the best of Showe award last year, and because of that we didn’t think it was likely that he would place thisyear, but he did — a big blue ribbon was hanging in his display.

The Palm Harbor arts how is a juried show, which is nice because ot attracts vendors who might not otherwise come. Even if an artist doesn’t sell a whole lot, he or she might win a prized worth bragging about.

This was the 35the annual Palm Harbor show. It started out pretty small, but it has become a major Palm Harbor event that local people really wait for.