Rhonda Furby

Rhonda Furby is the community outreach director for the Pearl River County SPCA

Squirrel and Chipmunk are two female kittens from the same litter.

One very cold morning, a member of the shelter staff arrived at work to find a bowl of cat food and a bowl of water on the ground by the dumpster. After going inside and taking care of the cats and kittens, she became curious about the bowls.

She came back outside and started looking around and located a kitten in a tree. She and several employees tried for hours to get the kitten to come down out of the tree to no avail.

The sounds of the dogs barking and the sounds of traffic were just too much for her. She wasn’t coming down through efforts to coax her, so everyone retreated inside to give her a chance to calm down.

When another staff member returned outside, a kitten came out from under one of the vehicles in the parking lot. That’s when they realized there were two kittens left there.

The kitten in the tree saw her sister and decided to come down, but had to have assistance from a volunteer to make it all the way. They were vaccinated and spayed.

They are very sweet girls and even though they had a rocky start, they have a new and exciting life ahead of them.

Their wonderful new mommy couldn’t bear to separate them, so they were adopted together and have human sisters to grow up with.

Thanks to the attentiveness of the shelter staff, they were given a second chance.

Panzi is a beautiful Boston Terrier mix.

A Good Samaritan found her lying in a ditch with an injured foot and contacted an SPCA Board member to help this poor soul. The board member sent her to The Animal Health Clinic where Dr. Smith examined Panzi’s foot and determined she was probably caught in a trap.

He brought her into surgery and was able to reconstruct her foot. While she was in surgery she was spayed. Dr. Smith kept Panzi at his office for almost 2 weeks for observation.

One of our wonderful foster families took her into their home to help her foot heal and to teach her some manners. The foster mom also posted her on Facebook and found a family for her. As soon as her foot was healed, she was adopted!

We are so grateful for our foster families. This family made sure that Panzi got a second chance at a great new life!

Foster families make a huge difference in how easily an animal is adopted.

Most of the animals coming into the shelter are strays and we have no background information. We don’t know if they know any commands or tricks. In a home environment, it’s easy to observe them and learn all of these things.

When someone is ready to adopt their new family member, the foster family is able to give them lots of information that would not be observed in a shelter environment.