CARIBOU, Maine — Norma Milton, president of Halfway Home Pet Rescue, a feline rescue and rehabilitation service in Caribou, said she has been extremely blessed with all the help she’s received from the community this year.
Norma Milton, president of the Halfway Home Pet Rescue in Caribou, holds “Tracy,” a cat with over-sized paws, at her shelter on Main Street in Caribou.
(Christopher Bouchard)
The non-profit operation has 37 volunteers, including Milton, who said Thursday that she was “overwhelmed” at the beginning of the year. But with all the local help, she said that HHPR has been able to accomplish “three times” what she thought was possible in 2017.
The good luck began in February when Doug Morrill donated a warehouse to the 501c3 organization.
Milton, in addition to overseeing a shelter on Main Street, often rescues feral cats in the city. She then takes them to the vet for necessary shots as well as spaying and neutering.
Milton said that, in February, there were about “30 or 40 cats” loose on Broadway, a road that runs parallel to train tracks and the Aroostook River, and many of them were hiding out around an abandoned warehouse owned by Morrill.
“I told Doug I’d like permission to go on the property, and he told me that he’d sell that building for a dollar,” Milton recalled. “I told him I just so happened to have a dollar, and he told me he’d donate that dollar back to our organization, which he did.”
Norma Milton, president of Halfway Home Pet Rescue in Caribou, holds Meeko, a cat that weighs over 25 pounds and is one of many available for adoption at the Main Street shelter.
(Christopher Bouchard)
The building needed a great deal of work, however, and Dean Staples Construction brought three carpenters over to donate their labor and rebuild a broken down wall on the side of the building. Jeff Baker Sheet Metal also installed protective frames for the windows free of charge.
Woodland-based carpenter Joel Violette also donated labor by fixing the steps and building a warm room in the warehouse to store canned food. The Maine Community Grant Foundation even donated $8,700 for repairs to the building’s water and sewer system.
Now, the warehouse is used to store supplies for the cats and inventory for a Herschel Street thrift store owned by HHPR (in which all proceeds go directly to the cats). Before obtaining the warehouse, Milton would store all of these materials in her house, and is glad that the organization has extra space.
“It’s nice to be able to walk through my living room,” she said.
Milton estimated that the donations knocked about $35,000 off the price of repairs and improvements to the finished warehouse.
“We ended up with a building that’s worth about $45,000 and it only cost us around $10,000.”
The storage building was only one example of generosity toward the pet rescue organization in 2017, as the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation also recently donated $33,800 for the purchase of a new vehicle. That vehicle is used to transport cats to southern Maine and to pick up supplies to be distributed through a “Meals on Wheels” program that provides food for pets owned by senior citizens.
Tracy is one of many cats available for adoption at the Halfway Home Pet Rescue shelter in Caribou. HHPR President Norma Milton affectionately calls Tracy “Bigfoot,” because of his large paws.
(Christopher Bouchard)
Milton said she got involved with this program when she learned that many of the “Meals on Wheels” recipients were sharing their food with their pets.
The HHPR president was humbled by all of the support she received this year.
“This doesn’t happen very often with non-profits,” she said. “You think about how desperately you need something, and then it’s right there on your doorstep. Look at everything that happened this year. All of our needs are being met; tell me one non-profit that could say, ‘Everything is going nicely.’”
While HHPR became a registered 501c3 non-profit organization in 2009, Milton’s love of rescuing cats began when she was only 5 years old and living on a farm.
“We had a lot of feral cats in our barn,” Milton said, “and when the farmer saw that there were too many kittens around, they would be drowned.”
“Times have changed a lot,” Milton said.
Milton’s father would tell her that he “found a home” for the cats when she would return home from school and notice several kittens missing. However, the feral “mother” cat, would stick around as it was the most effective way of ridding the barn of mice, which Milton said could ruin all of the stored grain.
“That’s what got me started,” she said. “I felt like all cats should be given a chance.”
