CARIBOU, Maine — Norma Milton, president and founder of the Halfway Home Pet Rescue in Caribou has received the following notification of an awarded grant from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation of Maine. which notified Milton that the Halfway Home Pet Rescue’s existing grant from the Sewall Foundation has been amended to include an additional $100,000. This amendment coincides with the HHPR scheduled 2023 grant payment of $40,.000 for continuing four spay/neuter clinics.
The reward email noted, “I am delighted to let you know that we have amended Halfway Home Pet Rescue Inc.’s grant from the Sewall Foundation dated August 08, 2022 in support of Four Free Spay/Neuter Clinics for Aroostook County low-income families & include a clinic aimed precisely for the Presque Isle Micmac Indian Band. The project end date has not changed and continues to be August 07, 2025.”
This $100,000 grant amendment is made through the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation’s Animal Welfare program. These funds are restricted to capital support for the Aroostook Regional Animal Health Facility. The $100,000 grant amendment has been added to 2023 grant payment, for a total payment of $140,000.
According to Milton the original award for 2023-24 was for $40,000 granted to aid in the cost of the free spay clinics and the Low-Cost Animal Wellness Clinics located at the Aroostook Regional Animal Wellness Center at 40 Broadway Avenue in Caribou. The amended $100,000 is granted to continue the construction of the Animal Wellness Center into an all-in-one building at the 40 Broadway Avenue location. When finished the building will occupy all of the pet rescue’s need for stray, surrendered, and feral cat’s rooms as well as the main business office of the corporation and the spay/neuter clinics and wellness clinics.
Milton stated “We were getting quite worried about finances as donations have been down lately and our expenses both construction and operating expenses have (especially feline medical expenses) been unusually high so this was a real email miracle for our mission. We are extremely grateful for the vote of confidence in our mission by the Sewall Foundation. This year has seen a very late kitten season and there has also been a flood of extremely sick and injured adult animals coming to us. The good side of this problem is that the general public is responding to these ill and injured animals by not looking the other way or dumping them in the woods, but they are bringing the cats to the pet rescue’s door. We are traveling most of these extremely sick animals to Orrington, Maine (12 miles below Bangor) to the Kindred Spirits Animal Hospital for immediate emergency medical care which also involves travel costs and volunteer time on the road. Thankfully, we have a volunteer team that is very dedicated and does whatever is necessary to get the animal appropriate medical help as quickly as possible.”
Milton continued, “This is our mission – to help the most needy of the animals and then to spay/neuter to defeat the county’s cat overpopulation.”
Construction at the wellness center will continue through August and most of September this year. The wellness clinic for vaccination is Sept. 28 and the next spay/neuter clinic will be Sept. 29-30 and Oct. 1. Applications are available online. From January to July, HHPR already has spayed/neutered another 592 county cats and plans to sterilize another 350 cats before year end.
