By Tammie Mulvey
Houlton Rotarian
Lorraine Monfils is the owner of Hollywood Pet Salon and the founder of The Ark Animal Sanctuary. She had lived “away” and was in retail sales, but found it too stressful, so she decided to follow her heart and went to school for grooming and as she said there was no turning back. Monfils spoke to us April 7 about The Ark Animal Sanctuary. As most people are aware, a fire destroyed their building last month, taking the lives of 16 cats. The building can be replaced but the cats cannot.
contributed photo/Michael Clark
ROTARY GUEST — Lorraine Monfils, middle, was a recent guest speaker at the Houlton Rotary Club. With her are Rotarian Steve Nelson and Rotary president Lori Weston.
Monfils and other folks who understood the need for a place to help any and all animals that have no other options, organized the Ark Animal Sanctuary in May of 2009. They are not in “competition” with the Houlton Humane Society; we are fortunate to have both of these wonderful places in our community to help. The Ark supplements the local shelters.
Many people are asking if they were insured and, yes, they were and are waiting to hear back from the insurance company. But in the meantime they have been extremely fortunate to have a tremendous amount of support from the community and beyond. They have received donations from 14 different countries, as well as people and organizations from most all of our states.
Monfils and all the volunteers were blown away and will be forever grateful for the support shown to the animals. They were going to cancel the bake sale that following Saturday after the fire, due to mourning their losses, but a few people had a different idea and decided to do the bake sale, raffle and a silent auction. What a turn out they had – they made $12,000 that day alone! The Ark’s plans to build again are on the way!
They originally were going to be building a larger facility and had various phases to go through and that is still the plan. They are going to be putting in a mobile trailer to start on phase one once again. It is all about moving forward. The plan is to have a steel building built which will be larger, and with a security system. For the next phase, their goal is to raise $70,000 and they are currently at $47,000 and that only counts the monetary donations they are receiving items for the animals weekly from people all over the world.
If you would like to make a donation, you can go to their website and use your PayPal account or drop it off at the Hollywood Pet Salon. They will continue their bi-weekly bake sales and have started a 50/50 raffle as well.
In the beginning, the Ark Animal Sanctuary was determined to never have a mortgage and they have not, That has not changed as they want to be able to spend all their resources on the animals and not have to be concerned about a mortgage. They are a no-kill sanctuary. Monfils told us about a few stories that were hard to hear regarding abuse of animals and how they came into their care. They will do everything that is needed to save the life of the animal. The Ark is not contracted with any towns and do not have to take in any animals but they do out of love.
The Ark has been working on the feral cat population as well and if you see a feral cat with its ear clipped that means it has been spayed or neutered. They had two dogs with severe issues as well and they have been in a foster home. They were going to be moved to Arizona to a sanctuary that they could be comfortable at. However, when they took them to the vet to get cleared, much to their surprise instead of being cleared they were adopted.
They have foster homes taking care of animals now and will continue to. Lorraine would like to say thank you to all the volunteers, donators and supporters of the Ark. On a personal note, we have taken home two cats and a dog from the Ark Animal Sanctuary and two cats and a dog from the Houlton Humane Society and all of them are terrific pets and I would also like to say thank you to everyone that helps out with both organizations.
