February 2008 Sanctuary News
Greetings!
Well, things are going well with the animals. They are all healthy and happy. The weather has not been difficult for them at all.
It is always a difficult time for us being closed during the winter season. This is a time that we need even more financial support from the public because we are not receiving funds from admissions and tours. The main reason we close during 
the winter is because we do not have paved walkways and it gets pretty wet out there. You have to remember that most people really don’t like getting their feet wet. Also, we will probably never pave walkways at the sanctuary. Did you know that concrete will raise the ground temperature about 15 degrees higher? Well it does and it gets hot enough around here in the summer. We don’t want to bring in any more heat than necessary in the summer. But, you can look forward to us opening back up the first Saturday in April.
Even though we are closed to the public during the winter months we are still available to visit schools, social clubs, and other venues to speak and educate the public about the plight of these magnificent creatures. No, we will never bring any animals to any event or venue. Even if the law allowed us to do so, and the LAW DOES NOT, we would NEVER do it anyway. Transporting animals like this around in cages and into unfamiliar areas and people add an extreme amount of stress on animals. You may wonder why it doesn’t when you come to visit Yogie and Friends. Well, one reason is that they are in their familiar home surroundings and we limit the amount of time the public gets to visit them. Also, we have better control over the behavior of people visiting and will not allow them to yell, tease, throw anything at the animals, or otherwise do anything that will stress or harm the animals. The animal’s health and well being are foremost with us. Their safety and comfort also ensures the public’s safety as well.
This brings us to another issue. I am sure you may have seen all the media frenzy about the tiger attack at the San Francisco zoo. How tragic that anyone got hurt and killed. It is also tragic that a beautiful tiger had to die as well. This was all 100% preventable. This is one reason many sanctuaries will not open to the public. But, we control the visits and behavior of the visitors. We have also had surveillance cameras at Yogie and Friends for several years and we monitor the facility to ensure we don’t see any dangerous activity on the property. We inspect the perimeter fences often to make sure things are as they should be. We have a buddy system in place to guarantee there are no keeper errors that would allow any animal to escape. We don’t want any of our innocent animals to die because of our negligence and stupidity. That is how it should be. Safety first.
On a positive note it looks as though our education building may be completed within the next few weeks. Surely in
time for our spring opening. This will allow a place for birthday parties, volunteer meetings, and other fundraisers. We are excited about this. Keep watching for updates.
There are so many ways you can help our animals and you may not even realize it. For instance, if you shop on-line, and many of us do to avoid the crowds and traffic, you can help in different ways. You can go to www.giveline.com or www.goodshop.com, or www.igive.com and select Yogie and Friends as your charity of choice. Any one of these organizations will donate a percentage of your purchase to our cause and it is very simple to do. Heck, you don’t even have to leave your house to help the animals, but we hope you do come and visit.
If you are a big magazine subscriber, then your subscriptions or renewals can help us when you do so at www.magfundraising.com and purchase or renew your magazines there. You will receive a big discount at the same time helping the big cats at Yogie and Friends. They give us a large percentage. What a great gift giving idea and a fun and easy way to help.
Do you Yahoo or Google? Well, instead of using that search engine you can go to www.goodsearch.com and choose Yogie and Friends as your charity. Every time you do a search we will get about a penny for that. It all adds up.
How about going Green with us? There are so many little things you can do and one of the biggest ways we are asking you right now is to send us your old cell phones. Don’t just throw them away. Let us recycle them. We will get anywhere from $4 – $80 for your old cell phone and at the same time helping our environment by keeping them out of our landfills. Click here for more information !
We have several fundraisers in the planning stages. Please keep watching for that.
The semi-annual Bake Sale is scheduled for March 15th at Courtyard Coffee on Youree Drive in Shreveport, next to Michaels from 11a.m. – 4 p.m. Please come out and see the amazing baked good we have. It gets better and better. We look forward to this as always.
Moses, the lion cub, will be 2 years old on 27 February. You will be amazed at how magnificent a lion he is becoming. His mane is going to be a thing of beauty. I hope you get to come and see him.
Please remember to take the necessary steps to reduce stress on your animals. Always have fresh, cool water and a clean, dry shelter available for them. The weather is cooler and you also need to make sure during the colder weather that your outdoor animal’s water doesn’t freeze in their bowls. Remember you are the only voice they have and they depend on you.
Please spay and neuter your pets. There are far too many unwanted pets as there is and the animal shelters are filled to capacity with these animals needing to be adopted. Be kind and take the time to make sure your animals don’t end up as garbage. That is not at all kind.
And remember, Wild Animals Do Not Make Good Pets!
Please don’t ever pay anyone to have your photo taken with an exotic cat or any other wild animal. You are just encouraging them to exploit these animals.
Be good to your animals and their people! Be the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Jenny and the Yogie Cats
Posted in Monthly Newsletter and tagged 2008 February News, Latest News, Yogie and Friends News
Calling all Carpenters! We need your help!
Hi,
If there are any of you out there who are skilled in carpentry work we can really use your help. We have a 16 X 24 outdoor wooden building. You may have seen these at Home Depot. It is the barn style building. We are so close to completion and this is where you come in.
Here is what we need to finish the building:
- Install two outdoor doors.
- Install two indoor doors.
- Frame for the outside doors and finish work for this.
- Install lights.
- Install ceiling fan.
The outside doors will require some creative carpentry work since there will need to be an overhang built with flashing and the shingling the smaller room covering since the door will be larger than how the wall is designed. This may sound confusing in my e-mail, but you’ll understand better when you see.
I bought the doors, 2 x 4s, drywall, and siding for the building. I know there will be some other things needed and I can get that as soon as I get the volunteer carpenters.
Here’s the thing. When this building is complete it (even though it is a small building) will be multipurpose. We have a bathroom and a small office in there. But, this can be used to hold all the birthday parties I get phone calls for. That will be a big source of revenue for Yogie and Friends. The other thing is that the summers are hot. It is harder to get volunteers willing to sit outside in the heat and sell novelties and entrance tickets to Yogie in the hot summer months. I have several retired folks who would volunteer their time for us indoors. We have an A/C unit in the building.
I can also hold meetings and volunteer training in here and also do small fundraisers in the off season. This will also serve as a small gift shop.
Anyway, I think you get the picture.
If you can help, then please e-mail me or call my cell at 318-286-1145. I’d like to get this completed before we open again in April.
For the cats!
Jenny
Posted in Special Announcements and tagged Calling all Carpenters! We need your help!, Latest News, Yogie and Friends News
January 2008 Sanctuary News
Happy New Year!
Here we are in 2008. Help make it great in 2008! And when we say Great! We mean these Great Cats! They are special and we hope you can make it even more special for them. After all this is what we are all about at Yogie and Friends. The Cats!
All the Yogie and Friends volunteer staff want to say a very special thanks to those of you who contributed to us financially this past year. There are so many of you and we can’t thank you enough
As you can see from our website we are closed for the winter season. We close at this time because of the typically wet weather. But please continue to visit the website for updates and events.
There were many things accomplished in 2007 and yet still so much more to accomplish in 2008.
All the animal pens were updated with the installation of the horizontal poles 3 feet high off the ground around each pen. That’s over 1000 linear feet of poles. We also purchased newer locks for all the pens. We do this periodically just to ensure they are the best in safety we can have.
Our bake sales continue to get bigger and better and even more successful that we will have another one in March.
We have a new webmaster, Paige Bass, with WickedTickle.com and she is really doing a great job for us. We thank Don Sherret for his many patient years with doing the website for us. He’s probably relaxing more now. Don will always be part of the Yogie and Friends Family.
Wicked Tickle put on the first Orange and Black Friday to benefit Yogie and Friends with several local bands volunteering their time and talents to raise funds for the cats. Very cool.
We were able to purchase the calf hutches for the animals as new cat houses. We still aren’t sure how we feel about these yet, but they seem to be a nice alternative to the wooden structures we had previously.
Yogie and Boo Boo, our two lionesses, were spayed without any complications. We want to thank Dr. Jane Eggerstedt and Donna Burrell for financing these two surgeries. Since the birth of the lion cubs in March 2007 we knew that the industry standard of vasectomies for lions is not a good birth control method. All are doing well and they are experiencing continued good health.
There is still a lot of work that has to be done to maintain a facility like Yogie and Friends. We have lots of projects planned in 2008. We still need help with the education building and hopefully we will get that completed this year and it will present us with a tool to raise more money for the cats.
Please remember that Yogie and Friends is a 100% volunteer driven organization and this means none of us receive any compensation for the work we do. This is a labor of love and we are rewarded by seeing these cats live in comfort for the rest of their lives. Since none of these cats can ever be released into the wild, they were after all captive born animals, we provide the next best thing to what they should have been born into.
Please remember to take the necessary steps to reduce stress on your animals. Always have fresh, cool water and a clean, dry shelter available for them. The weather is cooler and you also need to make sure during the colder weather that your outdoor animal’s water doesn’t freeze in their bowls. Remember you are the only voice they have and they depend on you.
Please spay and neuter your pets. There are far too many unwanted pets as there is and the animal shelters are filled to capacity with these animals needing to be adopted. Be kind and take the time to make sure your animals don’t end up as garbage. That is not at all kind.
And remember, Wild Animals Do Not Make Good Pets!
Please don’t ever pay anyone to have your photo taken with an exotic cat or any other wild animal. You are just encouraging them to exploit these animals.
Be good to your animals and their people! Be the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Tim, Jenny, and the Yogie Cats
Posted in Monthly Newsletter and tagged 2008 January News, Latest News, Yogie and Friends News