MAYS LANDING – Someone knew exactly where to place a box filled with 21 cats who were abandoned in front of the Funny Farm Rescue animal shelter at 6908 Railroad Blvd. They were left just out of view of cameras.
The animal shelter’s owner/founder Laurie Zaleski is less concerned about finding out the identity of the individual who abandoned the cats as she is in finding homes for each of them but she was frustrated about why this was done.
She took the Funny Farm Rescue Facebook page to sound off about the situation. “I’m not usually one to post negative things because we’re a pretty positive place here. I was off today for Veterans Day; I work for the Federal Aviation Administration and I had all this stuff I was going to do and I was outside feeding the animals and found them.”
“We think it happened between 7:05 a.m. and 7:25 a.m. We have cameras out front and my one volunteer got here at 7:05 and there were no cats and at 7:25 my neighbor was walking her dog and she saw them. I went out there and put it on Facebook Live. I am sick of this. It is a felony to dump animals in New Jersey. They made that a law a year or two ago,” Zaleski said.
The cats were crammed into a large crate and had no food or water. “They were all on top of each other, one head was popping up and then another…all in all they came to 21 cats and they were all going to potty on each other because they were scared,” she said.
“I am a private charity and single woman here, running this place by myself working with what I have and when people surrender animals we don’t force them to make a donation and we were the only ones taking cats in during COVID so we are full. No one called me about needing to bring in cats or we would have taken in some,” she added.
Zaleski said, “this is someone who didn’t try to help themselves at all or they wouldn’t have had 21 all at once. They weren’t all little babies there were three to four moms with their off springs the youngest being four months old at least. I am vowing that we will get every single cat adopted but it will take us some time.”
She is concerned because “we can’t get veterinarian appointments right now. That has been my biggest challenge. I took to Facebook live and no one has seen that side of me because I’m usually happy and everything is peaches and cream. It wasn’t a cruelty case for long because we found them very quickly after they were left.”
“It was almost like they knew where our cameras stopped because they were down the road. It is 20 acres so it is quite a long piece of Railroad Boulevard where I am but they put them out where people could see them right on the edge of the road,” she added.
“I can’t put them in with the rest of the cats here we have over 250 kitty cats. If you are in trouble ask for help. There was one guy who had 15 cats who needed a home and I took four at a time and I got those adopted and we worked on getting four more. We’ll help anybody but just don’t dump them. They get scared to death. We’ll get them all homes.”
For those who would like to adopt a cat, donate funds or supplies or become a volunteer you can reach out to the Funny Farm Rescue by using their mailing address which is Funny Farm Rescue, 6908 Railroad Blvd. Mays Landing, NJ 08330.
You can also call 609-742-9410 or visit funnyfarmrescue.org/donate.htm The shelter’s e-mail address is laurie@funnyfarm.org
