I am always surprised by the amount of cruelty in this world. Especially to animals. A while ago, a friend called to tell me that she found three kittens in her yard. There was no sign of a mother, and they’d been hiding in her wood pile for three days. We went over and got them out of her woodpile and set up a trap for the mother.

These kittens had no parasites, worms, ear mites, fleas, ticks….they were calm and comfortable with humans and the various sounds in our house. This means, most likely, that someone dumped these 4 week old kittens. We left the trap out for days, but we didn’t find their mother. These kittens were probably taken from their mother and dropped in the woods. How could someone take kittens that weren’t even weaned and dump them in a forest?

Yesterday while driving through downtown Franklin, we came upon a flock of turkeys that were standing beside the road. One of the chicks had been hit by a car and the hen was standing over her dead chick trying to protect him. There were probably 20 turkeys in the flock that consisted of chicks, hens and a tom. Someone had been impatient and just rode over this baby. I stopped the car and traffic and carried the chick to the side of the road so that the mother hen wouldn’t be hit, too. If someone had waited thirty seconds, this wouldn’t have happened. How is it that an animal’s life is worth so little to someone?

A while ago, I made a pact with myself. If I ever saw an animal in need, I would stop whatever I was doing and help. And I know that there are a lot of you out there that would do the same. But for every one of us, there seem to be ten people who don’t care.

It gets disheartening and feels hopeless. Every day there are horror stories of atrocities done to animals. How do we change this? How do we stop this? It will be a long time before I don’t see the image of the hen mourning over her chick whenever I close my eyes. Luckily, I have three kittens to make me laugh and smile.