Mother's Comfort Project testimonial: sewing cage comforters

Please see below another testimonial for the Mother's Comfort Project.

We still need a sponsor for 2009-10, so help us out so that we can continue this great project and bring more awareness to animals in need, especially those at the Brooklyn AC&C.

From Jeri, after the April 2009 sewing session:

“Do you think there really is a rescue gene?” I ask Susan. She has just told me that the woman’s face on the Mother’s Comfort patch is that of her grandmother, the woman who passed down her love of animals.

This is the kind of banter that goes on while we sew. We learn about one another: our names, our hobbies, our diets, our schools, our families. We discuss our different experiences with service dogs, pets, and rescue organizations.

You see, we did not know each other before we united on this stunning April day. We are women as young as 14 and as old as 51. Some of us are blonde, some auburn, some grey-haired. Some of us wear dresses, others wear Abercrombie tees or shorts. Some look like supermodels and actresses, others more like grandmas. One of us is even canine: Susan’s pet and our mascot, Sadie. However, there is one thing we have in common: the desire to make life a bit softer and a tad brighter for the homeless animals of New York City.

We are here in Flirt Home Ec, a chic boutique cum craft class cum sewing shop in Park Slope Brooklyn, helping to make animal toys and beds. Today, we are cutting various donated fabrics, snipping and stuffing batting, adding pinches of catnip, or operating sewing machines (some of us for the very first time).

Next month, other volunteers will repeat our work. And then in June, Susan and some of her supporters will visit the [Animal Care & Control] shelter in another part of Brooklyn, to deliver the beds and toys, each one adorned with an orange awareness ribbon.

This is the second year of the Mother’s Comfort project. It is one of many innovative ways Susan Brandt and her Rational Animal organization publicize homelessness and enhance animal welfare around the City. After taking part in this event and being lavished with Sadie kisses, I have to say my own life was enhanced too.

-JERI DAYLE

[Jeri Dayle is a freelance writer, a keystone volunteer of Loving Touch Rescue in Queens, and an ardent supporter of Rational Animal. This is the 9th Rational Animal event--including two Gimme Shelter concerts, a Gingerbread Homes display and a Barking Arts gallery—that she has attended.]