Middleton fundraiser gone to the dogs… and cats

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By Lacey Sheppy

For The Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

When Middleton’s Caroline Saxon receives her allowance each week, she isn’t thinking about buying clothes or candy.

Instead, the 11-year-old Annapolis East Elementary School student dutifully sets aside half her earnings to help those she considers most important: the cats and dogs of the Companion Animal Protection Society (CAPS).

CAPS is a volunteer-run, not-for-profit organization in Annapolis County that rescues abandoned animals from the pound and places them in foster homes until permanent homes can be found. It is currently caring for 200 cats and kittens and four dogs. “I was hearing about some cats’ lifestyles before they came in and the condition they were in,” said Caroline. “It was very sad.”

During the months of July and August, Caroline saved $27, which she turned over to CAPS last week to help pay for food, litter, and veterinary bills.

She’s already collected another $25 – a combination of allowance money and donations from family and friends – which she plans to use to purchase toys, blankets, beds, and treats for the cats. “Every time she goes into Zellers, or some place like that, we have to go look at the cat beds and toys,” said Caroline’s mother, Michelle.

But Caroline’s fundraising efforts don’t stop there.

Later this month, she’s hosting a movie night at her house with all proceeds going to CAPS.

She’s invited 17 people and is charging $1 each for admission, $1 for goodie bags full of popcorn and other snacks and is even raffling off a gift basket. “It was her idea completely,” said Michelle. “Mom and dad are going to donate the movie rental.”

Movie night headquarters – complete with a table full of pet magazines, CAPS information booklets, stickers, and a piggy bank shaped like a cat – has been set up in the Saxons’ basement to ensure the event runs smoothly. “If the parents are going to stay, they have to pay admission, even if they’re not going to watch the movie,” said Caroline, whose family owns two cats – Roxy and Oliver – and a rabbit named Buttercup.

In addition to raising money for CAPS, Caroline – along with her mother, brother and sister Maura, 9, – also spends one day a week cuddling cats at the organization’s second largest foster home. “We mostly just play with the cats,” said Maura. “I make toys for them too.”

Maura’s creations include stuffed fabric pillows attached to strings or shoelaces. She’s also working on a new project for the CAPS canines. “It’s going to be a bone for a dog,” she explained. “It will be like the ones I make for the cats, but without the shoelace.”

While Maura’s busy perfecting her invention, Caroline has already turned to her next fundraiser. “I’m thinking of getting little canvasses and painting them and selling them to family and friends to raise money,” she said.