Pet Talk

by Cathy Davis
   Wow, what a Moosestompers weekend! So much going on in Houlton, I have to chuckle when someone complains there is nothing to do. I don’t know about you, but there aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything done and there is always something to do in Houlton.  
    The Houlton Humane Society hosted a “Saturday Night Supper” bake sale on Feb. 19. I urged people to come early if they wanted to be sure to get some of Cara’s famous baked beans (she’ll shoot me for this, but honestly, they are awesome beans), and also Courtney’s famous baked beans (which are equally awesome), and folks listened! We set up at 11:30 so we had time to get the tables organized, people dropping off goodies could stop in,  etc., and we started our sale at noon. Before 12:30 we were sold out of beans, potato salad, the chili went shortly after that, the homemade bread was gone, the cakes and cookies were fast disappearing. It was just a tremendously successful event and we would like to thank all who baked and cooked, all who purchased, and especially The Shiretown Video for allowing us to set up inside the store where we were warm and comfortable.
    We also had a kitty available for adoption. This was an owner surrender, long-haired black and white kitty, already neutered, lovely friendly cat. His family had to give him up because of allergies in the children. Sad situation, you can tell this cat was loved a lot, but I’m sure a new home will be found for him soon. 
    It was especially nice of Shiretown Video to let us bring him with us as they also have allergies and just having a cat in the building could have triggered a reaction, but these people are so nice, all of them, that they were willing to risk that, just to help us out. How sad it must be to love animals and not be able to have any because of allergies. 
    It was great spending the day visiting with friends and supporters, and then at the closing of the day we had our drawing for the Cedar Ideas Ice Shack. We sold almost all of our tickets and we want to thank all of you who helped sell tickets, who purchased tickets, who called in and e-mailed and stood in line to make sure you had your chance at this raffle. The winner was Steven Chabot, and we were thrilled to call him to make the announcement. Of course then I had to go home and break the news to my family that we didn’t win the building, and watch two grown men cry, but they’ll get over it and maybe we’ll do it again real soon.
    A lot of people asked us when we would be having our next bake sale and right now we don’t have a date in mind because our next big event is our St. Patrick’s Day Box Lunch. Many of you are already familiar with this annual event and you know how much work it is, so this will be what we’ll be working on for the next three weeks.
    If you have any spare time at all, we will be setting up at the Congregational Church on High Street on the 16th to start the production line making the sandwiches, sorting and packaging the sweets, etc.   Because some of our orders go out of town, we also bag up some orders and ship them out on the 16th, and then the morning of the 17th we have a crew that delivers to local businesses.
    Lunches this year  are $6, same as last year, and include three finger roll sandwiches (egg salad, tuna salad and ham salad), a bag of chips, and at least three homemade sweets. On any given year we deliver anywhere from 800 to 1,000 lunches all over town so we will need at least 200 dozen cookies, sweet breads, and squares. If you have some spare time, please consider doing some baking for us. We need our most help in that area. We also need help delivering the morning of the 17th. This takes about three hours and is a ton of fun. Everybody who does it loves doing it and they keep coming back year after year.
    Order forms will be either faxed to or delivered to your place of business the first week of March and picked up by the 11th so we’ll know how many orders we have to fill.  If you do not receive an order form would you please call me at 532-2345 or call the shelter at 532-2862 and we’ll be sure to get order forms to you right away.
    If you belong to an organization that is looking for a “community service” project, this might be the one for you. Help bake, make sandwiches, deliver, donate to help with the cost of the rolls, tuna, bags, etc, anything you can think of to make this event a success.
    This  fundraiser, as well as all the others during the year, provide over half the operating income for the Houlton Humane Society animal shelter. Other coming events include an indoor “trash and treasure” sale, so please keep us in mind if you are doing early spring cleaning and drop off your clean used items at the shelter. Remember that we are unable to take electronics of any kind. And since we’ve had such a huge demand for another “Saturday Night Supper” sale, I’m sure we can fit one of those into our schedule too! We’ll keep you posted!
    Thanks again for all the support!
    www.houltonhumanesociety.org