Homemade toys and beds help shelter animals get adopted

By Sandy Miller

Thanks to some wonderful volunteers with a talent for sewing and crocheting, some shelter animals are a little more comfortable while waiting for their forever homes.

Alice O’Neil rarely goes anywhere without a ball or two of yarn and a pair of crochet hooks. That’s how she made 2,500 cat toys last year alone. She crochets the colorful toy balls and mice in doctors’ waiting rooms, on trips, while watching TV. And when she’s not making toys, she’s sewing up “cage comforters” – soft beds for shelter animals to curl up on.

The seed for what would become the Cage Comforter program was planted nine years ago when O’Neil paid a visit to a New York City shelter. She went home that day with a little 10-year-old partially blind dog. She named him J.J. and he would bring her much joy over the next nine years.

But she couldn’t get the other animals at the shelter out of her mind. “I wanted to do something for them,” O’Neil says. “I couldn’t adopt them all, but maybe I could do some little thing that would brighten their time there.”

O’Neil contacted the volunteer coordinator at Animal Care and Control of New York City. Like many people, O’Neil found it emotionally difficult to go inside shelters. She was looking for a way she could help shelter animals from her home.

The volunteer coordinator told her she had been trying to recruit volunteers to make beds and toys for the agency’s shelters in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island.

“I didn’t know how to sew, but thought, ‘How hard could it be?’” O’Neil remembers. “I also liked the idea that if I only made one bed, at my convenience at home, I was doing something concrete to help a homeless animal.”

O’Neil ended up making much more than one bed, and a good number of toys to go with them. She delivered the beds and toys to the Brooklyn shelter herself.

“The transformation in the animals receiving these simple little items was overwhelming,” O’Neil says. “They came from the backs of their cages and jumped on the beds. They completely relaxed.... To think that I was able to have that kind of effect on these animals was amazing to me, and it encouraged me to do more.” O’Neil began recruiting other volunteers, and the Cage Comforter program was born.

The Cage Comforter program is especially appealing to older people who can’t get around like they used to. “Some of the volunteers were shut-ins who had no way of doing volunteer work outside the house, but were thrilled when they found something meaningful to do from home,” O’Neil says.

Not only do the beds and toys make shelter animals more comfortable, they also improve their chances for adoption. They reduce the stress the animals feel while in a cage, and they allow potential adopters to more easily see the pets as part of their homes and lives.

O’Neil ran the program until she moved to Tunkhannock, Pennsylvania, after retiring from her job as the housing administrator for the New York City Housing Authority. She continues to make beds and toys for the New York City shelters, as well as her local shelter. And she has helped others to start similar programs at their own local shelters.

Nancy Calegari now coordinates the Cage Comforter program. She has nine regular volunteers who sew beds and toys for animals in New York City shelters, and other volunteers who contribute occasionally. One of those volunteers is Wilma Farrell of Evans City, Pennsylvania. She spends a lot of her time sewing snuggly beds on her Viking sewing machine. Farrell lives on a very limited income with her cat in a small efficiency apartment, but she still manages to find the fabric and other materials needed to make beds for the Cage Comforter program. “I have a collection of odds-and-ends fabric that people keep giving me,” Farrell says.

Marianne Crawford is retired and lives with her daughter in Centreville, Virginia. She’s been making cat toys for the animals in New York City shelters for seven years. “Making them for the poor kitties in the shelters is very rewarding,” Crawford says. “I feel as though I make them happy, if just for a few moments, a day, or weeks. I get pictures of the cats with my toys, which brings a smile to my face. This alone makes me want to do more.”

Calegari says, “What impresses me most about the volunteers who sew and knit is their devotion. Many have been sending us these beds and toys for years on a regular basis. They buy the supplies themselves and pay the postage. They are truly devoted to these homeless cats and dogs. They ask nothing in return.”

For more information on the Cage Comforter program,
go to nycacc.org/cagecomforters.htm or pleasebekind.com/ccp.html.

Posted with permission from Best Friends magazine by Joy Moffat