(written by the parents)

Now that you're familiar with her challenge, you might be curious about the girl behind the concept. Since she's often far too modest to list her accomplishments for everyone to see, this is where we take over. Meet my little girl, Raeanne Bruyere.

Raeanne has always has a strong passion for animals. When she was 3, I made this mistake of telling her where meat comes from, and I suppose I didn't do it as tactfully as I could have. She responded by avoiding meat like it was poisoned, and to this day will eat it only when poked and prodded.

We've always had animals, even longer than we've had kids, and we raised our kids to understand that animals deserve all our compassion. We made them aware that humans are directly responsible for domesticated animals being totally dependant on human beings for survival since we've domesticated them, and that it's now our responsibility to care for them. In other words, we made the mess, it's up to us to clean it up. Raeanne just took to the message I sent more so than any of my children.

And I guess it really started when we moved to the house we eventually bought. The neighborhood is overrun with wild cats. Everytime we open the door we're faced with another starving cat, ribs pronounced, and we'd do our best to help by setting food outside daily for them, but we had to accept that there was only so much we could do, and the little we could do made almost no difference in the big picture. Raeanne refused, and continues to refuse, to accept that. She firmly believes that, no matter how little the deed performed, it makes a difference, even if only to encourage other people to get involved.


The cat above is Honey, the stray that started it. I hesitate to even call her a stray, since the only term that seems right is "feral". This cat was completely wild when we first saw her, and I told the kids to keep their distance from her. Raeanne, stubborn as always, had her own ideas. She started getting the cat familiar with her, just by sitting quietly in the backyard, allowing Honey to adjust. Within a few weeks, Honey would come up to Raeanne, but only to Raeanne.

That's when I got my first good look at her, and it broke my heart. You could count every one of her ribs, that's how malnourished she was. But, given a few months of Raeanne's close attention, Honey started looking like a normal cat, and even let the rest of us come up to say hello. Shortly after, she lived at our front door and wouldn't leave. She wouldn't come inside, but she was perfectly happy being very close by.

One night during a rainstorm, we heard meowing at the front door. We went outside, only to discover two little grey kittens, identical, and obviously from the same litter, although definitely not Honey's. It seemed like she'd led them to our door! We brought them inside, and the rescue began. Raeanne began rescuing the last chance cats, the ones no one else seemed to want. She took adoption applications, chose new families for the cats with careful consideration, and exacted promises of constant vet care and spaying and neutering to make sure she wasn't responsible for playing into the pet overpopulation crisis.

While cats may be a dime a dozen, she had no trouble placing her charges. Once word got out about what she was doing, she had people driving in from hours away, simply to get a cat from the little girl with the huge heart.

Honey was rehomed to a wonderful family, and enjoys plenty of time in the outdoors she loves so much, but these days she does it on a lead, to keep her safe and close by. Tom and Jerry, the grey kittens, grew into those beautiful grey cats that you can see in the picture below, and she homed them together to a family who drove to our city to pick them up.


I could list each of the cats and kittens she saved and found loving homes for, because we remember them all fondly, but sufficed to say, she made quite an impact in the lives of many cats that otherwise would probably have had no other chances. Most of them would have starved to death. Some would have been hit by cars or killed by predators. Others would have been abused. As far as I'm concerned, my little girl was the miracle these animals so desperately needed.

We still rescue, but not to the degree that we did a year ago. We have hopes of expanding our property and then continuing on a larger scale, and probably still primarily with cats. While dog rescues are getting to be pretty common, thankfully, there are still few that extend their services to cats. New Hope Dog Rescue, the organization Raeanne is fundraising for, has helped cats in the past. I can't say this wasn't a serious factor for Raeanne when deciding which rescue she would strive to help.

All of the pictures you're seeing below right now are goodbye pictures. Raeanne insisted on having a picture taken with each one before it went off to it's new home.


These days, Raeanne is all about raising awareness. She spends her Saturday's standing outside a local pet store with her dog, Rufus, protesting the sale of puppies in pet stores. She recently joined a protest outside the Shrine Circus. She writes nearly every school report geared to one area of animal rights, whether it be the cruel practices in training circus animals, the pet overpopulation crisis or a report singing the praises of Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, where she hopes to work someday.

She fully intends to pursue a career working with animals, preferably in a training and rehabilitation capacity. She did used to want to be a veterinarian, but has since decided she doesn't have it in her to euthanize any animal for any reason.

Now, she's raised the bar for herself yet again, with her challenge to raise $5,000 for New Hope Dog Rescue, and her promise to shave her head once she does. I have to wonder how she's going to top this in the future. :) I have no doubt that she'll meet this goal, even if it takes her years to do it.

We're supporting her in this campaign just like we've given her our support in every other endeavor she's taken on. I hope to see that support coming in from all other directions, too.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and to learn about my incredible daughter. We're so unbelievably proud of her, and we're glad that others are able to see the light that shines from her selflessness and compassion.