There are so few of us compared to cat and dog lovers. Most of us are not wealthy. We genuinely cannot afford this ugliness between one another. I personally guess and believe that the damage done by this gossip will never be made up monetarily. And the ferrets? How many died of old age sitting in a cage at the shelter because of the gossip Sara and her friends brought up and keep bringing up? Fleas in a shelter of 100 animals in stacked cages, smack dab next to each other is not a gigantic problem? No one to take them to a pet store on an adoption day as we are so short of volunteers not a problem? We are supposed to have $15,000. sitting around for the current ferrets with adrenal, and another heaven knows how many thousands for the ones coming in? How many ferrets died homeless in this shelter as a result of people believing this gossip? How many? AT LEAST ONE. Personally, I adopted no one from GCFA because I believed what a shelter owner I revered as a shelter operator wrote to me.. I took in 4 ferrets from others before I saw for my own eyes the real GCFA. We do not even have an apology for deliberately writing negatively of a shelter whose few volunteers work like animals. Or a promise that this gossip will end now. And yet, despite all the damage STILL being perpetrated as recently as a few days ago here on the FML to circulate all over the world..... I AM sincerely sorry to have had to write what I did. And I am sincerely sorry because it could have been phrased by another in a way you all would have understood somehow in a softer, kinder way. I am sincerely sorry because I Believed the ruinous words myself. But today is not the day I should apologize to Sara.I have already done that, and mean it. For me-it is the day I really feel that I have to apologize to at least one of the now deceased innocent shelter ferrets at GCFA that would have had a home and love. I would have taken the underdogs: the old ones there the longest-like Cheyenne. Ones that were not pretty-like bald, burnt, pus dripping, old Maria. I would have chosen one of the ones that spent years in the shelter. The ones that, instead? ended up dying in a cage in the shelter. My cages and home are full now. And I will not be replacing any more of my babies as they pass. Changes in my life make that a bad choice now. But I am truly contrite. I believed the words of someone I did not know because she was someone I deeply respected because she was a shelter operator. Because she went out of her way to warn me against GCFA. What was wrong with Me? Dear babies. Please forgive me. One or more of you would have had a home with me. You died, instead, alone with no one special mommy to hold you, in a shelter. I am truly sorry. Don't anyone else be the idiot that I was. It is not just the relentless spreading of negative comments far and wide to hurt a shelter that is ugly and evil. It is that part within us that believes this stuff. [Posted in FML issue 3887]