Sally Williams—founder and director of The Brodie Fund, which helps pay for the treatment of pets diagnosed with cancer, when their humans can’t afford it, provided the animals are patients at specific veterinary hospitals in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Colorado—acknowledges that she’s been a fervent feline lover all her life, going back to Sandy, the family cat before she was born. She elaborates, noting that she figures she’s lived with 11 cats over the course of her lifetime, and places the current population at four. She describes Brodie, the organization’s namesake, from first the first adopting him, to as a 12-year-old, how his sneezing at first seemed like it might be a garden-variety upper-respiratory ailment—until he began sneezing blood. This spurred further examination, and a cancer diagnosis, Williams says. Brodie underwent radiation, fared well, and lived another 13 months after treatment ended. But it was this process and the considerable costs involved, Williams recalls, that made her think that maybe she could help others navigating their way through similar challenges—and, maybe help with the often-significant expense of treatment. With those objectives in mind, she launched The Brodie Fund, starting first at a veterinary hospital in her home state of New Jersey. She’s slowly widened out to a few, select vet hospitals in Connecticut, New York, and Colorado (where, she says, she partnered with a like-mined organization there). Mentioning she’s embarked on this journey again with her cat Marlin, who’s nine months into chemo treatment, Williams explains that this purposefully gradual expansion has allowed The Brodie Fund to help many families, without capping the grants at a particular amount. (https://thebrodiefund.org)
ALSO: I spoke with Thomas Ponce, a guest on “Talking Animals” almost exactly three years ago, when he was 15—and already a veteran activist—and the founder, at 12, of Lobby For Animals, which reflects Ponce’s belief that lobbying is the most effective method to affect true, meaningful change for animal welfare. He is at the center of a fundraiser, chiefly because his computer recently died, a development that prevents him from, among other things, doing his work for Lobby For Animals—including the software that tracks the status of various pieces of legislation. (http://lobbyforanimals.org)
COMEDY CORNER: Erin Foley’s “Three Cats” (https://erinkfoley.com)
MUSIC: Rebekah Pulley’s “Talking Animals Theme,” instrumentals
NAME THAT ANIMAL TUNE: We didn’t play “Name That Animal Tune” today.
AUDIO ARCHIVE: