A Table View animal-welfare organisation is in a race against time to find a bigger home for abused and neglected animals.
Cheryl-Lyn’s Rescue Organisation (CRO) rehabilitates sick, abused and neglected animals through foster care, and assists with sterilisation of animals in informal settlements.
However, since the Covid-19 pandemic struck, donations have been drying up and not many people offer to foster on their own expense because they can’t afford to, says CRO’s founder Cheryl-Lyn Potgieter.
She now finds her home overcrowded with severe cases of abused and neglected animals until they are rehabilitated and re-homed.
Ms Potgieter has been working in communities, with the help of the SPCA and vets in the area since 2015. It all started when she was called to the scene of a dead dog left on the side of the road. She still gets called out to such incidents and collects the bodies and takes them to a vet for possible identification.
When Tabletalk met up with Ms Potgieter, she was bottle-feeding a litter of puppies from the Hyundai Grand i10 Cargo, which she bought with the R100 000 donated to her organisation from an anonymous donor in 2020, (“Well deserved,” Tabletalk, February 12, 2020).
According to her, the puppies, left for dead, were found in an open field in Dunoon last month. She was called by two young boys from the community who now volunteer at CRO.
Ms Potgieter says she has 28 dogs at her home, some of them sleep in her bed, while others live in kennels on the premises.
She says she spends lots of time searching for property on the internet but has been unable to find a place she can afford.
But somewhere needs to be found soon, she says, because neglected and abused animals are coming through her door almost daily.
The organisation has started a crowdfunding campaign on BackaBuddy to raise R1.5 million rand. So far it has just over R15 000.
“We understand that times are tough, especially during a pandemic, but every little bit helps,” says Ms Potgieter.
The organisation also needs food for the animals and a vet bill of nearly R30 000 needs to be paid.
SPCA spokeswoman Belinda Abraham says they have been working with Ms Potgieter for almost nine years and they help her by taking on cruelty cases that she feels the SPCA is better equipped to deal with.
Call 082 770 2667 or email info@cro-animal-rescue.org.za for more information.
