Pennies for Pets A Story of Love

St. Rose Catholic School’s Pennies for Pets Project

In early December the students in Mrs. Lucas’s 3rd Grade at St. Rose Catholic School began the Pennies for Pets Project inspired by me, Gracey The Tiniest Tiger. The children wanted to do something for members of our community that share their lives with cats and dogs.  Mrs. Medaugh, the school’s librarian sings in the choir with my mom and when Mrs. Medaugh heard about my idea, she got super excited and  coordinated the entire project with Mrs. Lucas and the children began to collect their pennies.

Blankets Knotted with Love

Meanwhile,  Mrs. Wycinski, who sings in the choir too, teaches math at the high school and who takes care of me when my parents are away, pitched in to help when my mom called her from the fabric store and said she was overwhelmed by all the colorful material.  Mrs. Wycinski laughed and said she would be happy to coordinate the fabric and she even measured and cut the blankets to make it easier for the 3rd graders to tie all the knots that make the material into a cozy blanket.

During the Pennies for Pets Project, the world seemed to stop on that terrible day innocent lives were taken by the shooter in Sandy Hook, Ct.  Our friend Robin Olson, author of Covered in Cat Hair and founder of Kitten Associates lives in this community. Trying to decide what she could do to help, Robin wrote:

Between tears I said to Sam that maybe we should open up the foster kitten room and invite the children of Newtown to come here and just pet the cats. We knew the effect playtime would have on the kids. I’d seen it many time before-their eyes lit up, twinkling, giggling like mad, their voices rising in glee. I thought if I could help them, even for a short while it would be worth it.

When Mrs Medaugh learned of Robin’s plans to help the children, she talked to the 3rd graders at St. Rose about Kitten Associates.  The children were so excited to hear about Robin’s plan they wanted to help so they decided to send their pennies and blankets knotted with love to Kitten Associates.

That is a lot of pennies!

The 3rd Grade continued to collect pennies and when the blankets were ready to ship to Kitten Associates, there were 20,000 pennies!  The blankets were packaged up and sent  and all the children were happy knowing their blankets and pennies were helping Kitten Associates help the children in Connecticut.

A Story of Love

A story of love from the children of St. Rose Catholic School in Ohio to the children of Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. And to our hero Robin, that works every day to make the lives of  humans and felines better by giving kindness and love to the brokenhearted, we want to simply say;

We love you.