Loving our Animal Friends and Making a Difference with Best Friends Animal Society.

Zoe-Anne and I have supported and donated to Best Friends Animal Society for more than 20 years.

We learned about Best Friends when our local chapter of Pet Assistance Foundation was having trouble raising enough money to assist all the local folks that needed help offsetting the high cost of spay and neuter at local vets. The Best Friends operation in the San Fernando Valley allowed us to refer some of our under-funded pet owners to them for reduced rate services.

As we worked with Best Friends, we realized that the organization had some pretty lofty goals, and that they were not only dedicated to providing needed desperately needed services for pets and pet lovers, but that they were highly effective in making every dollar go to work for animals throughout all of their programs.

Best Friends wants every animal to have a loving home and every shelter to be a no-kill shelter. Best Friends says: “Save them all,” which is of course, what Zoe and I want to do too, so with your help, we can save some more, help educate the masses, and help make sure every animal finds a loving family.

Shortly after Zoe’s AML diagnosis in November, we came up with the concept of making her memorial a fundraiser for Best Friends Animal Society. That was the only thing she wanted to ask her friends and family to support, if they were able. We talked quite a bit about different ways to do that, with an online outreach for donations always part of the concept, and because Zoe had wanted to visit the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, we came up with some ideas on how to make that part of the memorial plans as well.

We had purchased our personalized California “ZOEY 4 Spay & Neuter” License Plate soon after they came out, and we decommissioned it from her vehicle last year when we were getting her another vehicle but decided not to put it on the new car.

We hoped there would be a way to create a permanent tribute memorial to Zoe and our Spay & Neuter work using the license plate and maybe images of our two current cats, Pasha and Presto. We were also trying to think of a way to incorporate the artwork of one of our favorite living artists, Michael Leu, as part of the permanent tribute.

We had purchased a large Michael Leu signed limited-edition serigraph, called “The Night of 101 Cats” in Munich in 2000. The picture depicts 101 cats of various coloring, leaping out of a red Trojan horse in the middle of the night. Zoe had it on the wall in her office behind her desk and her computer. She loved the image and so did Pasha and Presto.

The Michael Leu part of the tribute story turned out to be kismet. Michael lives near San Rafael California and has won countless awards for his impressionist/expressionist renditions of people, places, and especially cats. Michael has had a special relationship with his cat “Fuzzy,” and I think his ability to represent it in his artwork is remarkable. He seems to understand cats, and that makes him very special in Zoe-Anne’s and my estimation. His website is https://www.michaelleu.com/ .

Zoe-Anne died on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday afternoon I was at her desk, going through her computer for names of people to call, looking at the “101 Cats,” and noticed our Michael Leu portfolio book we had purchased in San Francisci, and started reading about his relationship with “Fuzzy” again and looking at the pictures he did of people with their cats. That was it, I decided to try to contact him and see if there was any way to get him to do a portrait of Zoe-Anne, with the license plate and the two cats. I contacted his gallery on Monday and he got back to me on Tuesday or Wednesday and said he would be honored to do the portrait.

I told Michael how much we loved the “101 Cats” and sent him a bunch of photos of everyone – including one of Pasha in front of the “101 Cats.”

I was speechless and nearly in tears when I saw the completed “ZOEY 4 Spay & Neuter Tribute”.

Michael was very moved by what we were doing by trying to raise some money for the Best Friends Animal Society and he donated 10 signed copies of “The Night of 101 Cats,” poster (34in x 24in), which shows a red Trojan horse with 101 gorgeous assorted cats leaping out from the open door.

We had a drawing for 4 of the signed Michael Leu “The Night of 101 Cats” posters on September 1, 2024, and will have another on March 16, 2025.

Sign up for the drawing on the Win 101 Cats page.

And in the future?

I hope that these efforts are just the beginning of finding new ways to help Best Friends SAVE THEM ALL.

You can honor Zoe-Anne and Save Them All at Best Friends Animal Society by Donating at http://support.bestfriends.org/goto/ZOEY_4_SPAY-NEUTER

Thank you everyone,

Bruce McFarland