Dear Teresa,

As promised, I am sending you my observations from my visit from 10th Life Sanctuary, located outside Clewiston, FL. I know that you had read some negative things about it on the internet, so I wanted to tell you about my visit. I have also attached lots of pictures so you can see the immaculate conditions that the cats are kept it.

We arrived after a 3.5 hour drive and met Maury Swee, the person in charge. He gave us a full tour of the facilities, nothing was off limits to us. We entered a very large enclosure (4000 sq ft) that had many different sections to separate groups of the kitties, such as the ferals, FIV+, Feline Leuk+, new arrivals, and general population, etc.

None of the sections were over-crowded at all. The kitties all had ample room to either relax on the floor in the sun, recline on a shelf/perch, find a hidden spot within the rafter-type structure to nap, or completely get away from it all and go indoors to an area that has fans for hot weather and heat lamps for cold weather.

Everything was CLEAN! There was plenty of fresh food and water, and litter boxes appeared to be cleaned very regularly. Most of the cats were very social and when I sat down to play with them, they were all very friendly, sweet, and looked healthy. There were of course the timid ones that stayed away, but appeared happy, clean and healthy. I observed four different people working the whole time we were there: cleaning, feeding, medicating, micro-chipping, etc. These people work very hard to provide these animals a safe place to live out their lives.

Lastly, we toured the area that ALL new arrivals are kept in 'quarantine' in separate and VERY LARGE Carriers for 14 days to observe and provide for any special needs before releasing into the general population. All carriers were clearly and neatly marked with any conditions and/or medications that were being used.

While this sanctuary is very basic, and some might call primitive compared to a place like Best Friends, (which receives grants/funding, and lots of contributions) 10th Life is providing a clean and safe environment (in my opinion) with what little private contributions they receive. Maury Swee is a very dedicated person and I only wish that more people knew of his efforts and would contribute to the sanctuary. They are facing a dilemma of possibly losing the area they lease since the owner is selling the property.

I have been following Maury's efforts for the past 3 years. I find it amazing the amount of resistance and harassment that he has had to deal with. Over the years there has been some negative things alleged against him and the sanctuary by some ignorant and/or malicious people. If you go to his website, you can see that he has posted allegations against him and then the follow-up reports/inspections conducted by various agencies. I would like to personally help Maury with quelling the negative publicity by sharing my experience with as many people as possible. Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you see fit.

The rescue group I went down with brought nine kitties that at this point were considered 'un-adoptable' due to aggression, overly timid, etc. Maury took these babies in so they can live out there lives worry-free. In exchange, we took seven tiny kittens back with us to be adopted out at PetCO when they are spayed, etc.

This man deserves a medal for caring about the animals as much as he does.

Kind Regards,

Rebecca

SANCTUARY PICTURES