About

Shauna NOrton, founder of the non profit, protect our gentle friends, grew up in a very old, broken down house in an isolated part of the prairie in Colorado.

She was constantly in a great deal of pain in that house, due to the horrific amounts of abuse and neglect she suffered at the hands of her parents, but what was happening outside was far more devastating to her.

The stray cats she ran to for love and kindness were subject to all of the terrors that outdoor cats suffer before they perish. Because her parents refused to spend any money on neutering or spaying them, they bred freely.

Shauna was never allowed to provide them with food, water, shelter or medical care, so they died in droves, no matter what she tried to do to save them. This became a heavy burden of grief, which she still carries. She knows she never would have survived without their comfort.

In the 16 years she endured with her parents before escaping, she saw dozens of animals die of all the painful ways outdoor cats suffer, but knows now that’s nothing compared to the millions of dogs and cats that perish out on the street. Starvation and disease were the most common, and many were killed by wild animals.

She saw them being run over by cars and freezing to death in the winter. Many lost pets fall prey to disturbed individuals like her father, who enjoyed torturing and killing her beloved friends, while she was forced to watch. Many lost cats and dogs are set on fire each year.

Did you know that the root of the word passion is pain?

“The word passion comes from Latin root pati-, meaning suffering, or enduring. Thus, compassion means to suffer-with: the compassionate aren’t immune to other people’s pain. And passion is, at its core, a form of pain that demands it be quenched. It’s not for the faint of heart or those who lack patience — which is not the ability to wait, but the ability to suffer.”

Even though she was badly damaged in many ways, she vowed to help all animals who are being threatened. She transformed her pain into a passion to save their lives as they had hers. She channeled her suffering into dedicating her life to healing any animals that she encountered.

When she was able, she started a pet business over 30 years ago, taking care of cats, dogs and all household pets, as well as teaching her clients how to manage and solve the many behavioral issues they can have.

As she walked her path towards healing, again, her animal friends kept her alive. The knowledge that they needed her helped her stay in this life, day by day.

Her two precious cats and the pets she was caring for gave her the love she needed to face her past, which was almost too painful to bear, but she never gave up on herself or her furry friends.

Along the way, she found out that millions and millions of lost pets are euthanized in shelters every year. What was even more staggering was that they only represented about 10% of the over 5 million cats and about the same number of dogs that escape each year in the US.

Because she had first hand knowledge of what was happening to them, she cried for a very long time, and then, decided to become one of the many heroes who were working so hard to reduce those numbers.

She wasn’t sure how she could help, but over the many years of working with cats and dogs, she saw one thing over and over. Out of the over 300 cats she had met, only three where protected with a collar and ID.

She started looking into the statistics and discovered that those numbers matched reports of less than 4% of lost cats ever making it back home after going missing.

Dogs fared a little better than cats, because more owners put collars on their pets, but they only represented about 15-20% of them being taken back to their families.

She knew about microchips and was very surprised that only a few were given a chance to have theirs read. It’s a wonderful idea, but is failing badly due to the human factor. Only 10% of lost pets are rescued and taken to a nearby shelter.

She knew why in an instant. She saw what cats look like after being outside for a few days, or a week or two, or more. Nobody wants to rescue a stray for many reasons. They think stray means feral, which so many people fear.

The only people that understand the true meaning: a pet that has strayed from it’s home, would rescue them. The rest will perish. Over 2 million die on the roads each year after being hit by a car.

She knew what she had to do to get them back home, before they wandered into harm’s way. She set out to educate pet owners and professionals how to make that possible.

She created this website where those visitors who decided to get their pet a collar and ID could enter them into a free raffle with a nice prize of $1,500, of her own money.

At first, she was worried that nobody would believe the cold, hard truth about their pet, but when she sat down with each one of her cat clients, not only did they understand the danger, but were eager to have their furry friend fitted with a collar, right then and there.

She felt an easing of her grief with every success and is now vowing to spend the rest of her life being a hero to lost pets and animals around the world.

Before the Pandemic hit, she was in the process of giving vets and shelters a way to educate their clients and fit their patients with a free collar and ID. She will return to that mission when she is able.

Her other project is to help people heal the environment to protect wild animals, whom she cherishes, too. She is starting in her own community of Framingham, Massachusetts.

Will you take the next step to prevent your cat or dog from succumbing to the number one cause of death? Not even vets know the truth behind the failure of microchips, but numbers don’t lie!