In most cases, falling asleep on the job could get you fired.
But one cat shelter in Wisconsin hardly minds when Terry Lauerman, their 75-year-old volunteer, regularly dozes off as he brushes the cats there.
More than US$20,000 in donations flooded into the shelterafter staff posted about him on Facebook.
“Terry just kind of showed up here with a brush in hand one day about six months ago and just started brushing cats,” Elizabeth Feldhausen, the founder of Safe Haven Pet Sanctuary Inc., told CTVnews.ca. Friday.
“If one of the cats would throw up, he would go clean it up for us because he knew where all the cleaning supplies were,” she said, adding that he started showing up at the shelter in Green Bay, WI, a couple days a week but now shows up nearly every day.
“One day, we were like ‘Terry, you’re an official volunteer,’” Feldhausen said. Lauerman regularly comes in six days a week for two to three hours a day. In addition to voluntary vomit duty, he regularly helps around the shelter and introduces the animals to prospective owners.
Feldhausen says Lauerman, a former Spanish teacher, regularly travels outside of the country for months at a time, so he doesn’t have enough time to own cats of his own.
When the retiree accidentally falls asleep while cuddling with the cats or brushing them, the staff just leave him to it. On Wednesday, the staff snapped several photos of the affectionately nicknamed “Cat Grandpa” napping and shared them on Facebook.
The post has already garnered 65,000 reactions and 17,000 shares.
The post reads, “We are so lucky to have a human like Terry… he brushes all of the cats, and can tell you about all of their likes and dislikes. He also accidentally falls asleep most days. We don't mind - Cats need this! Terry is a wonderful volunteer.”
In the past two days, the shelter had a massive spike in donations as well as people offering to volunteer since the post went public.
“I’ve been barely able to keep up with all the messages and comments—I’m still sifting through all of them,” Feldhausen said, adding that the attention is helping with finding homes for the 30 cats in the shelter. “Everything’s been going crazy. Our Facebook page have over two million views this week.”
The amount has surpassed C$25,800 and the shelter was still receiving calls Friday morning.
“I have two cellphones right now… one of them is blowing up—it’s a couple donations every minute, so I can't even talk on it,” she said.'Feldhausen said she’s pleased Lauerman pushed his way in to becoming a volunteer.
“When something loud happens, (he’ll) get up and fall asleep on another couch,” she chuckled. Feldhausen said their volunteer roster was already pretty full, so they weren’t actively looking for more volunteers.
“He definitely pushed his way in,” she laughed, saying it was kind of abnormal for someone to come in unprompted. “We’re so happy he did but it was pretty out of the ordinary.”
