Kids cuddle critters after raising $2,600 for animal shelter

By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News
May 21, 2002

Tony Goldsby hesitated when Maxine Mager handed him the kitten. "Do you like cats?" Maxine asked the 12-year-old sixth-grader from Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Denver. "I don't know," Tony said. Within minutes, Tony was petting the kitten, and the kitten was playing with Tony's silver chain.
Tony was among 100 students who helped raise $2,600 for Mager's animal shelter near Brighton. On Monday, Mager showed up at the school with a selection of kittens, ferrets, dogs, bunnies and chickens for the children to pet.

Raising money for Mager's abandoned animals is a way for kids to start thinking about others, and Bev Defnall, a language arts and technology teacher who organized the fund drive.

"It just gets them thinking about something besides themselves," Defnall said. "I'm not saying they're selfish. That's just natural for the age. They haven't quite realized that the world doesn't revolve around them."

Defnall started the project after reading a newspaper article about Mager. Mager has about 140 animals at her 12 1/2 acre farm, Creative Acres, just east of Brighton. They range from horses, kittens and puppies to peacocks, sheep, goats, pigs, exotic chickens, bunnies and several emus.

Mager does not euthanize the animals, even the sick ones that will never be adopted. "We have a goat that just had gall bladder surgery," Mager told the children. "It's my $2,000 goat. You guys really helped." Many of the animals were abandoned by their owners. "Last week alone, I got two goats in. I got these two kittens in. They were found in a dumpster," she said.

Initially, the kids were supposed to visit Mager's shelter. But buses were not available, and there were questions about whether the shelter could handle 100 youngsters. So Mager brought the animals to the children.

Like Tony, some of the kids have never held animals. "It was mean," Tony said of the kitten he held, one of the litter that came from the dumpster. "It kept biting me and tearing at my shirt." But he liked it. "It's little," he said.  "So it can't hurt you as much."

Michael Montenegro, 12, has pets at home but had never held a ferret. When the teachers weren't looking, Michael kissed the ferret cradled in his arms.  "One of my friends told me to kiss it, so I kissed it," he said later. "I liked the ferret, but it smelled kind of weird."

"It touches a side of them that I think is important -- that tender side," Defnall said. "I think it's sometimes hard for little boys to show that."