Submitted by the Animal Protection Society -Friday Harbor.

The Animal Protection Society – Friday Harbor is pleased to announce Patty Francisco as the APS-FH Volunteer of the Month for April 2023! Patty has been a dedicated volunteer for APS-FH since June of 2021, where she spends her hours socializing, playing, talking to, and just good ol’ fashion hanging out with the felines in our care.

Whether you prefer to call Patty “an APS-FH Cat Volunteer”, “a Cat’s Best Friend”, or her self- coined title, “Feline Enrichment Specialist”, we just know that all us humans and cats at the shelter are lucky to call her a part of our team!

For every shift that Patty works at our shelter, she brings kindness, patience, and knowledge of rescue cat behavior along with her. We have yet to bring a cat or kitten into our shelter that Patty can’t make friends with!

Some of our arrivals need more time than others to adjust to their new life at the shelter, and we can always count on Patty to give them that extra time needed – taking socialization slowly and helping them feel safe and secure while they’re here in our care. Whether a feline is a kitten, young, adult, senior, small, big, male, or female, Patty can woo them all! Volunteers like Patty make all the difference in helping cats and kittens adjust to their new environment, and in turn helping them find loving, forever homes!

Although we have many deserving volunteers who work hard to make our resident cats and kittens feel comfortable and entertained, we believe Patty’s nurturing nature truly is a gift to all our animals and humans at the shelter and one that deserves to be recognized! Not only is Patty extremely worthy of this recognition, but she is also so thoughtful of others that we had to do some convincing to get her to accept the award; instead, she was ready to pass this recognition onto another volunteer! For all these reasons and more, we know that she couldn’t be more deserving of this award and being celebrated in this way.

Thanks so much Patty! We so appreciate the way you’re kind to everyone you encounter, are always willing to lend a helping hand and all the passion you have for the cats in our care. Thank you for being such a valued part of our team!