Titled ‘If These Stones Could Talk,’ the Paint Lake Pioneer Cemetery self-guided tour, offered through a brochure, invites participants to explore notable gravesites and learn about the early settlers who shaped the area.

Paint Lake Cemetery holds historical significance as the final resting place for many early settlers. The cemetery is home to interesting figures such as Zachariah Cole, the first permanent settler to be interred there, and Harry Kenney, a hearing-impaired bachelor who managed a “market garden” and delivered produce to summer residents around the lake by canoe or rowboat. These stories offer a glimpse into what life was like in Lake of Bays over a century ago.

History fans are encouraged to visit Paint Lake Cemetery and pick up a brochure located near the westernmost gate. Alternatively, a digital version of the brochure, along with other self-guided tours developed by the Heritage Committee, is available at lakeofbays.on.ca/WalkingTours.

________________________________________

To advertise with us e-mail info@muskoka411.com

The post New Cemetery Walking Tour Explores History Of Early Dorset appeared first on Muskoka411.

In partnership with the District Municipality of Muskoka, the Township of Lake of Bays is excited to announce its Annual Compost Giveaway, scheduled for Friday, April 21, 2023. The event will take place from 10 a.m. until quantities last at four locations:

• Lake of Bays Community Centre Arena, Baysville (10 University St)
• Dorset Seniors Centre (5025 Muskoka Road 117)
• Interlaken Old Firehall (2309 Limberlost Rd)
• Dwight Branch Public Library Parking Lot (1014 Dwight Beach Rd)

Lake of Bays residents are encouraged to arrive early, as it’s first come, first serve. Please bring your own containers and shovels.

For optimal results, they suggest mixing the compost with 60% topsoil and 40% compost.

The post Annual Compost Giveaway 2023 In Lake Of Bays appeared first on Muskoka411.

On February 11, 2022, just after 12 p.m., Haliburton Highlands OPP, along with emergency services, responded to a two-vehicle collision involving a passenger vehicle and flatbed truck on Highway 35, near Shoe Lake Road, south of Dorset, in the Township of Algonquin Highlands.

As a result of the collision, one driver was pronounced deceased.

Members of the family have asked for the name not to be released.

Highway 35 was closed for several hours for the police investigation.

The post Deceased Identified After Collision On Hwy. 35 South Of Dorset appeared first on Muskoka411.

The Dorset-based rescue, which specializes in taking on feral felines, has helped over 100 cats since it was officially incorporated in January. They’re currently caring for 47 cats, the largest number they’ve ever had at once, so they’re looking to grow their team of volunteers so they can help as many cats as possible. Though the rescue is just approaching their first anniversary, Deveaux and her partner Kyal Smith have been helping cats for years. It all started when a feral cat showed up at Smith’s cabin nearly four years ago.

Meeting MamaCat

“She was just this little fur ball under the deck with little green eyes peeking at us,” Deveaux said. “Eventually, she came and sat there and he put some ham down and it went from there.”

They named their new visitor MamaCat and after a year or two, she started bringing them her kittens. Eventually they discovered that one of her kittens was pregnant, leaving them with two mother cats and eight kittens roaming around the property. That’s when they decided they would need to take action to help the colony of cats.

“I started taking them in to get spayed or neutered and realized that’s not really going to be long term tenable [or] sustainable,” Deveaux said. “We set up a GoFundMe page and thought, ‘Let’s just see, maybe we can get a little help from people around here because there’s lots of strays, lots of ferals.’ And to our great surprise and delight, people started contributing.”

Between the community contributions and professional changes caused by COVID, their small project snowballed and became a full-blown rescue. Residents and local businesses started calling the rescue to report cat sightings, so they set out to trap as many cats as possible before winter weather set in. Soon after, the Cats of Paint Lake rescue was born.

Taking cats from feral to friendly

The mission at the Cats of Paint Lake is to rescue cats living outside and help rehabilitate them, bringing the animals from feral to family pet. The rescue takes on difficult cases from other rescues in addition to accepting the occasional surrender, but their main goal is helping ferals and strays.

“We kind of focus on the difficult cases,” Deveaux said. “The ones that are challenging, the ones that are a little wild, the ones that have had a sad story, but mostly we do focus, especially this time of year, on the strays and the ferals because they’re the ones that are out there and they’re at imminent risk of getting killed.”

Feral cats are subject to a variety of risks while outdoors, including diseases, predators, changing weather and starvation over the winter. A lot of rescues and even vets won’t deal with feral cats, Deveaux said, so she works with the Humane Society in North Bay to rehabilitate cats from Muskoka, Haliburton County and beyond. 

They’ve helped cats from Orillia, Barrie and Toronto and their team has connected with people from all over the province and even outside of Canada to provide advice on trapping and rehabbing feral cats. Once cats enter the rescue, they’re met with warmth, safety and comfort, which helps them start on the way to becoming house cats. Their team of volunteers is a big part of that, Deveaux said, and they love the work they do.

“They realize that this problem of strays and ferals out there, it’s a human created problem,” she said. “The cats didn’t ask to be lost, left outside, dumped, abandoned or born out there for that matter, and so it’s going to take all of us to fix it. I have people who come in here who are just amazing with them and every cat responds to different people, so it’s great to have more and more of them on board.”

Seeking volunteers of all ages and abilities

They have about eight to 10 regulars as well as a few dozen seasonal and sporadic volunteers, so they’re hoping to get more people to cover daily shifts at the rescue. The facility is a low-odour, temperature-controlled environment with heated floors, air purifiers and other features to keep both people and pets comfortable and safe, so some of the most common tasks are basic cleaning and feeding duties.

“It’s not just cleaning and feeding, it’s also interacting with those animals and getting to know them, and that’s part of the socialization process,” Deveaux said. “When you’re opening their space and going in there, this takes people who are not intimidated, first of all, and really love the cats.”

In addition to shifts at the rescue, they could also use people who can help out with driving, trapping, social media, photography and video, fundraising, and more. Some of their volunteers even sew cat toys, beds and other items. The rescue has had volunteers as young as five and as old as 91, so all ages and abilities are welcome.

For locals with extra space in their home, becoming a foster is a great way to support the rescue’s efforts. Due to the size of their facility, the rescue is limited by the number of foster families they have available. The more fosters they have, the more cats they can help, Deveaux said, but it’s important that they manage the numbers and ensure they have enough resources to care for each intake.

“I call it finishing school, so more often than not, we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting on getting the ferals down from wild animal into the status of ‘I’m almost a [house] cat,’” she said. “Once you get them to that point, they need to learn how to live in a house and we can emulate that as far as we want, but we’re not going to ever really be able to let them learn how to live in a house unless they go live in a house.”

A little goes a long way

For people without time to volunteer, there are still many ways to help. With the exception of a small grant from the Haliburton County Development Corporation, the rescue runs entirely on donations. Monetary contributions as well as donations like garbage bags, old newspapers, food dishes and disinfecting wipes make a big difference for their day-to-day operations. 

Even a comment or share on their growing social media pages can help. They have accounts on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, but their most popular platform is TikTok with over 20,000 followers and nearly 275,000 likes. Their online following helps build awareness and bring in donations, and they’re hopeful that their growing presence could lead to sponsorships or partnerships with pet brands.

The work at the rescue can’t happen without volunteers, donors and other supporters, so no matter what kind of help locals can provide to the Cats of Paint Lake, every bit goes toward bringing cats from feral to friendly.

“When you see the transformation, they don’t all have to just go outside,” Deveaux said. “They are wild things by virtue of the necessity of survival, but they are, at heart, just cats and sometimes you can help them find that again.”

To volunteer with the Cats of Paint Lake, or to make a donation, visit the rescue’s website.

The post Cats Of Paint Lake Rescue Seeks Volunteers To Help Bring Cats From Feral To Friendly appeared first on Muskoka411.

Seymour grew up cottaging in Dorset and plans to move back full time after completing her veterinary technician program in Guelph this spring. As a child, she would help rescue cats from feral colonies in Dorset while also assisting with wildlife rescues for everything from raccoons and squirrels to bunnies and ducklings. Once she even secured vet care and rehomed a stray puppy while visiting Costa Rica at just 16 years old. Two years later, she volunteered at an elephant orphanage, which is where she realized she wanted to dedicate her life to saving animals. In mid-2020, she continued on that path by founding a rescue, and it all started with baby Blue.  

“One morning I woke up and my friends who actually adopted my first foster kitten… the kitten that started all of the kitten rescuing for me four years ago, [they] contacted me about baby Blue,” Seymour said. ”Baby Blue was about five weeks old when she was rescued and she was literally just found on someone’s doorstep.”

Blue and the birth of Dorset Rescue Kittens

Because of her age, Blue required around the clock care with bottle feeding and stimulation every two to four hours for nearly a month. Seymour raised her alongside her pet dog and rabbits as well as a baby chick she was fostering for the Guelph Humane Society. Once Blue was ready, Seymour rehomed her with a retiree, who sends frequent updates about Blue and her brother Fig. More and more calls about stray and feral kittens have been coming in ever since.

“Once I hit about 12 kittens in my home, I realized that I needed to start fundraising for medical bills because obviously vet bills add up and, of course, we needed to find them homes, so I started my Facebook page,” Seymour said. “That’s pretty much how the rescue was born, and it just kind of took off from there.”

The rescue is completely volunteer run and operates through donations and adoptions fees alone. It costs $450 to adopt a pair of kittens and $250 for a single kitten, though they only adopt out single kittens to homes with another cat to ensure proper socialization. 

From June to December, Seymour rescued 50 cats, and that doesn’t include a group of adult feral cats that were trapped, neutered and released. In the first two months of 2021, her team has already rescued over 30 cats and Seymour expects the total for the year to be well over 100. 

“I just think about those 50 cats that we rescued in 2020 and every single one of those cats would have been living in an outdoor situation now,” she said. “They might not have made it. Seventy five per cent of kittens born in the wild don’t even make it to the age of two and that’s a terrifying statistic, but feral cats are faced against so many things.”

The colony of cats she helped rescue kittens from as a child is still there in Dorset, so one of her goals for the year is to fix all the adults and rescue the kittens to avoid future litters from being born outside. She’s proud of the progress they’ve made, but many of the challenges they faced in the early days of the rescue still remain.

“At that point I had no foster parents, no volunteers, no financial support and to be honest, at this point, we really don’t have a lot of that anyways,” Seymour said. “It’s really me behind the scenes of almost everything.”

Building the team

Seymour arranges all the veterinary care, does administrative work, and runs their social media accounts and website while also handling the adoption process for all of the cats. She’s spent dozens of hours driving across the province for vet services and personally cares for several cats at a time, often taking in neonatal kittens that require a great deal of attention.

Her partner Thomas helps out with the website as well as driving and dropping off supplies, but aside from him and a few volunteers, the rescue only has about 10 foster homes to support their operations. Now, as her return to Muskoka gets closer, Seymour is in desperate need of fosters in cottage country.

“Because I live in Guelph, I need my foster homes close to me, so right now, the majority of them are all students that live near me and are doing online school, but we need foster homes in Muskoka,” she said. “We have almost none right now, and when I move back up there full time in a month, I’m going to need people close to me to foster the kittens.”

Seymour is looking for foster families within about 45 minutes of Dorset that have access to a vehicle. Though donations of supplies from foster families are welcome, the rescue supplies food, litter and toys and arranges all vet care for the cats, so fosters mainly need a spare room where the cat can have a quiet space to get used to their new environment. 

Previous experience with cats isn’t necessary and other pets in the home are fine as long as they’re up to date on vaccinations, she said, so the most important thing is offering a patient and loving home. 

“Fostering is a great thing for people who love animals that don’t have 20 years to commit to them or who don’t have the financial means to provide for them because we do provide everything they need,” Seymour said.

For those who want to help out but can’t take in a foster, they often need volunteer drivers to help transport the kittens as well as volunteer trappers to help get them to the rescue. They could also use help with marking materials like photos and videos, fundraisers and even handy projects like building cat trees or winter feral cat homes, so all help is welcome. No matter what role a volunteer plays, they’re contributing to a better life for animals across the region.

“It’s really just a beautiful experience to see the kitten develop, and then be able to find them a forever home where they get everything that they want, but they’re also giving back to the people who adopt them,” Seymour said.

Getting what they need, and giving back so much more

That was exactly the case with Scotty and Tessa, a pair of kittens that spent four months at the rescue due to their shy demeanor. Once Seymour felt they were ready, she considered the options carefully and selected Judy MacEachern and her husband as their new forever family.

“I followed the Facebook page for a few months, and reached out to Cailey after we had to euthanize our very senior cat,” MacEachern said. “There were many back and forth messages where I shared our story, and Cailey was able to assess our home. She suggested Scotty and Tessa based on their personalities and our family.”

The cats were shy, but MacEachern and her husband have always been cat people, and after saying goodbye to their cat of 20 years, they were ready for some new companions, no matter how timid.

“[The MacEacherns] were very very committed to socializing the kittens, and they were okay with the fact that they were shy,” Seymour said. “When I showed up to their house, the adopter started crying and then I started crying because we had had the kittens for so long and I was so worried that we wouldn’t find the right match for them, but it was the perfect match.”

Seymour cautioned the adopters that the cats may hide in the carrier for a few hours, if not longer, when they first arrived at their new home.

“Cailey communicated realistic expectations,” MacEachern said. “However, they came out of the carrier within 20 minutes and stayed out. Of course, they were shy at first, but they have adapted much faster than any of us predicted.”

The couple has had Scotty and Tessa for six weeks and the kittens have adjusted well, even becoming little celebrities amongst the family through their appearance on video calls. MacEachern believes their smooth transition is due in part to the advice Seymour provided throughout the process, and they continue to provide her with updates and photos. Seymour receives updates from adoptive families nearly every day, and her network of animal lovers continues to grow.

“I adopt these kittens out to these people and then they become my family,” Seymour said. “The kittens were my family and then their adopters become my family because they always keep in touch with me, so it’s beautiful when the adoption happens, and then it’s beautiful for the rest of the cat’s life because we do stay in touch and we do keep that connection.”

Seeing cats flourish and get adopted out is wonderful, but it can’t continue, especially on the same scale, without financial support, Seymour said. Caring for each kitten costs hundreds of dollars and since the feral cats they help don’t bring in adoption fees, much of the cost is coming out of Seymour’s own pocket. With few donations coming in, the rescue is in critical need of more funding. Every donation goes directly to vet bills and, in turn, helps save the lives of more cats.

“We can only do so much, and the more people we have helping us foster and more people help with finances, the more we can do,” she said. “I’m one person and it’s going to take way more than just myself and the few people that I have helping us now to help the feral cat population and rescue all of these animals, so I really look forward to the future and I hope that we can come together as a community.”

To become a foster or volunteer with Dorset Rescue Kittens, or to set up a donation drop-off, email dorsetrescuekittens@hotmail.com. Visit their website, Facebook and Instagram pages for updates, and click here to see the rescue’s Amazon wishlist. Donations can be made through e-transfer to dorsetrescuekittens@hotmail.com.

Dorset Rescue Kittens is seeking a veterinary clinic in the Muskoka area that is willing to work with the rescue at a low cost. If you can help address that need, please contact the rescue at dorsetrescuekittens@hotmail.com.

1 of 8

The post Dorset Rescue Kittens Seeks Community Support After Rescuing Over 80 Cats appeared first on Muskoka411.