Brenda Comer had an idea a while back and she knew just who to take it to.
The results of that idea was put on display Tuesday morning at the Columbus-Lowndes Humane Society as Megan Pratt, marketing director for Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle, presented the facility with a grocery-cart full of patient gowns, sheets and blankets.
“You would be surprised all the things that we can use that you might not think about,” said CLHS director Karen Johnwick. “This is a perfect example of something we can use that would probably be thrown away.”
Comer, a member of the CLHS board, was thinking about a problem that had emerged with visitors at the facility’s cat room.
“Everybody wants to hold the kittens,” Johnwick noted. “But when you do that, there’s the possibility of spreading their germs to the other cats.”
Comer thought she had an idea and called Pratt.
“We’re old (Mississippi University for Women) buddies,” Pratt said. “So she called me last week and asked if we had any old patient gowns. I didn’t know, so I checked with our director of environmental services. He said if the gowns or blankets are stained or frayed, we can’t use them. So they were just thrown away.
“So I let Brenda know that we had a lot of those items,” she added. “We’re thrilled. It’s great to find a use for them. Now that we know there’s a need for these items, our laundry people know to just set them aside.”
The delivery included about three-dozen gowns, which visitors can put on when they visit the cat room and swap out with each new cat they hold.
There are currently about 30 cats and kittens available for adoption.
Johnwick said the blankets also fill a great need
“In the winter our heating bill is outrageous, so if we have plenty of blankets it really helps us lower the heating cost,” she said. “We love getting blankets and towels. We can never get enough.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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