Despite being retired, this brave man has no intention to stop working.
Willie Ortiz is a retired soldier, mechanic, school bus driver, and welder at Connecticut’s Hartford Hospital. However, the role he prides himself the most is being a cat parent.
Every night, Willie packs his old mini-van floor-to-ceiling with cat food and sets off on a tour.
For the past 22 years, Willie has been feeding stray cats. To put it precisely, during his tour, he stops 16 times across the city to feed 68 stray cats.
What’s fascinating is that the humble man hasn’t missed a single night of caring for his furry friends.
Most people wonder what encouraged Willie to care for so many stray cats. Well, here’s his story.
It all started in 1995 when he saw a starving kitty begging for food outside his friend’s auto body shop.
While everyone ignored the cat, he couldn’t do that, so he started feeding her. Soon after that, he discovered several stray colonies across the city that were in desperate need of help.
Besides feeding almost 70 kitties, which costs him about $600 of monthly cat food, Willie also takes sick and injured cats to the vet, provides them with spay/neuter procedures, vaccinates them, and tries to find them forever homes.
To continue his mission, Willie spends his days collecting scrap metal to sell and earn money for the cat food. To make it a bit easier for him, community members who have heard about Willie’s story often donate him metal.
He always humbly accepts donations, even financial, but strictly refuses to use the money for anything except food and care for his beloved felines.
Willie’s friend also wanted to help, so he has set up a GoFundMe page for him, where you can learn more about his mission and make a donation.
Willie is one kind and amazing person who, despite his age, refuses to give up but is determined to carry on his mission and make sure that the stray cats are taken good care of.
If there were more people like Willie, I’m sure that the world would be a much better place!
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