WE, THE ADVISORY BOARD OF WHISKERS AND TAILS HAVE ADDED THIS FORUM TO AID OUR FOUNDING FAMILY. HEALTH ISSUES AND THE FUTURE OF OUR SMALL HUMANE ORGANIZATION WILL DEPEND SOLELY ON ITS OUTCOME. THIS FAMILY MUST MOVE INTO A BETTER ENVIRONMENT. IN DOING SO THEIR HEALTH WILL IMPROVE GREATLY AND IF ALL FUNDS ARE RAISED FOR OUR FACILITY WE WILL BE ABLE TO CONTINUE OUR HUMANE EFFORTS.

OUR GOAL IS TO RAISE $50,000 FOR THIS FAMILY. FUNDS WILL BE USED FOR :

Medical bills, prescriptions and medical supplies.

Utility Bills and gas to make the many trips to the doctors for all three.

to help relocate them to a new place to live and to help with moving costs.

We know that this is a lot to ask but our entire future as well as the future of this family is resting solely on getting them out of their current location and into a place where they can live that will not worsen their health issues.

ReGina, Tom and Tommy Jr are still hard at work in their perspective positions. ReGina still actively pursues grants, researching and writing, she still cares for the animals daily whether her back is giving her grief or not. Tom still works at his job in a manufacturing plant. Breathing problems or not he refuses to give in and is in high hopes that he can get his family and his self moved before another winter comes around. Tommy JR. still manages to get all of his humane work done every single day.

This family has not given up nor have they given in. They keep going no matter what and that is why we want so badly to help them. They love what they do and they work hard at doing it and they work hard at trying to cope with all of their physical issues. They just do not stop!

Please read the following information about ReGina and her family and than make a decision to help.

ReGina Edmondson

Founder and Director of Whiskers and Tails ReGina was born in Missouri. Her father a devoted service man had traveled all over the world. Served in WW2 and the Korean Conflict. Highly decorated and deeply devoted to his military career. He retired from the Armed Forced in 1965. Her Mother an ex school teacher had 8 children when they finally settled down in one small town she spent her later years collecting valuable antiques and other wonderful things. She enjoyed painting, writing children’s books and researching her family history.

Being the youngest of all of those children ReGina had ample opportunities to learn about life, love, sorrow, work and play. One of the biggest loves of her life was animals. It was also her greatest sorrow. She loved helping them and the ever expected happy ending. She hated losing them which was inevitable in some cases.

She gained great joy out of just sitting there watching them play gave her hours and hours of great joy. As she grew older she began to learn about the true horrors that animals had to face and how cruel some uncaring humans could be.

She started helping animals at a very young age. Defending them against older people that felt that animals had no feelings. She would rescue them and feed them and care for them. She began to day dream about a place where animals and children could be brought together. A place where people who did not know what was going on could learn.

She would teach them how to care for animals and she would also teach them how easy it is to give love to these precious little beings and how wonderful it is to get love in return. For years she worked on her plans and she developed her ideas and thoughts until she felt that she finally had it right. She attended adult night classes when she was a teenager and her studies leaned very strongly towards business management and accounting. She learned about promoting, human resources, office management and more.

From the age of 13 to present she volunteered in food pantries, thrift stores, animal shelters and at rescues. Offering her skills, gifts, services and time to charitable organizations that served everything from children to seniors to all kinds of animals. She worked on farms and in offices and she honed and honed her experiences until she felt that she had the experience to do what she needed to do ~~start a program of her own to help animals everywhere.

Growing up she continually watched as her parents would spend hours in the kitchen preparing meals to wrap up and deliver to families that would have otherwise gone hungry. Her dad would drive for miles delivering this food and he always made sure to bring a little something extra for the children.

To this day ReGina takes great pride in visiting thrift shops, churches, yard sales and every place that she can to locate special items to put in baskets of her own to deliver to needy families in the community. She and her family cook food that is delivered all over the county. Complete meals along with home made desserts are lovingly packaged up and tucked away in her old car and delivered. No one is forgotten. All of the companion animals receive toys, treats, bedding and some that are really in need get newly made dog houses and other forms of shelter. Playing Santa Claus has left them stranded out on old country roads because their vehicles are simply worn out but this does not stop them.

No family on their list has ever gone with out food, gifts, decorations and trimmings or a dog or cat house.

In 1985 she married the love of her life - Tommy. A wonderful, loving man who not only supports her dreams and humane efforts emotionally but physically and financially as well. He drives all over the place to pick up donated items. He uses a portion of his check to help with prescription food, vet bills or what ever else needs to be done when donations or grants do not come in. He is a huge part of the back bone that keeps Whiskers and Tails going.

In 1986 their son Tommy Jr. was born. Home schooled, happy and instilled in him is the love of life, family and animals. He too supports his mother and her dream of helping animals. Every day he is up and ready to make the trip to feed water and clean , care for and hold the special needs animals that he help to rescue.

Like his dad he has helped to build Whiskers and Tails from the ground up. Designing and building ( with some help from Carl, Dean and his Dad), five mini apartments for our Forever home special needs babies to roam in cage free. He has spent countless hours moving and rearranging and cleaning just to make a place for them to call home for as long as they live. He truly does go that extra mile.

In December of 1999 ReGina and her family moved out of their brand new house and moved into a 100 year old house that had come up for sale right next door to her Mother . Her mother had been diagnosed with Emphysema just a bit before that and had become bedridden from the lack of oxygen and energy. Buying the old house put her closer to her mother and gave her a chance to spend more time there.

In the spring of 2000 she lost her oldest brother to after surgery complications. This was the first sign of the worst that was yet to come. In 2001 she started Whiskers and Tails and began to rescue all of the animals that had needed help for so long. She started having fundraisers and letting people know that she was there and what she was doing.

Providing all of the humane resources and information that she could get her hands on to the community that she was trying to help.

In the first year she had rescued over 100 animals and it did not end there. She made more trips to the vet than she cares to count and she lost more babies than she will ever talk about without bursting into tears. Needless death from horrible diseases that could so easily have been avoided if people would just keep their animals inside. Feline leukemia, Feline Infectious Virus and Pan Lu ( similar to distemper ) has absolutely no cure and its effects are devastating to innocent animals. Seeing them suffer was more than she could bear and than having to make the decision to let them go was also more than she wanted to deal with it. But, it is all part of working in this strange world of animals. She will never get used to saying good bye to them.

2003 rolled around and the early part of the year seemed to be surrounded by this strange shadow. Spring came and her Mother became very ill. June saw the decline of her Mother’s health and than without warning she was gone. Her dad had passed in 1990 from diabetes and now with her Mother gone she and her brothers and sisters had to do the very thing they had dreaded for years. They had to clean the house out and get it ready to sell.

Packing box after box of her childhood memories was one of the hardest things she had ever had to do in her lifetime. It took well over one year to empty the big old house and all of its surrounding buildings. After all there were forty years of memories, collections, antiques and more to get out of there. Every morning ReGina has to wake up and face that old empty house now. It is a constant reminder of the life she had growing up and of everything she has lost.

In the summer of 2002 Tommy was diagnosed with COPD with Chronic Bronchitis. (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) This is a horrible lung disease that literally robs its victims of the ability to perform even the simplest of tasks. It eventually drains the body of energy and the ability to make even moderately fast paced movements.

Every year from October to March Tommy suffers from all of the effects of this disease. He gets bronchitis so bad that he cannot breathe properly. His coughing spells last from two to four minutes leaving him worn out, short of breath and having pains in his upper chest.

He uses an inhaler, a nebulizer, advair and spireava. He is also prescribed antibiotics and steroids on a ongoing basis during the fall and winter months. He will not get better but we cannot allow him to get worse. He has to live in a controlled environment that does not have varying temperatures, drafts and other air quality issues. He needs to live in a house that has an actual furnace and an air purifier and that has central air conditioning for those extremely hot sticky summer days.

The old house would be fine for someone that did not have a lung disease the could afford to install a furnace but Tommy has a lung disease but he does not have the funds to install a furnace and central air conditioning.

In the last few years Tommy JR. has developed allergies, back and leg problems and has had flu like symptoms more and more. The doctors have no explanation other than environment or that it might be a virus. This sudden change in his health seems to be not so sudden. In looking over journals from the last few years it appears that all three members of the family have developed illnesses and ailments that were not there before and the illnesses that were there seem to be getting worse.

1) ReGina has RA in her back. She cannot lift any heavy items and cannot lift boxes or bags over twenty pounds without ending up in extreme pain or completely bent over from a locked up lower back.

2) ReGina’s old spinal injury from a car wreck some years back is acting up more and more. She often finds herself unable to walk for days at a time.

3) ReGina is slowly beginning to lose the feeling in her left foot.

1) Tommy has developed more issues with his breathing.

2) Tommy’spells with bronchitis has worsened.

3) Tommy’s breathing condition has worsened.

1) Tommy JR. has developed allergies he has never had before.

2) He has developed lower back and upper leg pains.

3) He suffers from flu like symptoms two to three times per year.

There have been visitors to the home to survey the conditions and to research for possible reasons for these sudden health changes. Their findings add up to a hefty total….

1) Too many times Tommy, Tommy JR and ReGina can be found moving heavy items over and over again because of a lack of space and the fact that more donated items will be forth coming.

2) ReGina and Tommy JR. spend countless hours cleaning, scrubbing and working with all types of cleaning supplies.

3) The house has two window unit heat pumps that only re-circulate air. Their purpose only serves to take some of the chill off of the old house that it is working in. Some days in winter it is too cold in there to perform even daily activities properly. For persons with RA this is a devastating blow to delicate muscles and tissues. Extremely cold temps can worsen the condition of the victim suffering with the illness. For persons with lung diseases it can worsen the condition to the point of needing additional breathing aids.

4) In the summer countless hours are spent outside mowing, weed eating, moving things around keeping things clean and making things ready for perspective buyers.

5) When the animals were there countless hours were spent cleaning, feeding, watering, moving heavy boxes of litter and bags of food, Scrubbing and steam cleaning floors and mopping and sweeping. Carrying heavy bags of trash and relocating donated care items.

As time went on they finally realized that what they have is not working. Not physically, not space wise, not health wise and certainly not business wise. To finish the remodeling that they had started is simply pointless now. No funds exist to create a budget for remodeling and their heart is no longer in it. With ReGina’s mother gone they feel that moving on would be the best for themselves, the animals and the organization.

ReGina has agreed to try to auction off the two houses and will use a portion of the equity to buy her next home and some will be used for the facility its self.

As the Executive Board of this organization we have decided that this family needs help. We are asking that everyone that visits this site make a donation. Any size or amount is acceptable. We know that moving will not cure all of the health issues that this family is facing but what the experts tell us is that it will greatly improve them.

More space would mean less double and triple handing of donated items so that would take care of lower back pain and other back issues as well as the leg pain that Tommy Jr is now experiencing.

Moving into a house with one set temperature all over the house will greatly improve the air quality for both Tommy and Tommy JR. This means less bouts with bronchitis, less chest pain and hopefully more energy.

So many positive things could come from the sale of the houses and a move for the Edmondson Family and a possible continuing future for Whiskers and Tails.

Please, take a moment to offer some help. Pass this around to friends, family and co-workers. We all have a chance to help one family that has truly made a difference.

Pictures of ReGina's Mother, Dad and her Brother along with pictures of ReGina, her son and more.

ReGina has been so fortunate to have a husband that loves animals and supports her dreams and her humane efforts. Her son has grown up with animals and cannot imagine life without them.

Paw Note:

All information and photos are used with permission of the family.

Thank – You from the bottom of our hearts.

The Executive and Advisory Board of Whiskers and Tails.

Donald and Sandra Fuller & Audrey Bowman