Dear Editor,
My name is Jake and you’ve probably never met me or even heard of my plight. I am also willing to bet my next meal that many of you have never been to where my friends and I live.
The place I’m currently staying at with Barney, Gertrude, Shorty, and about 180 others isn’t a four-star luxury hotel. It is an older modest single-story facility.
It can be a bit cramped; sometimes there are more than four of us living in the same room at any given period of time. Some of my friends also live in an area with about 50 others. But I want to tell you we don’t complain because we’d rather be living here than defending ourselves on the streets of Mohave County and not knowing where our next meal is coming from. Yes, we all have a common unbreakable bond, and we affectingly call the place where we live our “group home.”
There are more group homes in Mohave County, and they are like a cornucopia abundantly full of unwanted and neglected residents of different nationalities. Gertrude’s relatives are originally from Europe, Barney is from South America and, of course, Shorty has no clue about his heritage. Some of Shorty’s friends have referred to him as the mutt in the next room.
Our group home isn’t the only one around. There are others in the surrounding area. As a matter of fact, we live in Golden Valley; there’s a couple in Kingman and, of course, others are located in Lake Havasu City and the outlying areas of Mohave County.
You probably wonder why so many of us live in such a small place. Well, the truth is most of us were neglected and abandoned, and some of my friends were even abused. Some of us ran away from our original homes because we felt our family members didn’t pay much attention to us. Many times, we were left outside to fend for ourselves on the streets and, sometimes, we didn’t even know where our next meal might come from.
During the monsoon season, it was almost unbearable for my friends and relatives who were living in various group homes. The older evaporative coolers on the roofs didn’t properly operate and, at times, the temperatures soared into the humid mid-to-high 90s inside our living quarters.
To be continued.
Butch Meriwether
