From south Texas comes the incredible story of how a TikTok content creator channeled his channel for good—rescuing a cat and a cat shelter by inspiring thousands in donations.
Broken by Victoria Lopez at My San Antonio, the story is a reminder of social media’s stunning potential to do good if it can just manage to capture enough people’s fleeting attention.
Spencer is the brains and motor behind the SB Mowing TikTok and YouTube channels, which document his hobby of finding people who can’t mow their lawns and doing it for them. With a combined following of 15 million people, it’s a great showing that kindness pays.
In Corpus Christi, Spencer was fighting back a terribly overgrown yard when he found a little tabby cat with puncture marks from a fight with a dog or another cat, which to Spencer’s mind seemed infected.
Spencer called rescue centers in the area to see if anyone would help the cat, who would later be named Esbee, and only one reached out: Edgar and Ivy’s Cat Sanctuary and Rescue.
Edgar and Ivy is run by Director Anissa Beal, who was falling into a growing financial pit attempting to fund the cat rescue center. She had vowed to call it quits at year’s end if she couldn’t manage to turn things around.
“I’ve never seen so much passion put into helping people and helping animals,” Spencer wrote, who gave them all the cash he had on hand as a thank-you for saving the animal when no one else would.
He explained to Beal he had a large social media following and that he would set up a GoFundMe to try to help them better fund operations; Beal thought little of the gesture.
But in a matter of days, the fundraiser shot up to $190,000 in private donations, catapulting Edgar and Ivy’s Cat Rescue Mission out of debt.
Then, in the days that followed, some of the other followers of SB Mowing who had decided to pay for supplies had their contributions recognized: when four truckloads of orders showed up at Edgar and Ivy’s front door.
“He saved us,” Beal told My San Antonio, referring to Spencer. “I kept praying that I’d get some sort of a sign if I should continue because I told myself if I couldn’t make it this year, I was going to end it. I was not going to continue this rescue.”
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Beal decided to dedicate the mission’s new building to Spencer, who was given the opportunity to name it: The SB Mowing Wellness and Recovery Center (for cats). Esbee, who has received dozens of offers for adoption, is right at home.
“Esbee, no doubt would have—with the wounds he had—would have died within the next 48 hours from sepsis,” Beal said, adding that she would only accept in-person adoption offers from genuinely interested parties and “not just while he was in his 15 minutes of fame.”
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Since this incredible act of charitable giving and compassion, Edgar and Ivy’s Mission has rescued 700 cats.
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