Meet Sawyer Tinsley, a 16-year-old Florida teen who used yard flamingos to raise $25K for rescue pets after fostering a kitten saved her from loneliness

School life is different from what most movies show. While some get to cruise through it in their main character era, others have to suffer through deep loneliness where they struggle to find community and support. For Sawyer Tinsley, going to school was overwhelming and lonely. Her first year of middle school was not going well since most of her old friends had shifted to a different school district in Jupiter, Florida. Moreover, due to COVID-19, it was difficult to make new friends with faces behind masks. “You would have to be six feet away, you couldn’t really speak, you had masks on, you couldn’t really see people. So, it started there when I was just like … this is hard, like, this is hard to do school in these conditions,” she said to WBPF News. “It was the best thing for helping me transition during COVID time when it was really hard.”Every day she would rush to her home from school and head straight to her room, sad and frustrated. But one day, when she opened her bedroom door, her mood instantly lifted because waiting there was her latest foster kitten from Palm Beach Purrs. Its loud purring and affectionate nature made her feel less alone and soon she had an idea.

Finding love in kittens

Ever since she was little, Sawyer had wanted a cat. But her family already had three dogs and one of them didn’t like cats. When Sawyer was 10, her parents learned about fostering kittens until they were ready for neutering and adoption. “We can give it a try so long as you keep the kitten in your room,” they said.Sawyer loved every one of her foster kittens. Not only did the kitten find a forever home, but she also got another furry feline to help ease her loneliness during a strange school year.One afternoon, something clicked. Sawyer realised that many of her old friends had also expressed their own feelings of isolation. “Hugging a kitten makes me feel so relaxed and less lonely. Maybe it would help my friends, too,” she thought. Thus, to help other middle school girls facing similar challenges, she created a club called ‘PAUSE’, inviting them to her home to spend time with foster kittens.As soon as some restrictions lifted, Sawyer called a few friends over to play with the kittens. “Would you like to come over and play with a kitten?” she asked and each one of them replied with an enthusiastic yes.As the group of teenagers socialised with the young kittens, they realised that they felt great. “Can we do it again tomorrow?” they asked. Soon, they were bringing more friends and classmates over, eager to make connections.“And then they just come and we put them downstairs and then they can just run around. The kids play with them and talk about their, like, stressors (they) have been going through in middle school, cause that’s when it starts to like, amp up for elementary school,” Sawyer explained.Florida Atlantic University student Chloee Wilkerson, who was taking a break from studying at PetSmart in Palm Beach Gardens, where the foster kittens are located, shared her experience. “It’s my favourite coping mechanism. I’ll wake up at night to do it, but this is the least consequential one to do,” Wilkerson said.

Helping the animals

Now 16, Sawyer has fostered nearly 300 kittens. She and her friends, new and old, have come up with a very creative way to raise money for local animal shelters by launching Flamingo Flocking, an annual fundraiser. Every August evening, Sawyer and a few volunteers quietly “flock” a neighbour’s yard, planting 15 bright pink plastic flamingos alongside a sign that reads, ‘If you donate to help rescue animals, tomorrow you can tell us where to “flock” them next’. Instead of getting annoyed, neighbours have come to love the playful tradition and often eagerly nominate loved ones for a popping pink surprise.Sawyer also sponsors an annual Flamingo 5K run and to date has raised more than $25,000 for local no-kill shelters. “Petting a sweet kitten is so calming,” she said to Woman’s World. “If everyone could do it, I think the world would be a thousand times happier.”In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in sports psychology. “Hopefully I am in a successful career and have lots of cats. I gotta have cats and dogs. I love animals,” she said.