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About The Oglethorpe echo. (Crawford, Ga.) 1874-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 9, 2025)
Thursday, October 9, 2025 THE OGLETHORPE Echo Page 7 - : is 1.2. MOLLY MOORE/THE OGLETHORPE ECHO Doug Griffin stands in front of tents on his property on Craw- ford-Smithonia Road. Griffin and his wife Carolyn will host Field of Worship this weekend. Local ministry to host worship services in tents Shelter helps decrease feral cat population By Molly Moore The Oglethorpe Echo Upper Room Athens is provid ing a fresh approach to worship in Oglethorpe County this weekend. This Friday through Sunday, Up per Room Athens will host Field of Worship, a three-day tent gather ing at Doug and Carolyn Griffin’s house in Oglethorpe County, offer ing a glimpse of what faith looks like when lived boldly. “We’re trying to get people to ex perience the reality of God,” said Doug Griffin, who co-founded, with Carolyn, the ministry. Carolyn described the ministry’s beginning as a “Book of Acts expe rience” that she and Doug shared in 1979, a year marked by deep com munity, spiritual healing and sup port. “We had healings. There was a relationship,” she said. “And it was such a beautiful thing, and we just thought that that's what church life was all about. We found out, no, that's not exactly the way it is at all.” That experience planted a vision to cultivate a similar atmosphere in Oglethorpe County, and in 2015, the Griffins founded Upper Room Ath ens. Their gatherings, which host up to 25 members, are often held in participants’ homes and prior itize worship, prayer and fellow ship, with the Holy Spirit guiding the meeting’s flow, rather than an agenda. “We truly want to bring heaven to Earth in Oglethorpe County,” Car olyn said. The tent gathering will be de signed differently. FIELD OF WORSHIP Upper Room Athens will host the Field of Worship event from 4-10 p.m. Oct. 10-12 at 1085 Craw- ford-Smithonia Road in Crawford. People are en couraged to bring snacks, blankets and lawn chairs. There will be no formal preach ing or offerings; instead, attendees are invited to worship, and if they choose, participate in baptism and communion, all in an effort to en counter God. The event was made possible by the generosity of volunteers, who donated pop-up tents and supplies. “We’d already been offered a trough by a local food store for bap tism, and then a tent was provided; somebody bought and donated it,” Doug said. “Somebody said, ‘You could use our sound system,’ and then the signs were donated to us.” The Griffins describe their ap proach as “faith in action.” By cre ating a space of openness and par ticipation, Upper Room Athens aims for attendees to leave with the experience that inspires real-life change. Everybody is invited. “We are hoping the people that come will see that God will come and meet with them, because he loves them so much, and that this walk here on Earth is mostly about a personal relationship with him,” Carolyn said. By Hannah Freeman The Oglethorpe Echo Each year, Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter takes in about 2,000 animals — most of them cats. With feral cat populations an ongoing is sue, the shelter has turned to a pro cess called trap-neuter-return (TNR) to stem the tide. In 2024, the shelter performed about 190 TNR procedures on feral cats. This year, it has completed 250. “There are a lot of feral cats in Oglethorpe,” said Juli Huth, execu tive director of MOAS. “It is a lot of farmland, so it is hard to say how many feral cats we actually have in that county until they become a nui sance and people want them gone.” Huth said cat colonies are espe cially prevalent in Lexington, Craw ford and the area surrounding Wat son Mill Bridge State Park. The shelter tracks hotspots around Mad ison and Oglethorpe counties, but data is limited to intakes. One reason the feral cat popula tion has exploded is due to the quick rate of feline reproduction, which is typically around two months. Access to food is another contrib uting factor. “When you have animals that you’re feeding, if they show up on your property and you’re feeding them, we start looking at ownership laws,” Huth said. “But if they’re consistently around and you’re car ing for them, the most responsible thing to do is to get them fixed.” At Oglethorpe Animal Clinic in Crawford, veterinary assistant Mad ison Mathews agrees the best way to reduce the number of feral cats is by having them spayed or neutered. “The biggest issue that we proba bly face nowadays with cats is a lot of people just release them without having been spayed or neutered,” Mathews said. “My biggest sugges tion is always trap and release and doing a spay or neuter on the cat as well, if they’re going to be out and about in the wild.” While most animal shelters like MOAS offer free or discounted spay-and-neuter procedures for fe- NewsMatch ECHOING YOUR DONATIONS Starting November 1, 2025 through December 31, 2025, this year — NewsMatch will double your one-time gift, all up to $1,000. This means The Oglethorpe Echo can gain needed funds to support our office, journalists, print costs, and digital products. Donate up to $1,000 during the months of November and December 2025. HANNAH FREEMAN/THE OGLETHORPE ECHO An adoptable house cat plays outside on the "catio" at Madison Oglethorpe Animal Shelter in Danielsville. MOAS uses TNR proce dures to limit the feral cat population in Madison and Oglethorpe counties so those cats don't end up in the shelter. ral cats, Oglethorpe Animal Clin ic does not. However, the clinic can perform surgeries on feral cats at standard costs. Huth said MOAS can perform TNR procedures for free due to grants from nonprofit sponsors like Fix Georgia Pets and its Spay it Forward program. Still, the process is a community effort. “If you have the money to pay for the surgery, we have discount ed prices for feral cats,” Huth said. “Because we so desperately want those cats to be fixed so that they’re not reproducing and becoming a problem that then comes here.” As part of the TNR program, MOAS rents humane cat traps for a $50 refundable deposit and encour ages residents to use these traps to capture feral cats. Once trapped, residents can schedule an appoint ment to have the cats spayed or neu tered at the shelter. The most difficult part of the pro cess is catching the cats. “Our surgery schedule is pretty booked out a lot of time, but we try to work with people who are trying to do their part so that those animals don’t wind up here,” Huth said. “It’s a super simple process. The hardest part is actually trapping the animals.” After being altered, cats receive a rabies vaccine and are ear-tipped to indicate they’ve been treated. The cats are then sent home with the resident who brought them. Huth recommends holding the cats for at least 24 hours to ensure they fully recover before being returned to their colonies. While most feral cats aren’t suit able as house pets, the shelter al lows residents to adopt treated fe- rals for free. “We’re not going to charge an adoption fee because we want them to be able to get out,” Huth said. “There’s farmlands all around, so if somebody has an issue at their barn, they can come down and get some cats. All they have to do is promise to us that they’re going to take care of them.” Research from the National Insti tute of Health shows high-intensity TNR methods result in fewer deaths among feral cats, in addition to few er births. Huth also said fixed feral cats are less destructive. “The biggest thing that we’re ad vocating for is when you see one (cat), catch that one, get it fixed and then you don’t have 10 in a year,” Huth said. “If we can just stop that one on that property when it shows up, it becomes a lot less of an issue later.” CAKE BINGO FUNDRAISER Quiet Oaks Health Care Thursday, Nov. 13, 2025 at 6:30 PM Need cake donations as well as players to win the cakes Cards are $5 each or 5 for $20 All donated cakes must be delivered to the facility by the morning of November 12. Proceeds go to the Resident Fund. Questions? Call Quiet Oaks at 706-743-5452 THE OGLETHORPE ECHO W As a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News, we are joining a movement of nonprofit newsrooms to raise money that a group of organizations will match, in order to continue to provide strong local journalism for Oglethorpe County. Your $100 Donation Becomes $200! 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