People who knew Gail Sheffield have a lot to say about the kind, modest woman from Louisiana. But there is nothing modest about her final gift to the Flathead Spay and Neuter Task Force.
Just weeks after Sheffield died on Oct. 4, executive director Mimi Beadles found out the long-time volunteer’s passing wish was to give her home in Many Lakes to the nonprofit animal group. The home along Vicki Lake is worth between $250,000 and $300,000.
“I was blown away, I couldn’t even talk,” Beadles said.
Sheffield was an author, anthropologist, attorney and painter, but if you asked, “she would say she’s a feral cat trapper,” Beadles said.
That’s also how Julia Sims remembers her friend. Sims and Sheffield went to college together in the early 1960s and both eventually ended up in Montana.
Sheffield always loved cats and even started a feral cat consortium when she was in Louisiana. Sims said her friend would often go out in the middle of the night and trap street cats to get them spayed or neutered.
“I was always worried about her being out there,” Sims said. “But that’s what she’d do.”
Sheffield even spent time saving animals after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. That generosity continued when she moved to Montana eight years ago. When she arrived, she began volunteering for the Flathead Spay and Neuter Task Force. The group was started in 1998 and since then has treated more than 27,000 cats and dogs, many at its facility along U.S. Highway 2 near Columbia Falls.
Up until her death, Sheffield could be found working at the facility, where the cats and dogs underwent surgery, before being released a few days later.
“She loved the spay and neuter program and she loved Montana,” Sims said. “She was so unassuming and modest. She was just the salt of the earth.”
Two years ago, Sheffield’s husband died and she began to get her will in order. Sims and her husband were named the executors and soon after Sheffield’s death, they began the process of sorting through their friend’s belongings. Sheffield donated $100,000 to the feral cat consortium in Louisiana and her year-old house to the Flathead group.
“She so strongly believed in the project and she would have never given the house to something she didn’t believe in,” Sims said. “People talk about doing stuff, but she did it.”
Beadles said the house would be formally turned over to the Flathead Spay and Neuter Task Force in the coming days and then put on the market soon after. For more information about the non-profit group, call (406) 892-7387.