How This Kitten Rescue Volunteer Found Her Passion

Robyn Coquelle has taken the past year off work, and for two to three days a week, she has spent a good part of that time as a volunteer on the medical team at the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association (VOKRA).

For six years, Robyn worked as a safety consultant doing building inspections, a career that she wasn’t passionate about. Robyn decided to take the leap, quit her job, and figure out what type of career she wanted for herself.

“I’ve always had an interest in veterinary medicine. I wasn’t sure if it was something I could do as work, as a job, if I can emotionally handle it. When I started volunteering, it was to see how it goes, I had no plans to quit my job yet, I was just looking to see if it was something I could do, and it ended up being the only thing I wanted to do.”

Being on the medical team, Robyn gives the cats medications, vaccinations, deworming, fluids, and monitors cats that aren’t doing too well. “It’s not for everyone you know, to have to give a cat a needle while it’s yelling at you, it’s not for everyone. Not everyone can stomach looking at worms in fecal matter … but as you’re doing it more and more, it just became so much more important to me than anything else.”

Volunteering at VOKRA has been a huge drive for Robyn, and has been pivotal in her realization for working in the veterinary sciences. She happily started a vet technician program in September.

“I fell in love with doing all the medical stuff that I do at VOKRA, I wanted to learn more, I want to do more species, I want to do more medical techniques specializing in something.”

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