Being in charge of a small cat rescue is very challenging. From fund-raising, advertising, vet care, cat care, finding foster homes and a whole host of other responsibilities, it’s harder when you’re on your own. It’s also more difficult getting public support, often because small rescues aren’t registered charities or incorporated entities. The public often determines who they want to support based on how “legitimate” rescues are. So, what makes a rescue “legitimate?” While it is good practice to investigate rescues before donating hard-earned money, it’s going to get a lot more difficult to discern who qualifies. The use of AI to generate images, posts and text is obfuscating an already difficult task.

I read, and listen to, a lot of news throughout my day, both from traditional media outlets and independent media sources. Deciding which articles to read is based on who is writing them, who the reporter works for and who owns the media outlet. I choose articles written by independent reporters, who have had connections to traditional media outlets, or are well-known for their factual, unbiased writing.

But a lot of people are now getting their news from social media. Younger generations are, often, on social media for everything they want to know. With AI firmly entrenched in most, if not all, social media platforms and search engines, how are we to know what’s real and what isn’t? AI learns and makes choices on its own. It provides you with a response in milliseconds from information it can access. But what if AI’s information pool is skewed? What if the repository of intelligence it has access to is biased? What kind of information are you going to get? Can you trust it? Is it fake?

Rescues are at the mercy of AI’s dark side. We’re already seeing a lot of fake articles, fake art, fake ads and fake videos. How long before the rescues asking for your support are fake, too? And how are people going to determine whether a rescue they want to support actually exists? The feature photo of the firefighter with the orange cat for this blog post is AI-generated. It was free from an AI photo service. There’s nothing to prevent anyone from creating, and using, these photos as part of a fake rescue – and they’re convincing.

“Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see” is an old proverb that is more than relevant today. At this point, I don’t even know if you can believe half of what you see. Maybe it’s more like one-quarter what you see.

For this blog post, I deliberately scanned my BlueSky Social “Discover” feed to see what would come up. Because I have my settings set to cats and rescues, those are the posts I mainly get. But in the feed were also people who said they were from Gaza, asking for financial and emotional support. As someone sitting in Canada, there was no way I could decide if those people were actually Gazans asking for help.

Technology that was supposed to make our lives easier, hasn’t worked out as we had hoped. Sure, it would be easy for me to send money anywhere. Not so easy is deciding if who I’m sending it to actually exists. So, I would imagine if these posts are real, the people on the other side must feel completely desperate and disillusioned. It’s heartbreaking to think that we have no choice but to become a world of skeptics. It’s even more heartbreaking that individuals could be helping in some way, but we can’t because we don’t know who to trust anymore. With so many unscrupulous people taking advantage of tragic situations, donating just isn’t a safe bet.

I am real. The cats I help are real. It’s easy for me to say that. I’ve been doing rescue since 2000 in varying capacities. The shelters I’ve volunteered for had me writing newsletters, cleaning caging, helping raise funds, driving animals to appointments and fostering. I’ve also done a lot of independent rescue and have sometimes helped smaller rescues. Being an advocate for animals at the city, provincial and federal level in different capacities has allowed me to give a voice to animals other than cats. And I’ve also been in the media over the years. But as I write this, I can think of hoaxes that had as much reality to them as my rescue history. Have I proved I exist? That my rescue exists? No.

WLCA has had a social media presence since 2011 and this website was created in 2025. My small, cat-focused organization has been helping people get cats home since 2011 and I’ve been rescuing cats for more than a decade. I have a box full of paid vet invoices, signed adoption agreements, donation receipts and some “Thank You” cards. WLCA has a bank account and a great relationship with our vet clinic. Maybe I’m closer to being able to prove I’m real now.

I can post all the photos I want, write all the heartbreaking stories I want, talk about all the success stories and complain about the shortfall for cat care, but that’s not proof enough. Anyone can do that. You can get AI to create photos and text for social media. Inventing invoices on letterhead is also pretty easy. Holding an auction isn’t out of the realm of a fraudulent act, either.

To prove WLCA is an actual rescue, you have to consider the totality of the evidence. Could you check with our vet to see if WLCA is a client? Would they verify I come in with cats for vet care? Has anyone else met me in my capacity as a rescuer? Is there anyone else in rescue who can corroborate WLCA’s work? Did I have to sign documents to get a bank account? Are WLCA bank account transactions available to the public on request? All the answers to these questions are a “yes.” And I think this is what it’s going to come down to for the general public.

The best way to determine if the rescue you want to support is real, AI, or a fraudulent hoax, is to think critically and do your legwork. Yes, there are institutions and organizations that have been around for decades – tried and true. However, those are also usually the most funded. Without independent rescues, animals that aren’t easily adoptable or have ongoing health conditions can fall through the cracks of larger organizations. It’s ironic many of these types of cats stand a better chance with smaller rescues even if they have a fraction of the funding of larger rescues. The reason? The cats are not a number. Rescuers get to know them, personally. They care about every single one of them as if they were their own and they work hard to make sure they go to the RIGHT home, not just any home. That’s worth taking the extra time to do your research.