CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — You may have seen Spencer from SB Mowing. He finds overgrown lawns and properties around the country and cleans them up for free for those who may not be able to do it themselves.
A few years ago, Spencer decided to start documenting the properties he cleaned, making videos and posting them on social media.
Since then, he's grown quite a following, gathering close to 8 million followers on TikTok and nearly 2 million subscribers on YouTube.
While filming himself mowing a lawn in Corpus Christi one week, Spencer came across an injured cat.
"I feel like it was meant to be because I was actually going to mow a different lawn, and I took a wrong turn," Spencer said "I drove right by this one. I'm like, 'Oh! I have to do this one. This one is crazy overgrown.'"
He called multiple shelters and rescues. Edgar and Ivy's Cat Sanctuary was the only place that could help.
Director of Edgar and Ivy’s, Anissa Beal said the cat showed up in rough shape.
“He was holding the cat in a box," Beal said. "I was kind of looking at the cat and the cat's leg was very swollen. The abscess was pretty bad, and he was kind of weak."
Staff at the cat sanctuary cared for the cat who Spencer later named "SB”. Grateful for their work, Spencer decided to start a GoFundMe to help the shelter.
"He said, 'Maybe I can get you $10,000 or something.' And I said, 'That would be life changing,'" Beal said.
It would've been life changing because Beal was on the verge of closing the sanctuary.
“We've been doing this for four years and every week we struggle to make payroll and to give the cats everything that they need,” she said.
Rehabilitating cats is something that Beal been doing for the past 15 years, but Edgar and Ivy's only became a non-profit in 2019.
"I was spending half of my income trying to sustain this," she said. "I kept praying that I'd get some sort of a sign if I should continue, because I told myself if I couldn't make it this year, I was going to end it. I was not going to continue this rescue."
Spencer posted the video to his platforms, linking to the GoFundMe he made. In less than a week, his followers raised $140,000 for the sanctuary. That number continues to grow, but that's not all.
Just a day after the video was posted, four Amazon trucks loaded with donations also showed up to Edgar and Ivy's.
After totaling the donations made on the GoFundMe and those made on the sanctuary's website, the number of donations adds up to close to $180,000.
“It was a miracle, and it makes me emotional to think that so many people could care about us and about this cat and what we're doing,” Beal said. “I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and that it’s not true. This is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
Spencer knew his followers from all around the world could make a difference for the sanctuary, but he said he’s shocked by how much SB and Edgar and Ivy’s mission touched their hearts as much as it touched his.
“I had no idea it would raise that much money,” he said. “Whether it was God, or whether it was just by random chance that put this together, something put this together and it just worked so well."
To thank Spencer for what he was able to do for the sanctuary, Beal let him name a building which will be used to rehabilitate the cats that come into their care.
Rather than naming it after himself, Spencer decided to name it after the people that made the sanctuary's future possible. The building will be named the SB Mowing Community Wellness Center.
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