What began as yard sale fundraisers at Marja Ames’ Mattituck home has raised $220,000 for local animal shelters since 2023.
Now, Betty’s Boutique is preparing to move into a permanent storefront (7785 Main Road, Mattituck), opening a new chapter in a community-driven effort to support animals in need.
Ames initially planned a single sale to benefit the North Fork Animal Welfare League. After issuing a call for donations in January 2023, she quickly realized the response would require more than one event. The first five sales that year raised about $46,000.
“As the events happened and people would come to shop, and they saw the work that we put into our events, the donations got better,” Ames says. “People started donating. Any time a new person would come to one of the events, they would almost immediately come back a few weeks later with donations of their own. Through word of mouth, through people coming to the events, either by hearing about it online or through the shelter or just driving by and seeing the massive amount of cars, they would stop by, and it just snowballed from there.”
The story behind the boutique began years earlier, with Ames’ work rescuing cats.
After moving to the North Fork with her husband, David, about 20 years ago, Ames continued the animal-rescue work they had begun in New York City. Together, they established Ames Feline Adoption & Rescue, which helped care for stray and feral cats and collaborated with the North Fork Animal Welfare League on spay-and-neuter efforts.
The boutique’s name honors Betty, a one-eyed rescue cat the couple adopted as a kitten after a shelter found her in the rubble after 9/11. Betty lived with them for about 13 years.
The day after Betty died, Ames was preparing a room in their home for two feral cats awaiting veterinary appointments. She named the space Betty’s Place. For the next 12 years, it served as part of the couple’s cat-rescue efforts, housing cats recovering from surgery and helping them decide whether cats could be adopted or needed to return to their colonies. When Ames later began organizing fundraising sales, Betty’s Boutique was a natural extension of that name.
Ames also credits her late mother, Hilkka Törrönen, with shaping the care and attention given to the merchandise. Donated clothing and household goods are sorted, washed, repaired and displayed before being offered for sale.
“It’s an organically grown community effort to save the animals, and that gave my mom such joy,” Ames says. “ She is the reason that we make it nice like this.”
Items that can’t be sold are often donated to other organizations instead of being discarded, keeping them out of landfills.
As donations filled the house, crowds grew and parking along Main Road became increasingly difficult, Ames and her husband bought the building for the next phase. The planned opening is Oct. 24.
The store is expected to operate Thursday through Sunday, with hours tentatively set from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. All proceeds benefit North Fork Animal Welfare League.
Looking ahead, Ames hopes the building can eventually accommodate a veterinary clinic for shelter animals, particularly those needing spaying and neutering. Establishing the clinic would require finding a licensed veterinarian willing to help develop the project.
For now, the focus is on opening the doors, welcoming shoppers and continuing the fundraising work that began in a family home. What started with donations, volunteers and a commitment to animal welfare has grown into a lasting community effort, with Betty’s memory at its heart.
