Beginnings

I can’t remember when my affection for animals began. There’s a vintage photo of me in stiff, cuffed jeans with suspenders and Buster Brown shoes. I am holding a toy cat. Does that mean I always liked cats? Perhaps I clung obsessively to every toy. I think we lived on Martin Street then. I do recall eating ants after my aunt Adina, just a few years older, suggested it. (They were hot!) Prolly the same year she and I walked alone to her house and were considered missing. I must have been about three years old. I don’t think I had actually seen a real cat yet.

But my first memory of a failed animal rescue happened on Greely Street. We heard yelping. The man two houses away was hitting his dog. A playmate (Hilda? Cookie?) and I watched the drama unfold though a chain-link fence, hunkering down, a little bit fearful. The skinny dog had sores on its body, possibly from other beatings and appeared unkept. It has been 70 years, but I can see it clearly. The grayish black dog running in circles. The man yelling. Had the dog been barking or had it made a mess in that junky yard? We could only guess what the dog’s crime had been. I was horrified and sad.

But my sadness turned into action. We hurried to my house to get help. Finding no adults, I dialed zero on our phone. The operator asked, “What number please?” (It was the 50’s; there were shared party lines and operators assisted callers.) I said something like, “A man is whipping his dog.” The operator asked us not to play with the phone. No help ever came for that dog. We felt powerless. I was four years old.

In the 80’s, I was married to a Professional Jerkaholic (PJ), now deceased. He said we couldn’t have pets. But his friends shamed him into getting a dog after our daughter entered the city’s “Santa, Please Bring Me a Dog” contest. We drove to a breeder to see Springer Spaniel puppies. The PJ had us stay in the car while he bought a puppy we called Cinnamon. But it didn’t work out. PJ was abusive. Cinnamon was unhappy. Then PJ said he took Cinnamon to the Castaic shelter, but she was actually hidden in the Weston’s garage. There were other incidents. Cinn was a sweet, sensitive dog that loved to run with me on the paseo. She deserved a good home. I could not provide one. So she was rehomed to a nice kid named Joe Torres in San Diego. Years, perhaps months later, my dad mentioned Cinnamon was hit by a car. I pretended not to hear it. Pushed the thought from my mind. But I had failed another animal.

Starting Over

When the rescue bug hit, it was 2002. I was happily divorced, a new homeowner, and living solo with two cats, Charity and Riot. TigerLily Cat Rescue welcomed me as a new member, filling a coveted position: Chief Scooper Extraordinaire at The Cat Doctor’s clinic in Newhall (Yes, I made up that title). Dr. Tracy allowed Tigerlily to keep 6-7 cats in her storage room for adoption by her clients. Volunteers cleaned the cages. My gig was Monday nights, and I looked forward to those 3 hours. The storage room was small with no AC and large table fans. Some evenings, the bouquet of Quat and fresh poop was overwhelming. But I was in great company. This is how the much-adored shelter director, Ed Boks, began. Cleaning shelter cages in Maricopa, Arizona. And I was excited to start. Scooping, disinfecting cages, changing hammock towels and loving on cats was about to make my life more meaningful. (I ended up adopting Yogi who lived in that storage room.) In time, I would join TigerLily’s weekend adoption team guided by Bonnie Breton, founder, start fostering cats, and author their monthly newsletter. I needed cat rescue more than it needed me. It began to feed my soul.

Rescue

I also fostered cats for Kitten Rescue. It required getting them fixed, fully vaccinated, microchipped, dewormed, treated for ear mites, and tested for FIV/FeLV. Next was keeping them diarrhea, fever and sneeze-free in your own home so you could take them to frequent adoption events. With a full-time job, this balancing act was both rewarding and exhausting. The downside for me was always dealing with the public. At adoptions, children would sometimes tease the shy cats until they hissed and lunged at them. Some pulled cats from cages without asking. Families wanted kittens for their toddlers to be played with like toys that happened to breathe. Many people disagreed with our indoor-only policy, while their kids told me about finding “only the bloody collar” of their last cat. I still hear from a few of the wonderful adopters who send me photos of my foster cats, and I adore that. (I will admit that I sometimes track them down and ask for Proof of Life.) I want to know that their lives together continue to be good. As for rescues, KR is the best one for carefully planned and organized systems and protocols. It’s run by geniuses. 🙂

Feral Cats

I remember clearly the morning I knew I needed to help ferals. I was commuting to work, and a Phil Collins song was on the radio. The one that goes, “Oh, think twice, cause it’s another day for you and me in paradise…Sir, can you help me? It’s cold and I’ve nowhere to sleep.” I connected those lyrics to the dead cats I was avoiding on Slauson, the ones that did not survive a night of searching for food. I soon graduated from a TNR workshop taught by Dona Baker (founder of Feral Cat Caretakers Coalition) and started to trap cats. Trapping was harder for me than fostering. Lonelier. Scarier. I would sit in my Tacoma in the dark monitoring my traps, while needing to pee so badly I could not move. I was accosted by cat-loathing strangers who questioned my presence and tossed plates of cat food. I witnessed the suffering and abuse up close. But I saw something else, something most do not experience. Feral cats form bonds, family. They wait for a roving dad to show up at midnight, and each kitten salutes him with a quivering tail. Mothers will physically block kittens from getting near traps primed with tuna. And when the trap door slams shut, the panicked feral cat cries out for the others. It breaks your heart. You want to release them. But you don’t.

I trapped, fixed and returned countless cats on the mean streets of Los Angeles. There is little doubt that preventing unwanted litters improved their lives. I do not know what haunted me the most. Encountering so much suffering or observing uncompassionate people who were blind to it. To truly change the lives of feral cats, you must influence the hearts of people. That much I know is true. Cats are sensitive, sentient beings. I will never understand those who cannot see that. It continues to be my mission to enlighten them.

Karn Myers, co-founder of FixNation, helped me immensely when I began. She let me take my trapped feral cats to her vets to be fixed and covered most of the costs. If you are lucky, rescue angels like Dona and Karn will appear just in time as if they were sent to you. I thank the cat gods for them.

Today

I help to rescue cats as a financial sponsor. To foster and have cats in my home is risky. I promised myself I would never have more cats in carriers than would fit in my car for a wildfire evacuation. It is a promise I have kept. Sponsoring does not mean I care less. It means I fall in love with a cat for a week rather than a lifetime. I call it hands-off rescue, and I have saved many cats from death with $100 (or more) pledges. The non-profit rescues use the money for vet and shelter fees and then find homes (or ranches) for the cats. Sponsoring is fulfilling, important and much needed. I affectionately call us the Lancaster Team Supreme. 😎