Beginnings

I can’t remember when my affection for animals began. There’s a vintage photo of me in cuffed jeans with suspenders and Buster Brown shoes. I am holding a toy cat. Does that mean I liked cats? Perhaps I clung obsessively to any toy they gave me. It was the 40’s after all. 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 Adina and I walked alone to her house and were considered missing for a while. I must have been about three years old. I don’t think I had ever actually seen a real cat yet.

My first memory of a failed animal rescue happened on Greely Street. We heard a dog yelping. The neighbor two houses away was hitting his dog with something. A belt? A playmate 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 at what his crime had been. I was horrified and sad.

But my sadness became anger. 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 when people had party lines and operators assisted callers. I said something like, “A man is whipping his dog.” The operator told me not to play with the phone. No help ever came for that dog. I felt powerless. I was four years old.

In the 80’s, I was married to a Professional Jerkaholic (PJ), now deceased. He always said we couldn’t have pets. But his friends shamed him into getting our daughter a puppy after her “Santa, Please Bring Me a Dog” drawing won 3rd place in a local paper. We drove to see a backyard breeder’s Springer Spaniels, but the PJ told us to stay in the car. He selected 2 puppies and that’s how we got Cinnamon. (PJ sold her sister.) One night, PJ punched our dog in the face with his fist because she growled at his shadow in the dark. Cinnamon was so upset the next morning that she tucked her tail and cowered. I was afraid to leave her, and when I returned from work, she had pooped all over the house. I knew that was fear. PJ would repeatedly use Cinnamon to punish me. One day, he announced that he had taken her to the pound. (He found poop on the backyard lawn, and this was our punishment.) I drove to the Castaic shelter and searched all the enclosures. But PJ had accomplices. The Weston’s had hidden Cinnamon in their garage. Another time, PJ unlocked the backyard gate allowing Cinnamon to escape overnight. I searched for hours driving slowly up and down streets and was so relieved to find her napping on someone’s porch. She was so happy to see me. I tried to give her a good life, to protect her, but it was so difficult. Her fear became mine. So when PJ offered Cinnamon to my sister’s friend Joe, I was heartbroken but went along with it. She was a sweet, sensitive dog that loved to run with me on the paseo. She needed a good home. Deserved one. But I could not provide it. Not a safe one. Years, perhaps months later, my dad said 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 and a new homeowner, living solo with two cats, Charity and Riot. TigerLily Cat Rescue welcomed me as a new member, filling their only opening: Chief Scooper Extraordinaire at The Cat Doctor’s clinic. (Yes, I made up that title.) Dr. Tracy invited Tigerlily to keep cats in her storage room for adoption by her clients. Volunteers cleaned the cages. My gig was every Monday night, 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. That is how the much-adored shelter director, Ed Boks, began. Cleaning shelter cages in 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. 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 have fostered cats for Kitten Rescue. It means getting them fixed, vaccinated, microchipped, dewormed and treated for ear mites, and then keeping them diarrhea, fever and sneeze-free so you can take them to adoption events. This balancing act was both rewarding and exhausting. The downside for me was always dealing with the public. Children would tease the shy cats until they hissed and lunged at them. Women sought kittens for their toddlers to be played with like toys that happened to breathe. Couples failed to see why cats could not stay outdoors in coyoteville, while their kids told me about finding “only the bloody collar” of their last cat. You get the idea. I still hear from a few of the wonderful adopters (those that made the cut) who send me photos of my foster cats, and I adore that. (OK because I believe in transparency, I will admit that I sometimes track them down and ask for Proof of Life.) I want reassurance 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 day 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 words 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 tossed plates of cat food, and 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 a cat is captured, he cries out for the others. It breaks your heart.

I trapped, fixed and returned countless cats. There is little doubt that preventing pregnancies improved their lives. I do not know what haunted me the most. Encountering so much cruelty or observing uncompassionate humans 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.

Karn Myers, founder of FixNation, helped me immensely when I began. She let me take my trapped feral cats to her vets 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

The way I help cats is by sponsoring financially. To foster and have more cats in my home is risky. I promised myself and my furry family that I would never have more carriers than would fit comfortably 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 month rather than a lifetime. I call it hands-off rescue, and I have saved many cats from death with $50 to $100 pledges. The non-profits use the money for vet and shelter fees, and then find homes, barns, or ranches for the cats. It is fulfilling, important and much needed. We are the Lancaster Team Supreme. I write about the cats we save on my blog.