the downside

Most people think I have a lot of fun all day long. They couldn't be more wrong. My life isn't cuddling with kittens and happy adoptions. It's making life and death decisions for a lot of animals. Few of my volunteers see the really bad parts. They don't have nightmares every night. And that's the way it should be. This should never have a downside, except that it does. Far too often

We can't help them all. I can't cure fatal diseases, make people spay/neuter or be responsible.

Here's Rory. One of our favorites. It took a long time for us to find the right home for him. We found him the perfect family and knew our special boy finally had the home he deserved.

Today I got an email from his family telling me had just been diagnosed with a fatal disease. He won't be with us much longer. Here's a video we have of him.

Goodbye, Dr. Scott..........

Dr. Scott left us far too early. His death will be felt by more people than I bet he imagined. I'm sure I'll never understand why. I don't feel anger or guilt, simply a lot of sadness.

He is probably one of the best known doctors in the city. Always full of smiles. For as busy as he was, he never seemed to be in a hurry or not have time for whatever I wanted to chat about. He was brilliant as well as down to earth and funny. Whatever pain we endured in his office we still always felt better than before we arrived, simply because his joy and smiles were contagious. He is one of those few people on the earth who are truly irreplaceable.

I see people on the streets going about their daily life. Shopping for groceries, going to baseball practice, chatting on their cell phones. It seems like the world should not be going on as if it is business as usual. It is comforting in a way to know that life does go on, but on the other hand it seems like it should stop, at least for a few moments, as we all recognize our lives have been changed permanently.

Part of me wants to go by his office and demand to speak to him. He'll be there, right? Because he was always there. But I'm afraid they'll confirm what I know happened, and I won't be able to take it.

I'm devastated for his close friend and business partner, Dr. O'Grady, who will forever feel guilt, which is just what Dr. Scott would not have wanted. I feel sorry for the people who would have been his patients, because they didn't get to share in the joy he brought to so many.

I've known him since I was 6 years old, and spent time with him at the gym, at school events, and other occasions outside the office. He loved what I was doing for the animals. He was probably the most encouraging person I know. If ever I thought a happy person existed it would have been him. But I guess we were all wrong about that.

Maybe the problem with being such a giving person is that when you give so much you can't get it all returned to you, until finally you're just empty.

Your loss is felt, Dr. Scott, more than you'll ever know.

My house feral, Taz

I can’t count how many times I heard my parents tell me: When you’re all grown up and you have a place of your own, you can do whatever you want.

I love being able to take in as many cats as I want. For the summer I have relocated myself and my 2 boy cats to our place on the lake. I also have a few shelter cats who are sick.

I also now have my first house feral. I highly recommend it. She is a hurricane Katrina refugee and just too terrified of humans. I can get her to purr if I corner her and start petting her, but I can’t get that close if she has any say in the matter. She meows like a house pet and looks as if she WANTS to be loved, but is just too scared. At 7 months old she is very small and looks much younger. I can’t bring myself to let her go, because since she isn’t truly feral she may not hide from humans, and a well-meaning person might try to trap her, not knowing what happens immediately to untame trapped cats once they are brought to animal control/a humane society.

I generally have my hands full with my own 5 cats and the sick ones from the shelter that I take care of, so it is kind of fun to have a low-maintenance cat around. Right now she’s about 5 feet from me, on the top of the cat stand, grooming herself. This morning I woke up to her playing with my feet in bed, not realizing they were attached to me :).



So if you have no time to care for cats but want to save a life, contact us for a house feral today!!

Once upon a time

Once upon a time, I had a great father. Those days are over but I have a lot of wonderful memories.

He ruled the house and we 4 kids (I’m the oldest) like your typical dictator. On multiple occasions I figured God feared my dad’s temper.

But there was 1 issue that my father never once won an argument on: animals. Didn’t matter if it was baby guppies or a stray cat, he couldn’t win. I remember we once got 4 fish without realizing we would soon have 400. When they had babies we spent hours looking at the tank to make sure we grabbed all of them so they were safe from being eaten by the bigger fish. I was about 10 yrs. old then, and I remember my father storming out of his room at 11:00 at night shouting at my mom to “Get these kids to bed!!” She’d ignore him and we’d ignore him. I think she was smart enough to realize none of us would fall asleep if we thought there were any babies in jeopardy, and that she would pay the price for it in the morning. He woke up at 5am-ish so he was often in bed before we were. This late night battle happened many times before we grew tired of the fish and returned them to the pet store.

When Jandy died he decreed there would be no more cats. I adopted 2 a few months later and they lived with my boyfriend and I. “Grandpa” agreed to take them for 3 weeks while we were travelling, and they ended up staying at his house for 3 years. He’d swear they were “not his responsibility” and that he wasn’t going to be cleaning any litter boxes and that it would be alright with him if they were gone. But a few times I caught him giving them rides up and down the stairs in a laundry basket, saying “Wheeeeeeee Wheeeeeeee” and laughing, and I regularly heard him talking to them.

To this day he never figured out they were responsible for all the mice and chipmunks in the house. Most people say that they never had mice once they had cats. For us it was the other way around. We had a pet door and the cats would bring their “friends” inside with them. I can’t count how many mice and chipmunks and whatevers there were inside. I bought some live traps, but the faster I removed them the faster the cats brought in more. I finally realized we had a “rodent equilibria” at about 4 mice and 3 chipmunks and I accepted it.

I remember the night we found the first of many chipmunks. It was the night Cinders, aka Fatty, got skunked. It was well past 11pm and boy did she reek. I enlisted my brother’s help since we were both living with my father at the time. After we stopped laughing enough to do something, he clomped into the basement for tomato juice. All Kevin could find was some old V-8, and since it was in the basement it was pretty cold. Holding Fatty was a 2-handed job, so I held her and leaned over the sink as Kevin poured cold V-8 all over her. The fact that we were laughing our heads off the whole time didn’t help his aim. By the end of it the cat was terrified and I had tomato juice all the way down to my socks. She ran off and Kevin went back to his computer. I cleaned up the bathroom and changed clothes, then went off to check on the cat.

That was when I heard the “cheeping”. I was sure it was a bird or a bat. It was well past midnight and I was tired and slap-happy. I went back up the stairs to get Kevin again. I put on a bike helmet and grabbed a tennis racquet. He put a pillow case over his head. We searched for 20 minutes and gave up.

The next morning Vega, aka Skinny, came flying past the kitchen right behind a chipmunk. The chipmunk ran into the bathroom and Skinny went skidding on the linoleum. I closed the door and yelled for my dad, who was in the living room reading the newspaper.

Dad! We’ve got a chipmunk in the bathroom!
Thanks for letting me know.
Well, aren’t you going to do something about it?
What do you want me to do about it?
Well, what do you think I want you to do about it???
Why do I have to do anything about it?
Because it’s YOUR JOB!!
Why is it my job?
Because YOU’RE THE DAD.

He finally got up and caught it, but many chipmunks soon followed. They didn’t bother me much though my mother was horrified and my sister swore she was never setting foot in that house again.

The squirrel was a problem. I trapped him in the playroom and opened all the windows and the door. I chased him around in circles but he never ran outside. I finally trapped him in the back bathroom and put a trap in there.

He was very stubborn and refused to go into it. We figured after a while he would at least become weak and we could catch him. We heard him running around in there for almost 3 weeks, until there was silence. I had another ridiculous conversation with my father, then finally he went into the bathroom armed with a garbage can, a towel, and a broom. For all the commotion that ensued it was like listening to an elephant in a china shop. He caught it in the laundry basket then insisted I get in the car with him, and we drove 20 miles to release this guy.

Mice don’t all look the same. Some are brown, some are grey, some are big and some are small. Some of them I saw so often that I began naming them. Herman was the largest of them all. On a regular basis I caught him, walked him up the street to release him, and a week later he’d be back inside.

I had bought a racetrack at a garage sale for 50 cents, and Vega loved watching the cars race around on it. One day after having her fill of it for the moment, she walked off and I went back to my book. About 10 minutes later she returned with Herman. I was torn between wanting her to release him and wanting to see what she was going to do.

She put Herman on the racetrack. He looked at her and began walking on the track THE WRONG WAY. She took her paw and nudged him until he was walking in the direction the cars went in!


Then there was the day I adopted my 3rd cat, Autumn. I made the fatal mistake of looking in the cat room at PetSmart, and she got me. Her story said she was abandoned in a trailer park after her “owners” let 6 cats become 30+ before abandoning them all. I knew this wasn’t going to go over well with Daddy.

She looks a lot like Vega, so he did the classic double-take when he saw her, as his eyes grew wide and the sternness spread across his face. “Amy, what is that cat doing here?” “Dad, this is Autumn.” “Amy, you get that cat out of here.” “She’s very sweet and I found her in the gully.” “I don’t care, she isn’t staying here, you get rid of her and you do it now.” “She plays very well with the other cats and I took her to the vet today and she’s healthy.”

He scratched her ears. Then came The Big Sigh. I knew I had him.

“Is she potty trained?” “Yes dad, all cats are potty trained.” “Well, alright she can stay, but this is it, Amy, I mean it. There isn’t going to be a 4th, 5th, or 6th cat. You got that?” “Yes daddy.” “I’m serious, Amy, don’t be bringing anymore cats into the house, you got it? Do you hear me?? I mean it. Are you listening to me?”

Yes, daddy.