"Even after writing a book about my life as a cat-lover, admitting that my living room is full of hair, scratching posts and plastic sticks with feathers on feels slightly taboo. Of course, I'm not really mad. My house might get a bit smelly when I haven't vacuumed or checked under the sofa for a few days, but it is by no means a health hazard. True, I did once put a necktie on one of my cats when he was asleep, but I have never bought them an item of clothing and I don't call them “fur babies”.
I do, however, own six, which can feel a little like living with half a dozen miniature versions of Mariah Carey."
Deanne DeGrandpre, 45, of Eastvale, launched the site to help her daughter, Elizabeth Lloyd, 17, and her boyfriend, Devon Powell, 19, unload the neglected cats.
The two began catching strays several months ago at Swan Lake Country Estates Mobile Home Park in Mira Loma, where Powell lives.
Swan Lake became overrun by hundreds felines that fight and breed litter after litter. Some were dumped by residents, others are feral interlopers that band together in colonies.
Now the teenagers are part of an ad hoc cat coalition to catch orphaned felines.
Out in the country, the high-pitched voices of newborns have joined the local coyote pack. Crane flies have hatched in droves as they dependably do every May. One day I surprised a baby owl who’d left the nest but hadn’t yet learned to fly and watched him hobble off to a plum thicket like an old man on a crutch. Across the road, a tom turkey is out from dawn to dusk in the field fanning out his feathers to awe a bunch of hens. At night, a billion frogs serenade the moon with their croaking love songs.
The church I took my 95-year-old mother to on Mother’s Day was crowded with babies lined up to be baptized. The choir sang a poignant anthem in which the creator promised, “Non vos relinquam orphanos” — I will not leave you as orphans. I wondered: Is this the same spirit that watches over geese in ways we can’t understand? Life is driven on. There may no answers to our questions, but we can’t help asking: What is our place in this world? What does it all mean?
The clinic, which evolved out of the Peninsula Spay/Neuter Project, is supported in part by grants and donations, and in part by fees. It charges $35 to neuter a male cat and $45 to spay a female. Prices for dogs range from $55 to $85, depending on sex and weight – except for pit bulls, which get a discount. There are special programs and lower rates for pit bull-type dogs. For information, call 253-627-7729 or go to www.coalitionhumane.org.
So far, veterinarian Keiko Young, veterinary technician Jayme Bennett, veterinary assistants Liz Tolbert and Sandy Peterson, and clinic coordinator Sheri Kennedy are spaying or neutering 21 animals a day.
They want to get that number up to 40, said Patty Rusnak, vice president of the nonprofit clinic....
But by state law, Coalition Humane and clinics like it can serve only pets of low-income people. In Pierce County, the income cap is $37,050 for a household of one, $42,350 for a couple, $47,650 for three and $52,950 for four.
(The income cap evaporates for feral cats. Any caring soul can trap a cat, bring it to the clinic and, for $40, have it spayed or neutered, vaccinated, treated for ear mites and kept for three days of recovery.)
Perspective
Use it or Lose it
If you turned to this page,
you're forgetting that what is going
on around you is not reality
Think about that.
Remember where you came from
where you're going,and why you created
this mess you got yourself into in the first place.
1) 170 Clinton W - IPD raccoon (Ithaca Police Dept) - Got there and J. Ryan had picked it out of the 2nd floor porch. Nice man - finally got to meet. Taking rac to CU for IPD.
2) Lower Treman - rac from 327 to Cornell. No one around on arrival. Removed rac from truck, rinsed their shovel, and taking rac to CU. Left note for them to call
3) 76 Horton Rd - dog in doghouse w/rac. H. Dept doesn't know if contact. Still want me to get it. Told P. Coates I didn't know if CU would handle it.
That is when I heard it: the cry of an abandoned kitten, somewhere out in the darkness, calling for its mother somewhere inside the compound. By an animal lover’s anthropomorphic logic, those desperate calls, three nights running, had come to seem more than the appeal of a tiny creature doomed to a cold and lonely death. Deep in the winter night, they seemed like a dismal tocsin for all who suffer in a time of war.
Waiting for Narcy
You might suppose she were still alive.
At seven p.m, lights snap on.
The upstairs windows glow warmly
but welcome no visitors.
No one turns back the covers on her bed.
I'm told she visited the physician
for some minor ache, pain, or worry.
Seven days later
her Taurus is estate property.
Spring breezes dust it clean
as if it is exercised daily;
it does not look lonely in the drive.
One wonders if she knew its color matched
the shutters on the house.
Was it planned? An amused whim on the car lot?
Or was it a silly surprise upon arriving
at her home with the new wheels?
Did she never even notice?
There is no one to ask.
This spring
would she have cut a branch from
her salmon quince?
Planted pansies by her door?
Lingered on the steps to feel the spring sun?
No one much remembers.
Each day I sit
in my truck at the curb.
Neighbors pass by,
startled when I greet them
from the rolled-down window,
but each is glad to talk.
Always the same:
They did not know her well.
How sad that some did not even know she had died.
They stare at the cheerful house
as if surprised it had not been kind enough
to let them know
by donning mourning black.
After weeks of daily visits
the irony strikes me;
that they have made friends with
this stranger at the curb
but knew their neighbor not at all.
Her metal garden bells have tipped
and no longer ring,
muffled by hosta shoots.
I refuse to right them
and betray the garden's loss
by supporting the illusion that all is well.
The cement garden cat is frozen in
permanent crouch.
It will never pounce.
At 5:30 each day I have my rendezvous.
Sometimes he is here already,
sitting on the porch stair,
as if he keeps a watch on his wrist.
Sometimes I must wait til six
for him to return from other appointments.
Today there is a cold unpleasant rain
and I wonder if he has stood me up.
But he appears as scheduled,
coat rumpled and worn.
It seems he no longer cares
to keep himself neat.
As I spy from the tuck
he walks up the drive
across the path to the porch
mounts the stairs.
He flattens his ears when he sees the trap,
his white porcelain bowl set as
bait for capture, surrounded by wire,
trip pan and doors poised to close.
In the drizzle
he backs down a stair, glaring,
sinks into a sad crouch, paws tucked.
He remains in the rain for an hour,
stubbornly refusing to look at his bowl
except for a single lift of his chin at the half-hour,
a tilt forward of the ears,
hoping the trap has dissolved in the rain,
sullen to find that it has not.
He is the only one who seems to know her at all.
She gave him a name.
"NRC"...Non-Resident Cat.
Misunderstanding, I called him Narcy.
She was not there to correct me.
He cannot answer my questions
about pansies, quince, or the car,
but he bows his head against the wet
to tell me in the determined line
of his gaunt shoulders
that she was a kind person
whose memory could bring a wild cat back
to her lately-foodless porch, each day, 5:30 pm,
from that bitter Christmas
to this bitter spring.
Does he know she'll never be there
to meet him on those white stairs?
He seems to know the trap is final,
would rather bear hunger than step on the pan,
would rather crouch in the rain than walk away
from his remembrance of her.
I can't outlast this stoic in the rain.
He relinquishes the porch as I step up,
take the food from the trap, close the door,
set the porcelain dish in safety on the bottom stair,
and walk away.
He is back,
eating untasted food in great swallows
as I release the clutch
roll down the pavement,
past the bright houses, neat lawns,
the redbuds, the quince, the flags.
We will continue our grave waltz another evening.
Him, waiting for her.
Me, waiting for Narcy.
PENN YAN - Puppy Mill Rescue Inc. is sponsoring an event called "Bark Heard Around the World" May 17 to educate people about the treatment of dogs raised in puppy mills.
Eileen Franco, a Puppy Mill Rescue Inc. board member and foster mom,defined a "puppy mill" as a large-scale facility that produces more than one breed of dog. She said some dogs are sold right out of the mills, with a majority going to pet stores and a growing number sold over the Internet, which makes the mills harder to track and regulate.
Franco hopes the event at the Yates County Fairgrounds will convince more people to take a stand against mills and pressure state legislators to pass tougher laws against them.
"People need to do more than just be horrified - they need to start speaking out," she said. "We need people to be a voice for the voiceless."
Among the speakers May 17 will be Dr. Franklin McMillan of Best Friends Sanctuary in Utah, who has been working on a 15-year study of the emotional impact of dogs raised in puppy mills.
Dr. Carl Darby, a veterinarian at the Seneca Falls Veterinary Hospital who helps care for rescued dogs, plans to speak about the physical issues they have after leaving puppy mills.
"I'm hoping that people realize that when they buy a puppy from a puppy mill that they're supporting an organization that treats animals in an inhumane way," he said.
This is the first year A Bark Heard Around the World is being held in the area, but Franco said she has attended a similar event in Pennsylvania, where the puppy mill population is booming in Lancaster County. She said the number of mills in the Finger Lakes region - and especially in Yates County - is rising to a similar level.
