How It All Began…

“Oh, I shouldn’t call it that!”, my mother said as she giggled and covered her mouth with her hand. I asked, ” Why? It is a house, and it’s full of cats. Why wouldn’t you call it the ‘Cat House’?” My mother explained to me that the term “cat house” was used a long time ago as a nickname for a burlesque establishment. Hmm…perhaps you shouldn’t call it that then mom.

Of course, the name stuck with me, and to this day, I still call it the cat house.

My mother was an extremely shy person, and one day, about thirty years ago, she decided to seek out this cat shelter and volunteer. It gave her a sense of belonging. It helped her feel as though she was somehow contributing to something. And she was.

When we lost our cat Tyson suddenly in 2002, we immediately needed to fill the void. We asked my mom about the shelter, and that we wanted to adopt one. Of course, we actually had two in mind (kittens need buddies), but we didn’t dare tell her. Back then, the kittens were brought to the shelter and adopted out of the garage. We knew we wanted a white one so we could name him “Snowball”. We got there, saw an almost all white one with a little bit of black. Then, my spouse came to me with a kitten that was curled up in her arms. A long hair tuxedo. My spouse and I stood next to each other and called my mom over. She looked at us horrified and questioned, “Two? I thought you were just getting one?!”.

When we got home, we quickly realized that “Snowball” was not an appropriate name. We renamed him “Taz”. Yup, definitely more appropriate! The baby tuxedo we named “Mister Boo”. He was so fearful. He spent most of his life in the basement. What we didn’t know then was that I would spend a lot of my time in the future preventing that type of scenario for other adopters – socializing semi-feral kittens and cats.

We started to volunteer soon after adopting them. That was twenty years ago. Volunteering at an animal shelter is an emotional rollercoaster. You do it for the love of the animals, and you have to be careful to remember to take care of yourself in the process. It is worth every minute though. It took me twenty years there to find my niche. Helping animals learn that it is safe to love and attach themselves to humans. It took me a half of a century to learn that myself. Honestly, I still trust animals more than humans, but we grow together.