[Vision2020] Caturday (January 23, 2021)

[Tom Hansen]

 "We put our hearts out there every day for the love and care of the animals who come through our doors. And it's days like this that solidify why we do what we do." Welcome to Caturday.

Courtesy of the Sun Journal (North Carolina) at:

https://www.newbernsj.com/story/news/2021/01/20/unadoptable-cat-not-so-fast-there/4209756001/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link&ICID=ref_fark

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Unadoptable $10,000 cat finds a home

The $10,000 cat has found a home.

In Yonkers, that mischievously named city in New York.

Flashback: Grace is a rabbit tabby cat with a white chest who has made her home at Colonial Capital Humane Society’s cat house for eight years, ever since she was a kitten. She was “unadoptable,” which was odd since there was nothing stand-out wrong with her: though on a special diet (she’s a cat entering on her senior years, after all), she is undergoing no expensive treatment. She doesn’t have any weird deformity like an additional head for incapacitating injury like lost legs.

She just has an attitude thing.

She likes who she likes and avoids who she doesn’t.

When you’re competing with 100 other cats for permanent homes, that’s a debilitating thing.

Rhonda Heath, a board member of CCHS, is one of the Chosen Circle that Grace calls friends. While Grace is not a “lap cat” who will curl up and purr away on your lap for hours, she is affectionate and runs her motor for those she likes, Heath said.

And among those she likes the most are skittish and terrified cats.

Heath said it didn’t take long for the cattakers (as opposed to caretakers) in the cat trailer to notice that Grace had made herself a mother to all the other cats and, when one came in that was afraid and skittish, she would make that cat her own, staying by their side and comforting them as they adapted to their new and confusing surroundings.

But when visitors arrived to look for cats, Grace hung in the background. For eight years she was never picked.

Last October Heath came upon a contest sponsored by the Arm & Hammercompany – whose products include baking soda-laced kitty litter. Called the “Purrfectly Impurrfect Cat,” the company planned to choose three “unadoptable” cats at shelters across America” whose stories it loved. Those winning cats would receive national promotion from Arm & Hammer and any adopters would receive free consultation with Pam Johnson-Bennett, a nationally known cat behaviorist.
Lastly, the shelter (sadly, not the cat) would receive $10,000 to be used toward any shelter expenses.

Heath decided to enter Grace. “Grace is very picky about which humans she chooses to let into her world, but she is the Mama cat of the shelter,” she wrote in part. To Heath’s amazement, Grace was declared a winner.

Jump a few weeks to the Bouteneff home in Yonkers, New York, a nine-hour drive away, where another “unadoptable” cat, Claudette, lived. Claudette, who is half Siamese (she inherited the attitude, though not the markings, Patricia Bouteneff said) gets along fine with people but “is really aggressive to other animals.”


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Photos . . .

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“Caturday” by Linus Petit
http://www.tomandrodna.com/MoscowCares/Caturday/Caturday_by_Linus_Petit.mp3

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.moscowcares.com/

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
“A stranger is just a friend you haven't met.” - Roy E. Stolworthy
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