<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Courtesy of the Washington Post at:</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "><a href="http://tinyurl.com/mm5sd3r">http://tinyurl.com/mm5sd3r</a></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: nowrap; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: none; "> </span></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">--------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><h1 property="dc.title" style="margin: 0px 0px 4px; padding: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 2.5em; line-height: 1.2em; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; "><span class="entry-title">Arlington restaurant owner specializes in finding homes for homeless cats and dogs</span></h1></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">If you call your two restaurants the <a data-xslt="_http" href="http://lostdogcafe.com/">Lost Dog Cafe</a> and the <a data-xslt="_http" href="http://thestraycatcafe.com/">Stray Cat Cafe</a>, you cannot be surprised when people show up looking for their missing pets, people such as <strong>Laurie Nakamoto</strong>, whose miniature schnauzer <strong>Ms. Winter</strong> disappeared from her townhouse one night in July.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Laurie went to the two restaurants — which are at either end of a strip shopping center in Arlington’s Westover neighborhood — to see if she could put up “Missing Dog” flyers. Stray Cat assistant manager <strong>Dave Seldomridge</strong> said of course. He has a miniature pinscher named <strong>Angel, </strong>and he knows how bad he’d feel if she went missing.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But when Laurie started describing her dog, Dave had a bad feeling.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Plenty of restaurants have animal themes, but few take their themes to the extremes that the Stray Cat and Lost Dog do.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“It’s nice to go to work every day and know you’re not just here to make money and feed people,” said <strong>Pam McAlwee</strong>, the restaurants’ co-founder. “You’re also there for a purpose.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The purpose is to rescue cats and dogs from shelters and make them available for adoption.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I’ve always loved animals and always felt bad for the underdog, so to speak, the dogs in shelters that just get passed over,” Pam said. To her, getting a shelter dog is the ultimate in going green. “That’s a life that needs to be recycled,” she said.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pam and partner <strong>Ross Underwood</strong>started rescuing strays in the pre-cellphone, pre-Internet days. In the 1980s, they began making the rounds of area shelters, pulling out homeless animals and putting classified ads in The Washington Post seeking adopters. In the ads, Pam always printed the phone number of the Lost Dog Cafe, which opened in 1985 as the Gourmet Pizza Deli.</span></p><div><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I was working Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the days most families were looking for a dog. I would have them call me at the restaurant, and they would always laugh: ‘Am I calling the right number?’ ”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">What started with one or two dogs a week grew and grew. They handled so many dogs and cats that, in 2001, they bought 60 acres of land in Fauquier County and built the <a data-xslt="_http" href="http://lostdogrescue.org/about-us/lost-dog-ranch">Lost Dog and Cat Ranch</a>, a place to house animals that would be in danger of being euthanized if not for Pam’s efforts.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Shelters notify us constantly of dogs getting ready to be put to sleep,” Pam said. “We go and we take as many as we possibly can. We bring them here, get them spayed or neutered, up to date on their shots, cleaned up and well rested. Then we bring them up to D.C. area events.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Lost Dog and Cat Rescue Foundation (<a data-xslt="_http" href="http://www.lostdogrescue.org/">lostdogrescue.org</a>) organizes nearly a dozen adoption events every weekend, taking animals to local pet stores.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“We get them adopted, then we go and get more,” Pam said. “Unfortunately, it never ends.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Every year, Pam and her 300 volunteers help about 1,800 dogs and 700 cats find new homes.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It’s the rare businessperson who can combine the disparate parts of her life into one satisfying whole. “They both intertwine very much,” Pam said. “When you own a restaurant, you don’t have time for outside stuff as much as you would like. I just found a way to incorporate it into what I was doing.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Why does she think dogs and cats are worthy of such effort? Why does she love them so?</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“I think really it’s their innocence,” Pam said. “They’re like babies. They do nothing to harm us, ever. We’re the ones that harm them, if anything. They want nothing more than to give unselfish love.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Pam said that a penchant for animal activism is not a prerequisite for employment at her establishments. “But you have to know what our mission is and what our philosophy is,” she said.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Dave Seldomridge does. He was understanding when Laurie Nakamoto came into the Stray Cat Cafe in July. He listened as she described her own lost dog: small and black.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“At that moment, I knew,” Dave told me later. “I felt bad. I sent her to talk to <strong>Vince </strong>to see if she could put the pieces together.”</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">--------------------</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><span style="text-align: left; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Dave Seldomridge, manager at the Stray Cat Cafe in Arlington, and Pam McAlwee, owner of the cafe and the nearby Lost Dog Cafe. Dave helped point Laurie Nakamoto in the right direction when she came looking for information on her missing miniature schnauzer, Ms. Winter.</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto;margin: 0px 0px 22px; padding: 0px; "><img src="cid:543C5FAA-C499-4BB7-A0D1-5FA34899166B" alt="dogcafe21377793692.jpg" id="543C5FAA-C499-4BB7-A0D1-5FA34899166B" width="606" height="402"></p></div></p></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">--------------------------------------<br><br><div>Seeya on the flip-flop, Moscow, because . . .</div><div><br></div><div>"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div> </div><div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Kingston, Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>"<span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">There's room at the top they are telling you still</span><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> </span></div><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill </span><br style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">- John Lennon<br></span></font><div> </div></div></div></body></html>