What came next

Volunteering with cat rescues had been rather a flop, but I wasn’t prepared to give up the idea. All my life I’d planned to help animals when I retired and that’s what I was determined to do even if it could only be in a very minor way.

When we got shut out of the hoarder’s place, we’d visited a few properties to use as a new shelter but none of them were suitable and eventually the lady with the purse strings decided to use one of her rentals that had become available.

In the end it didn’t work for Grant and I, but at least now I was in touch with a real estate agent who knew our needs. I found a place online and the agent got the keys and took us there.

It was a 3-story house built into the side of a steep hill, thus the front of the basement was at ground level. The hill concerned me, given the possibility of earth quakes, so I had an engineer check it out. He reassured me, though subsequently we still had cause to worry.

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The house was far too big for me, but the plan I’d come up with was that I would open a foster care home for cats. Far more convenient than driving back and forth to another facility.

Grant was a contractor, so he could be tasked with fixing up the basement for the fosters who would live separately from my little gang upstairs.

That the property had a large, weedy garden did not escape me, but I chose not to worry about it just then.

We entered into the project with enthusiasm, sparing no expense. I even had two extra windows and a door installed in the basement for the benefit of the cats.

Animals need to be able to see daylight.

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Inside, we installed doors so we could keep the cats separated into 3 rooms, linking them with a tunnel that was opened or closed as necessary.

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And there were lots of shelves with blanketed cubbies.

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Thinking ahead, I had the downstairs toilet converted into an actual bathroom which served as our kitchen area. Over the years we served up a lot of meals!

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There was no end of projects. To facilitate getting up and down the steep hill in the garden, Grant and his team built steps. I also had a water feature installed adjacent to the patio, but that turned out to be another flop because the man who did it was a charlatan.

Periodically I’ve come up against one or two.

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Finding “clients” was never going to be a problem. Grant rounded up strays at the condo where he lived and I created a website: Yeti’s Kitty Suites.

There’s always someone who knows someone who’s got a cat in need.

Like Piero…

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A friend of a friend was concerned about a cat that was being tormented by kids, could I take him? Sure. The only thing, they said, was that he was a little bit scratchy.

The friends brought him over and for evaluation, I kept him in a spare room upstairs where we were introduced. Scratchy? Within minutes my hands and arms were perforated.

The friends of friends fled before I could change my mind.

(I never rejected cats for being temperamental – or anything else.)

But Piero was lovely. Within weeks he had calmed down a whole lot and he entertained us with his antics. However, he was going to need to be adopted by the right person. This turned out to be a veteran who had sustained a head injury and suffered with PTSD. Piero was renamed Phantom and lived happily ever after.

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Panther was a very smart boy. Perhaps he couldn’t see through the floorboards, but I’m sure he could read my mind and no doubt smell other cats on my clothing. But he was not concerned.

He was the Main Man and he knew it.

Not long after I moved into Knickerbocker (the name of the street, which was a nuisance because no-one ever knew how to spell it), Annie received a terminal diagnosis and before long another little friend was gone. I wish she could have had what she really wanted, to be the only, but at least she didn’t finish her days in a shelter.

Annie’s passing persuaded me that it would be alright to take in another upstairs cat.

(I need so much persuading.)

Which I will get to next….