I am pretty sure I always loved animals. I cannot remember a time I didn't. I grew up with animals my entire life. There was never a moment when there wasn't at least a cat laying at my side as I absently stroked their soft coat as I did my homework or watched television as a child.
I remember I was about 7 years old. We had a whole colony of cats living in our tiny backyard in Brooklyn, NY. Winter was setting in, the air was turning cold and I was worried. Some of them would come close to me but many of the cats were afraid. We had Trouble and Frisky -- our two cats upstairs that lived with us. My grandma lived in the downstairs apartment in our house on East 26th Street and she had a cat, a beautiful white Persian - Puss...and I would steal her cans of catfood to feed my colony outside. I wasn't dumb enough to take the cans from upstairs because I knew I would be busted. Grandma was no fool and she knew what I was up to but there was never getting in trouble with her so I decided to chance it. She ended up going to Waldbaums buying dozens and dozens of cans of the store brand because 4-6 cans a day was expensive and she did not have a lot of money. Grandmas are good for that -- supporting the little habits of their grandchildren...like feeding stray cats. However, we still had the issue of the cold winter setting in so I began to think.
My father, a master carpenter always had scraps of wood in the basement left over from old projects in a large bin. I smile as I fondly remember the magenta colored bin with all sizes and types of wood absently tossed just as you came down the stairs and rounded the corner. I loved going down into the basement (once I realized there WASN'T the boogeyman my sister said there was) and smelling the fresh cut wood. It was one of my favorite smells as a child mainly because it reminded me so much of my dad.
I watched my dad work countless times building furniture and fixing things. I headed to the scrap bin to begin my plans. I knew I couldn't cut the wood myself and I began to pilfer through my treasure. I was going to build a shelter for these cats so that they would have a safe place to survive the upcoming cold months. I may not have been able to use the saw but a hammer and nails were available to me with some crafty climbing and I set to work. A little rough looking but serving a very important purpose I surveyed my masterpiece and carried it out to the backyard with a great deal of effort. I placed it in the center of the 10 x 10 backyard and ran in to my accomplice -- my grandma for the remainder of my needs. I took towels and blankets and everything I could get my hands on that grandma would allow. I couldn't get them heat but I figured they could snuggle in between the layers of blankets. It didn't take long before the cats came to check out the new addition. I remember we had a pretty good rain and it soaked all the blankets breaking my heart. My shelter was not working as I intended. Head down, shoulders slumped I cried in my grandma's lap. She wrapped her arthritic hands around me and listened to me sob and just promised me it would be ok. The cats would be fine and it was more than they had before, she took the soaking wet blankets and set to wash them. I remember the smell of the rain and the grass soaking into the cloth vividly...the cool earthy smell mixed with the delicious sweet aroma of the fabric softener grams used. She gave me a tablecloth to place over the top and I waited for the next test of weather...SUCCESS! The shelter never leaked again! Although it was not to the credit of the cheap table cloth..but as I realized decades later...because my dad snuck out at some point and made the necessary adjustments to my shelter without saying a word. My dad isn't a man of many words but he is one of action. My whole life if I needed something done, it just.... got done. He never looked for credit or praise. Seeing his family happy was all he needed.
I watched my colony every chance I got from my Gram's bedroom window which faced the backyard. I watched them interact every day slowly beginning to trust me until the point when I came out to feed them they would all come running. Without meaning to I had gained their trust, slowly but surely. The younger kittens I was able to hold the older cats would come close enough to pet but I knew my limitations. I think this is when my ability to read both animals and people began to develop. Little did I know their new trust of humans could very well be what led them to their demise.
Slowly, one by one - my cats began to disappear or would come to my backyard to die. In our old neighborhood in Brooklyn all of our backyards were adjoined to one another but separated by chain link fencing. Someone, or many someones did not like my colony and began to poison my cats. Soon, my colony was gone. I remember a lot of heartache. I remember crying in the arms of my grams and my mom. I remember being confused and not understanding why. I remember all the naivety of being a little girl. I remember the heavy loss of a colony I raised and nurtured. I remember pulling the shelter apart because my heart could not bear to see it empty another day. I remember my parents being quite possibly the angriest I had seen them in my short life and my father setting out to "speak" to the neighbors. I am not sure what happened exactly but I can imagine. My father, even now his 60's is a man with a presence. Everyone in our neighborhood was smart enough to not get in my dad's way..especially with with matters involving his wife or his daughters. I chuckle to myself as I write that. My father is not a terribly tall man, or very large but he always seemed larger than life and formidable. I am a lot like my father for better or worse. I stand at a mere 5'1" but I stand tall and many fear me. I have a fierce personality.With my loss, I now began to understand WHY the cats feared me - the humans they were beginning to trust were the humans who betrayed them. It didn't matter that it wasn't ME that brought them harm, it was humanity.
Here is where I had my first significant choice in life -- a choice that would forever define me. I could have easily thrown in the towel and given up on animals deciding that the world that was teaching me betrayal at such a young age was winning. No matter how hard I tried someone would come along and take that away from me. Some people may have easily made that decision but my mom, dad and grams were my biggest supporters and they taught me that anything worth having was worth fighting for. There were no more colonies in Brooklyn but my love, passion and willingness to help animals didn't stop there. I would come home with stray dogs, cats, frogs... anything and everything that I found wandering the streets. Other people took the road clearly defined by the millions before them. The road they could walk down and never have to see the ugly side of the world, the world of abandoned, homeless and unloved animals. I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
