In the last column, I shared some of my family background with you. Although I mentioned that my family has always been a bit crazy in the cutest way, I think it was an accident that I might have overlooked me.
This is how my father learned in 1965 that he was going to have another child...
Mom and 15 other ladies belong to the bridge club. Every Thursday, they would gather in someone’s house and play cards for a whole day. One Thursday, when my mother had entertained my father and my father came home from get off work, she said, "Jimmy, you won't believe...someone in the bridge club is giving birth. Guess who?" Dad gave every other woman Named, and mother shook her head after each name. Finally, Dad said: "Kitty, there is no one else in the bridge club."
I think my parents have a hard time believing that as their 40th birthday approaches, their fifth child will join the family.
As they say, accidents will happen, and although some people, like me, will eventually be welcomed with love and open arms, others are not so lucky.
My sister Laura remembers another bridge club day a few weeks after our cat Puff gave birth to six cute kittens. Somehow, the kittens escaped from the padded box in the utility room where they were born and entered our "family room".
The room has 11-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. Laura came home from school and heard the screams of women and the sight of six kittens climbing up the curtains. I can imagine the fear and pain of my mother as she desperately tried to untie the fur ball's paws from her precious curtains.
Soon after this fiasco, Puff went to the vet to "repair". I'm sure that my mother hoped that she wanted to go to the vet before, not after, and her silk was chopped up.
At Pasadena Humane, everyone is exhausted because our kitten season has just ended. Caring for six kittens is not easy, so imagine caring for thousands of kittens. When we knew that these births could have been prevented, it was even more heartbreaking.
During our short probation period, we beg you to neuter or neuter your pet before the cats flood into the shelter again before spring arrives.
You may be wondering what you can do to help the many ownerless cats in our community who live outdoors. Pasadena Humane works with a dedicated network of volunteers to help capture unsocialized cats so that they can be brought to our clinic for neutering/neutering and vaccination.
Adult outdoor cats that are accustomed to free roaming usually do not adapt well to family life. Therefore, once these cats are changed, they will be sent back to the community where they are found.
Over time, this trap, neutral, return, and monitoring (called TNR or TNRM) process has proven to be the most effective way to humanely reduce the number of outdoor cats.
At the same time, kittens of unowned cats born outdoors can be socialized, neutered or neutered, and placed at home through adoption.
If you want to learn more about preventing the birth of unwanted companion animals through the neutering/neutering and community cat programs, please visit pasadenahumane.org.
Those of us who work hard to care for animals in the shelter really appreciate all the help we can get. Remember, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Dia DuVernet is the President and CEO of Pasadena Humane.
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