Cat Haven : Protection Society Gives Shelter to Homeless, Neglected Felines

They live in a bad neighborhood, an area of grim-looking factories and worn houses, but the cats on 17th Street don’t know it.

Behind a stucco house protected by a barbed-wire fence--and a dog--the cats reside in a shelter run by the National Cat Protection Society.

“Some people think this place is depressing, but if (the cats) weren’t here they would be fertilizer,” said Georgina Stassi, who works at the shelter in West Long Beach.

The cats--some from caring homes, others from alleys--curl up in baskets or on ledges in rooms adorned with pictures of lions. Each year, about 1,500 of them get adopted.

Stassi was in the shelter’s Exotic Room, where Himalayans, Siamese, Tabbys and Burmese are kept. “People expect these messy cats, but we get gorgeous animals here,” she said. “I’d say the majority don’t want to be here, they want to be in a home.”

She picked up a meowing, tan-and-white long-haired cat and said: “If you just look at him, he should be in somebody’s home. He’s beautiful.”

The shelter is a haven for unwanted cats in a time when they are in jeopardy because of overpopulation. The Los Angeles County Animal Control said 36,000 cats were put to sleep in 1991-92 at six county animal care centers, mainly because their owners could not be located.

The protection society shelter can become “like a dumping ground,” said Denise Johnston, the society’s president.

The society, which also has a shelter in Spring Valley, was founded in 1968 by Johnston’s stepfather, C. Richard Calore, who believed that cats were the most cruelly treated and neglected of domestic animals. He once said in a shelter publication: “Perhaps the basic reason why people do not think much of cats is due to their lack of understanding of these wonderful creatures.”

Calore died in 1988 and Johnston, of Costa Mesa, succeeded him as president.

“I’ve always loved cats,” said Johnston, who began helping Calore at the shelter nine years ago. “I don’t think anyone actually thinks that they’re going to commit themselves to the protection of cats. But it’s like I can’t leave. This is my thing in life.”

The society, through its publication, Feline Defenders, which is distributed throughout the country, has long championed cat issues with articles whose titles include “The Horrible Cost of a Fur Coat,” “The Crime of Deserting Your Pet,” “Cats and Senior Citizens,” “The Evil Effects of Vivisection on Children” and “Look Before You Drive.”

Poems, such as “When Toby Came

Our Way” and “Mercy Death,” also appear frequently.

A nonprofit organization with a staff of about eight at each shelter, the society relies on donations to buy food ($20,000 a year) and litter ($7,100), and also to pay its employees and veterinary bill. (A veterinarian checks on the cats each week.) Volunteers are always being sought to brush and feed the cats, and keep the shelter clean to protect against sickness. “If a cat gets a cold, he can contaminate the entire population,” Johnston said.

The shelter--with the motto “Prevention is kinder than destruction”--urges the public to have cats spayed or neutered. “It’s one of our main responsibilities,” said Johnston.

It costs $25 to adopt a female cat, with $15 refundable when the cat is altered. Adopting a male costs $20, with $10 refunded upon altering. The refund is higher for females because the procedure for altering female cats is more complicated, Johnston said.

Cats mate from late winter to early August. “Kitten season for any humane organization is like a nightmare because we know there’s going to be a surplus of animals,” Johnston said.

Kittens are brought in all day long; many have to be euthanized because there is not enough room.

“We must do what is best for all cats,” Johnston said. “Sometimes the best can be to euthanize them. When cats are plentiful during the breeding season, sometimes it’s the only humane answer. To take a cat to our shelter requires courage. There are far too many people who take their pets and drop them off in a field or on a deserted highway and make them suffer a fate far worse than a humane death.”

Older cats at the shelter are euthanized only in cases of sickness or overcrowding. The shelter holds about 300 cats.

Not all of the cats are adoptable. Some cat owners take their pets to the shelter and pay $700 so they can be kept for life in the Retirement-Placement Center, a building behind the shelter office. There they join Tiger, Pudge, Puff, Puff Puff, Sebastian, Abby, Princess and about 90 others. Their litter boxes are lined up against the wall. The shelter used to never turn away a cat, but now it tends to reject strays because they are the responsibility of Animal Control. “But if the cat is attractive--say it’s a house cat that got lost--we call Animal Control and give them the information, then keep it and try to get it adopted,” Johnston said.

People are told that donations are appreciated when they bring in a cat.

“A little lady came in today and gave me dimes and nickels and she cried,” said Bobbie Escamilla, shelter manager. “She had found this cat and nursed it back to health.”

On the same day, a man came in with three cats in a laundry hamper. He said he found the cats abandoned by tenants in an apartment building he owns.

The cats were handed to Juan Martinez, a veterinary assistant, who vaccinated them. Then they were put in cages.

Tearful scenes are common. “I have seen tough-looking men, some of them drivers of huge trucks, who lose control of themselves and cry (when they bring in cats),” Johnston said.

But touching farewells are not always bestowed upon the cats.

“Before we had barbed wire, people used to throw them over (the fence) all the time,” Johnston said. “One time a person--not a person as far as I’m concerned--left about 10 kittens out front and three of them were dead.

“I like to think that there is a feline heaven and that all those cats and kittens who have left this cruel and unjust world are smiling down on us.”