Maggie the Dog-Tester Keeps Homes Safe for Her Fellow Cats

To the annals of volunteerism, along with the names of Betsy Ross and Mother Teresa, add Maggie the cat.

In a modest package of gray and black fur, Maggie is the last line of defense in protecting animal lovers from unwisely mixing species. In what may be a unique role, the courageous feline is the Pasadena Humane Society’s “dog tester.”

Her job is to ensure domestic peace when adopted dogs come to homes where their traditional enemies already live.

So before they leave the shelter, the hounds are led into the office where Maggie resides.

It can get rather hairy.

“Sometimes she’ll just say to them, ‘get out of my face,’ ” volunteer Penny Fordham said of Maggie. “Sometimes she’ll look at me and say, ‘This just isn’t going to work out.’ ”

Maggie strolls around the shelter’s grounds during the day and is free to leave, but steadfastly remains at her post. “She’s really an amazing cat to stay here and let us do this to her,” Fordham said.

A 6-year-old gray tabby, Maggie serves a crucial purpose in an era when shelter “counselors” help match owners with pets, and families must meet their adopted canines at the shelter for “socialization” before taking them home.

Like Democrats and Republicans, cats and dogs can have a hard time getting along even under ideal circumstances. And nowadays, Fordham says, dogs are often encouraged by owners to chase cats, making it likely that much of the pool of canine adoptees at the humane society will harbor anti-feline proclivities.

“It’s a difficult thing in an urban society like this to expect that your dog and cat are going to get on,” Fordham said.

That’s why an average of 18 dogs a week are first tested on Maggie. After the prospective adopter fills out a detailed questionnaire and speaks with a counselor, the dog is brought into the shelter’s volunteer office on a leash, where Maggie sits on a conference table. Sometimes the dog lunges for Maggie, sometimes Maggie for the dog.

Most of the time the meeting resembles last week’s encounter between Maggie and Zipper, a mixed-breed puppy. Zipper trotted in on a leash. Maggie meowed.

“She made a few remarks to say ‘I’m a cat, I’m not a dog. You don’t sniff [me],’ ” Fordham recalled. All in all, it was amicable, and Zipper was adopted by a cat-owning family.

Sally Fekety, a spokeswoman for the National Humane Society, said that while many shelters may keep dogs or cats as mascots, she does not know of any who “formally” use them as dog testers. “They are probably called in on an irregular basis,” she said.

Maggie wasn’t always so gainfully employed. She was abandoned as a 4-week-old kitten in a Pasadena dumpster. She was found by a former administrator at the shelter, and quickly became a fixture in the volunteer office. Maggie strolls through the shelter, stopping in on the rabbits, chinchillas and snakes in the teaching rooms and occasionally disrupting lectures in the auditorium.

About six months ago, it was decided that Maggie needed to earn her living. Volunteers thought her outgoing nature would make her a perfect dog tester.

“Everyone just loves Maggie,” said Humane Society spokeswoman Elizabeth Stelow.

But she remains shy among human strangers. On a recent afternoon, she huddled in her cardboard box, curling up in an afghan and staring at a visitor with inquisitive, light green eyes. She shares the office with a big green parakeet named Seth, and sometimes with a small fox terrier named Baci. In one corner is her litter and feed; in another, a laser printer and fax machine.

A lot has happened in this office. A tiny Chihuahua puppy unexpectedly leaped onto Maggie’s table and began snarling at the cat, twice his size. A cocker spaniel began snapping at her, sending Maggie scurrying to the top of a filing cabinet. “She went bananas,” Fordham said.

Maggie isn’t always the victim. One recent afternoon Fordham led a Dalmatian into the office, and Maggie bounced off the table, hissed and arched her back. The dog nervously backed up and began barking. Fordham hurried him off to safety.

The cat settled down, possibly looking forward to more canine confrontations in the future.

“She definitely accepts this as a job,” Fordham said. “She’s a very resilient person.”