Keeping Kitties From Catastrophe

Where do old cats go to die? If they’re lucky, they spend their retirement in feline comfort at the National Cat Protection Society, a nonprofit shelter two blocks from the ocean dedicated to giving old cats dignified deaths, and abandoned cats new lives through adoption.

The shelter, founded in 1968 by a World War II veteran who fell in love with cats after a kitten kept him company in a battleground foxhole, celebrated its 30th anniversary Sunday.

And the 85 cats and about a dozen kittens gazing out from the shelter’s spotless pens did their adorable best to make it hard to go home without one.

“It’s gonna be hard to resist,” said Andrea Marmont, a Cypress mom whose twin 10-year-old daughters were busy girl-handling an 8-week-old kitten nearby.

Marmont adopted the family cat, Samantha, from the shelter six years ago. Then as today, the price was $40, plus convincing shelter staff she would give the cat a loving home.

Finding good homes for cats has been the shelter’s goal for three decades, since C. Richard Calore, who died in 1988, founded the shelter in Long Beach as a modest antidote, shelter employees say, to the persistent neglect that sends hundreds of thousands of stray cats out into the streets of Southern California each year.

The shelter moved to Newport Beach four years ago. But its mission remains the same--to let cats live out their natural lives, and to make those lives better.

“When [Calore] founded this place, he remembered that kitten who wandered in and took his mind off what he was feeling during the war,” said Robert Achzehner, 84, a friend of the cat lover and now vice president of the Protection Society.

“He decided that they made him feel so good, that someday he was going to take care of them.”

Today, the center places about 500 cats in new homes each year. About 100 more don’t get adopted. They live out their lives in the shelter’s retirement center-- a skylighted room that is half indoors, half out, and features a simulated wharf to climb on, a lifeguard tower to curl up on and metal waves to hide under.

Kittens are kept in plexiglass-faced pens near the center’s entrance--a ploy, center operators are not above acknowledging, that draws the kids in. The older cats are kept in the back, in colorfully decorated rooms facing a garden.

More than 75 volunteers spend time at the center, keeping it impeccably clean, and playing with and feeding the cats. Several times a week, a local veterinarian checks the cats and gives them shots when needed. Society members around the state help support the center, which costs more than $200,000 a year to run. Volunteers and staff visit schools, emphasizing the need to spay and neuter cats to prevent the overpopulation that leads to abuse and neglect.

“They care about the cats. When people come here to adopt, they don’t just hand you the cats. It’s not just a warehouse,” said Cindy Riedel, a Costa Mesa cat owner who got her cat, Charlie, from the shelter two years ago.

“I’m a great fan of the kitty society,” said Catherine Barnett, 76, wearing cat-shaped earrings and gazing at a litter of black kittens with white paws.

“I got my cat, Annie, here 16 years ago. When anything happens to her I’ll be right back to this place to get another one.”