Finally! A Show About a NYC Cat Wrangler

the streets of New York. It all started with people living in a city having pet cats, not having those cats fixed, and then having those cats then subsequently live outdoors. From there, those cats bread and then bread with their offspring, and their offspring breeding with their offspring, and all of a sudden you have an explosion in the population. The average female cat can have up to four litters per year, with litter sizes ranging between three to seven kittens on average.

So if you do the math, that can become hundreds of cats very quickly. But also built into that there is a very high mortality rate. Up to seventy five percent of kittens born outdoors will die before six months of age, so it's so much suffering, and even with that high mortality rate, the population is still exploding. But yeah, I mean most rescuers, though, we're just individual people and

we work together. We share resources, like on this recent trapping project, the other rescuer I'm working with, Suza has like a great basement for holding all of the feral cats before and after their Spain eater surgery. I love kittens and I have a huge, you know, soft spot for kittens. If I do have any sort of like quote unquote specialty, it is with kittens specifically. Even though I do a little bit of everything, the kittens are really like the thing that I go crazy for. Hid

how did you hear about this particular taste? It was me. I am an a rescue group with Heidi. We're like a collective of a bunch of independent rescuers. And someone contacted me on Instagram. Wow, said, my friend loves on the Street and they have a prod colony, are front managed and there are a bunch of kittens and we've been sitting outside out front for a couple of months and we would not get to the rest of the kittens. Wou and wait and they wouldn't show up. And so we figured.

cat guy. He's a cat dad. He's like done the thing where he's like turn them into dogs and like train them to walk on leashes and teaches them to do tricks and they can like shake and stand for treats because that's just like my dad's energy. So yeah, so he's definitely like a cat man. But I was

never like, oh, this crazy cat person at all. So yeah, so it's all started with me just seeing cats on the street in my neighborhood and feeling bad about it and scooping them and bringing them into my house and then not really knowing what to do but figuring it out. And then yeah, from there it's grown into what I kind of jokingly refer to as a cat empire that I run o y the traps right now, he's just staring at us. Don't look at him. I got a bunch, Ok,

we got a few. So right now we're covering the traps with sheets to keep everybody calm, chills them out, less stressful for them. So basically, the adults go back to Susas and we have more spain Ud appointments tomorrow for them, and then the kittens come back to my place. Can you grab the one that's nothing.

be a lot more emotionally invested. It does tend to be that a lot of feeders are just like oftentimes lower income people who have lived in the neighborhood for a really long time, who just see the cats every single day in their backyards. And then you know, trappers are just like bored white ladies with a lot of free time and a lot of you know, dispensable income. That's like the stereotypes I would say, there's obviously rich

feeders and trappers. Who are you know? I mean, I do think though, we kind of start from very similar places of like just seeing a cat on the street and feeling compassionate about it and you know, feeding it, wanting to take care of it. So I think we all start from the same place. And then I think the people who end up doing cat rescue end up just like branching out beyond that and you know, doing

tn R doing rescue. And then I just think as time goes on, the more you do it, the more you do get like a little bit more calloused, and and so you kind of like you you veeer in like different directions a little bit. The people right now, I just need to be realistic about my strength. I have a BFA and photography. That's why I moved to New York to pursue and then after college I worked

for eight years for an independent women's ward designer. So all of the photography for the website, you know, handling all of the online sales, the marketing, the social media, worked there for eight years and was doing that wall rescuing cats the entire time, and it definitely got to a point where having a full time day job and rescuing cats was just way too much to do. Four years ago I really started realizing, like, oh no, I just want to be a cat rescuer. It's so it's

it's very fulfilling to rescue cats. Actually I went part time for six months before actually quitting, just to see, you know, to like slowly basically see if financially I could do it, and I could. Some months obviously have been leaner than others. But now it's been a little over two years since I quit my day job. My income comes from social media, so that's you know, that's photography,

that's videos, and you know, it's working. It's I'm here, I'm doing it, I'm paying my bills, and I'm helping cats. So it scratches the creative side of my brain as well as like I have a very problem solving brain as well. So I'm like very fulfilled and very satisfied. A critical part of cat rescue is working with your community.

Especially as a white person working in neighborhoods of color, I can't just go around trapping cats because you know there are indoor outdoor pets, there are bodega cats, or even just like people like Gilbert if one day all of his cats went missing and he didn't know why, like that would crush him. So doing cat rescue responsibly means working with your community and talking to people, like

I'll knock on a door any day. I definitely get butterflies right before knocking on a stranger's door, and it's like that exact moment of like walking up the stairs to someone's front door, I definitely get really nervous, but then usually the second they open the door, I just like, I'm like, hey, like I live in the neighborhood and

I rescue cats. And someone told me that, you know there's cats on this block, and I was wondering if you do anything about them, if you feed them, And then I get pretty comfortable once I'm actually like doing my spiel 's actually because ninety five percent of the time people are so receptive and so happy for someone to be interested in helping the cats. I've had a small percentage of time where people have been really against

the cats being trapped, and that sucks. I have an aries Moon so though, so I can actually be extremely combative if I'm in that situation. I don't back down easily, so for better or worse. So I've definitely had a couple of times where I've like people have yelled at me,

and I can I hold my ground pretty easily. But then other times, like you know, like one time, this woman was feeding a lot of cats and she was like a very sweet woman, but she was an Orthodox Jew and she was extremely against taking away their reproductive rights. And you know, there was no yelling, nothing like we were. It was a very civilized conversation. She actually started like like weeping at the thought of taking away their right to have children. And she was like crying and very

upset at the idea. And you know, I tried to explain and at that point, like you just have to choose your battles. And there are so many cats in Brooklyn that I can trap somewhere else where there's a feeder who like is like Gilbert, who's super grateful for the help. So when I do encounter those situations where a feeder is really does not want their cats trapped, you know, you can only do so much because the people who feed the cats, see the suffering, they see

them dying, they want the cats to get help. They care about the cats. Also, there is like the stereotype that cats help the rats, and cats can help the rat situation a little bit, but cats are not. That's like another kind of like news thing where cats are not decimating entire rat populations. So a lot of times people will be like, don't we don't want the cats fix.

We want more cats because they control the rats and you know, but and I say, like, okay, well, the faral cats are coming back, but some of them take it to the next level where they're like they don't want them fixed because they just want more and more cats for the rats. But rats that have ingested rat poison kills cats.

die before adulthood, because it's just not a life. So that's what I'm trying to do emotionally, one thing that people don't prepare you for, and also that people don't really talk about is actually compassion fatigue is a very real thing with a lot of rescues, where because we see so much suffering on a daily basis, we become a little bit numb to it, and I would say a little bit calloused. We see so many suffering sick cats and kittens all the time, and it makes you, unfortunately,

you know, a lot less compassionate towards humans. I would say, because you can only there's only so much that you can care about. And also in cat rescue, we see the way humans fail cats, both indirectly and also very directly. We have a big problem in York with cats getting dumped and abandoned, people just kicking them out, people moving and leaving them behind. It's very very common. So seeing that like direct neglect and cruelty on a daily basis

makes it hard to like people question. Most feral cats will be like paper weights in the trap, will just be these scared, little silent rocks. And if you ever have a cat that's like yowing a bunch and like thrashing around and being really vocal, that is almost a guarantee it's a friendly cat, because friendly cats meow. Humans and feral ones will just be a little paperweights. I had a roommate for a while who I like asked. I was like, there's a cat outside, Can I bring

him in? And she was like no. And then when I moved into the apartment I'm in now because I've been in my current place for like eleven years or so. And then the next cat I saw outside, I just picked it up and carried it home in my arms. And that actually ended up being someone's lost and it was Microchip and we well, we were able to reunite it with its owner, so that was yeah, that was

like my gateway. It was like this long, beautiful, long haired Calico cat and it was like in the pouring rain, and it was like yeah, and then it like was like following us, like up the block and then I was like, okay, you come with me, and I just like pitched up and carried it home. And that's how

I rescued my first few cats. Actually, when I would be in the neighborhood like walking home from like a party drunk, and I would just like chase cats around and like grab them in my arms and carry them home. And then I like reached out to her rescue group and I was like, I got this cat, what do I do? Like, can you guys help me get it adopted?

And so then they kind of like took me under their wing and like taught me about n R. And so then I just slowly overtimed just sort of like grew and grew, and then I fostered for for that rescue that I reached out to, like once the cats that I had myself found God adopted. But then over time I kind of grew to the point of now people foster for me. I'm over the bad mentor though

don't tell anyone that. Like, everyone has their skill sets in this life, and I'm so grateful to the people the rescuers who you know, taught me everything that I know and like mentored me. But when it comes to like one on one, I'm not good at that. It's not my skill set. Do you feel like maybe you're like a cat and you like to operate alone a little bit? Definitely? I would say it's that's actually a

really common personality trait of cat rescuers. None of us have social skills, Like we're all definitely like a little bit introverted. There's exceptions, of course, but a lot of us, yeah, are like weird introverts who don't have social skills, and I definitely fit that stereotype of like I, yeah, we we like animals, and a lot of us don't, like don't necessarily aren't good with people. That's ups you know, I appreciate it.

or something. So yeah, so this box of meds alone is eight hundred bucks and I've been waiting for I need it, so I'm really glad I got it. But the thing also about this med is that it's not like legal in the United States. That's cannot prescribe it. That's will recommend the treatment, but they cannot prescribe it, so you have to get it from like the there's like a Facebook group where you can get like these

black market FIP drugs that are really expensive. So we're like, I got this box, I got to carry those six kids. Oh my god, there's something.

So I can appairently. I can be on time for cats, I just can't be on time for anything else. I have more than usual because I just have taken on ten kittens in a matter of like forty eight hours, so we're a little bit more than normal. Hopefully soon we'll get them ushered out into foster. So I have a three bedroom apartment, but I only have one roommate, so I have a cat room. So we're gonna set everyone up in the cat room right now, which you will see. I have a roommate for a really long time.

It's only been a cat room for like a year and a half, and it's been like the best thing ever. My apartment would be even here if I didn't have the cats. I definitely have had to like cater my life to the cats, obviously, but it's important to me to be clean and be q and this is my home, like I you know, I take pride in it. I do still have a social life. I have friends that are both cat rescuers and I have friends that don't

even particularly like cats. Dating wise, I mean, I am a very I've been single for a very long time. I've been single for like a decade. But it's not really related to the cats. Actually, it's just my personality. I'm an extremely independent person, so dating has always been not a priority even before the cats, and definitely the

cats are an issue. One thing, like the line I always I draw is that I don't like to have a guy spend the night if I have a litter box in my bedroom, because a lot of times I have a cat that'll be isolated to my bedroom for various reasons, which means there's a litter box in there, and so that's the way I draw the line. I'll have a guy over if I don't have a litter

box in my bedroom. But if I do have a litter box in my bedroom, then no men may enter my bedroom because I just you know, I just would be too insecure about it. I know, Pixel or this desk and all the kittens in the world, I'm not used to seeing a baby kitten with a cone on its head. She's the most pitiful kitten of all time. So Pixel had an abscess on her arm and she has to be in a cone for two weeks as a result, and I.