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Chapter 10. Linya" -- Initiation Into Rescue
One of the more enjoyable pleasures I shared with my daughter, Tara during warm weather was taking our dog, Heidi to Carl Shurtz Park and walking along the promenade that overlooks the East River. We often brought our camera and took pictures, while sharing light, warm conversation.
It was on the way back from one of these walks one evening that we noticed a couple of hungry looking tabby cats at the top of some stairs of a service entrance leading behind a high-rise building on East 86th Street near York Avenue. A friendly doorman introduced himself and told us about the cats.
"I try to feed them." Tony told us. "But, I am worried about them. The super of the building has poisoned several of them. He hates cats." "That's terrible," I said to Tony. "I am not sure what we can do, but I will try to get some help for these cats."
Although the cats came close to us, we could not pet them. There were about 6 to 8 cats and several kittens according to Tony. Over the next few weeks, I tried to gain their trust by bringing food each night. I began to know the cats and kittens and gave them names. But, I could not touch any of them.
I started to make calls to various "no kill" shelters, but all of them told me they were either full or did not take strays. I didn't know how to get any of the cats because I could not get close enough to any of them to pick up and put in a carrier. I was at a loss on how to help these cats or prevent them from being poisoned.
Then, one of the calls I made yielded me the name, "Mary Bentley." "Call this woman. She works with strays and perhaps can help you," I was told matter of factly.
Mary was a pleasant looking woman in her forties who was a volunteer for a small no kill shelter in Manhattan named, "I Love Cats." I explained the situation to her and she offered to come with me one night to figure out a game plan. "It sounds like you are going to need a humane trap," she told me.
Mary offered to help me catch the cats and kittens, but I would have to be responsible to vet and "socialize" some of the animals. She explained that the cats were "feral" and would need to be confined to a small space or cage in order to be handled and socialized. She would ask her shelter to take a couple of the cats and she knew of another woman named Mary Tate who might take a cat or two. We began to get a plan together.
We arranged with Tony to give us access to the back yards of the building and he agreed not to give the cats any food on the days or nights we were going to trap. The cats would have to be hungry enough to go into a Have-A-Heart trap (a cage-type device that, when a cat steps on a peddle inside to obtain food, the door closes, "trapping" the cat inside).
The first time we set the trap on a Saturday afternoon, we caught a cat I had never seen. "Gee, I don't know this cat," I said to Mary. "She seems scared."
"There are always more cats than you actually see," Mary told me. "We should cover the trap now, so the cat will calm down. Then, take her down to the vet."
The trap was covered with a heavy towel when I got on a bus to go downtown. The cat would be spayed, tested and vaccinated. While sitting on the bus, I decided to take another peek at the cat inside the trap. She peered out at me with big, frightened, green eyes. I named her, "Linya."
Like the novice that I was, I decided that perhaps Linya would feel better if I attempted to pet her. I put my finger through the bars of the trap in effort to comfort the petrified feline. In the flash of a second Linya's teeth clamped down hard on my finger, seemingly chomping to the bone.
I quickly withdrew my hand to note heavy bleeding on my right index finger. I was bleeding all over the place as horrified bus passengers looked on. A woman sitting next to me reached in her purse and gave me a big wad of Kleenex. Within minutes the blood soaked through the mounds of Kleenex. I then tried to wrap part of the towel around it. And still, it kept on bleeding.
I began to have fantasies of bleeding to death on the bus. I couldn't wait to get to the damned vet. Why was this bus so slow?
It seemed like forever before I finally got to my destination. I practically ran into the vet's office, still bleeding profusely.
"Is there something you can recommend for this?" I anxiously asked the vet showing him my bleeding hand. "Go next door and get a bottle of alcohol and soak your hand, " he said casually while taking the cat in the trap.
I ran into the drugstore, bought a bottle of alcohol and stuck my bleeding finger in the bottle. The stinging solution quickly turned bright red. I stood outside the vet's office more than a half hour soaking my hand in the solution, practically seeing my life pass before me.
Was this "it?" I wondered to myself. Would I simply bleed to death on a NYC street corner? God, what had I gotten myself into? Will the bleeding ever stop? I was one step away from sheer panic.
My hand bled for more than an hour when the bleeding finally slowed and then ceased.
I felt like I had just been given back my life. "Thank God, " I said and threw away the bottle of bright red alcohol. I then headed back home with my hand quickly swelling.
That night I told Mary about the incident on the bus. "That cat is going to be too feral for you to try and socialize," she told me. "The fact you never saw her before and that she bit that hard means we should let Mary Tate take her."
Mary Tate was a retired woman in her early 60's who owned a small building in the East 80's and took in cats that could not find placement. No one seemed to know how many cats Mary had, nor the quality of care the animals received, but sometimes desperate means called for desperate measures. I didn't know what to do with "Linya." I was now scared of the cat who had almost taken off my finger.
I called Mary Tate and she agreed to take Linya. She was a very soft spoken woman who had no qualms about taking a cat who practically severed a limb. "She's just scared," Mary said to me. "I will let her run free here with all the others. It will be fine."
Two days later I delivered a spayed Linya to Mary. She met me outside her building and quietly took the cat, assuring me everything would be OK.
This time I did not attempt to pet Linya.
Over the next couple of weeks, my entire hand and part of my arm swelled and turned all the colors of the rainbow. It was difficult for me to do my job and the pain was intense. But, I was grateful that I hadn't bled to death on a street corner and looked on the incident as a "learning experience."
And though I have rescued hundreds of strays since that first experience with "Linya," I never forgot the cat in the trap with the large frightened eyes.
Linya was my initiation into the bizarre, often unpredictable world of animal rescue.
Never take anything for granted.