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| RANDALL BEACH A friend to needy felines tries to turn yowls to purrs |
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| If you
knock on the door of the Greater New Haven Cat Project, Cheryl DeFilippo
will hold it open just a crack, so you can scoot inside before one of the
cats scoots outside. The small storefront at 965 State St. has cages from floor to ceiling. But on Saturdays, when the center is open, the cats are romping around the room, enjoying the visitors and assorted scratching posts. DeFilippo is here every Saturday, helping to match humans with cats, to create more of what she calls "happy endings." For most of these cats, the earlier chapters are not pretty. "It’s very distressing to see how animals are treated," said DeFilippo, who is president of the project’s board. She recalled a horrific scene at a house on Winthrop Avenue. "The family removed the mom but left the cats inside," DeFilippo said. "They had no food or water. "We got a phone call about a week later," she said. "We found 10 cats locked in one flea-infested, feces-infested room. Two of them were dead." But here comes the happy ending for the other eight cats: the project placed three of them in new homes, one is in a foster home and the remaining four are in the center, in good health, awaiting adoption. "When you take them in, get them medical care and bring them back to life," DeFilippo said, "it’s very rewarding." She knows some people think of animal volunteers as "a bunch of women who sit around, drink coffee and talk about animals. But we’re out there in not such good areas of New Haven, in the rain and snow, rescuing and trapping." On a recent evening, the project volunteers trapped 40 feral (wild) cats, gave them medical attention and spayed or neutered them. The healthy ones were returned to their colonies. DeFilippo said Connecticut will remain in a "cat crisis" until more people realize their cats must be sterilized. She noted one cat can have three litters per year, producing up to about 17 kittens. City and town officials as well as cat owners need to recognize this and start taking action, she said. Meanwhile, the project gets by through individual donations, bake sales and an anonymous donor who has set up a "trust fund" in honor of a cat named Phoebe. DeFilippo, who devotes about 30 hours every week to the project and fields a dozen calls every night at her home, is paid absolutely nothing. She notes the core of 20 volunteers aren’t paid anything either. "I’m driven," she said. "Animals are basically defenseless. They need people to speak for them and represent them when they’re abused." DeFilippo, 41, attempts to set aside Sundays for her family: her husband and their four cats, give or take another foster cat or two. "I’m trying to have my own life," she said, turning to deal with a woman whose cat had recently died from kidney failure. The woman was there to adopt a cat. But then, remembering her old cat, she burst into tears. DeFilippo consoled her. After the woman departed without adopting, DeFilippo said, "It’s tragic when you lose a pet. There is a void. I lost one of mine to feline leukemia." When that cat, Simpson, passed away in 1999, DeFilippo heard about the cat project and became a foster parent. She quickly became consumed by the project’s work. "I’d gone to law school to do something good," said DeFilippo, who is a Yale administrator. "This organization enabled me to do that." She and the other volunteers strive to keep in focus their mission of helping animals while dealing with the daily details. This occasionally means handling nasty, demanding people. "Sometimes people just leave cats in a box outside our door," she sighed. "It’s terrible." When a cat is adopted, DeFilippo confessed, she often has become so attached to the creature that she cries. "But our job is to find them permanent homes," she said. "If I didn’t keep that in mind, I’d have 40 cats — and no husband." To join the volunteer brigade or visit the center, call 782-CATS.
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| İNew Haven Register 2003 |
