elizaskinner.net – the jambox

Everyone loves kittens, right? They are so cute! You’d have to be crazy to not want to help poor homeless kittens, right? And yet ironically, the only people who actually do rescue work with cats are completely batshit insane. Batshit, braless, ratty-haired crazies in cut-offs and ponchos, smoking Kools next to a cage full of feral cats on a street corner. I know, because I volunteered for them for 4 months one summer.

I couldn’t have cats in my apartment, but I missed owning one so I decided the next best thing was to volunteer somewhere I could work with them. Sort of like barren women who teach pre-school, I could at least pretend for a few hours a week. I found an animal rescue group online that was looking for volunteers, called up and spoke to Joan who rasped her way through a phone interview that sounded like her dying words. Joan decided I was good enough, and told me to meet her at an apartment on the Upper East Side that Saturday.

I wasn’t sure exactly what the job would entail. I imagined myself spending hours petting poor big-eyed cats, perhaps teaching a few how to love again, or bursting into apartments full of neglected kittens, wisking them away and clubbing their “owners” in the knees. This was way before A&E ever thought of “Hoarders” – I had no idea the world I was setting foot into.

That Saturday I met Joan and Peggy, the other half of the organization, outside of an apartment building that I assumed one of them lived in. They stood on the sidewalk – two leathery middle-aged women in acid-washed everything, Peggy picking the matted hair out of Joan’s necklaces. It turned out neither of them lived there - a friend had let Peggy borrow her apartment while she was away on vacation, and Peggy had packed it full of angry urine-soaked alleycats and open dishes of rotting cat food. Yay, cats! Peggy saved you from the mean old streets and yucky freedom! She brought you here, to this Xanadu of dashed cat dreams and misery. I held my breath and helped stuff a couple of cats into travel cages, thankful that I had worn long sleeves.

We trotted out to 86th street and set up a table on the corner and waited. I handed out literature and talked to people while Joan and Peggy smoked, bickered, and berated people who approached the cats. They hated everyone - the looky loos who poked their fingers at the cats like they were part of a tiny urban petting zoo, the assholes who ignored or mocked us, and worst of all the incompetants and animal abusers who wanted to adopt the animals. Have you ever owned a cat before? No? Incompetant! Yes? Did it ever get sick? Abuser. Did it eventually die? Abuser! Did you have to give it away, perhaps to your parents or an ex? SICK TWISTED ABUSER. No one was good enough for their feral and retarded cats. (My favorite was a retarded orange cat named Freddy – he drooled and obsessively cleaned his paws, and had a big fluffy tail!)

Peggy and Joan hated me and wanted to be bestfriends with me, which was weird but got way weirder when we all noticed this guy who kept coming by the table. Every weekend, he would stop by and play with the kittens, and tell us about his own cat, Lola. He was smart and funny, an author, a ju jitsu instructor, and a model. I swear to God I did not get concussed halfway through that sentence. He was an actual author/ju jitsu instructor/model – the oldest career combo in the book, right? And imagine how he probably looked. And imagine my total brain shutdown when it became clear that he was more interested in me than in the cats. After a few weeks he left me his business card and Joan and Peggy were so excited! We were going to go out with the cute guy! We?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.