Success Stories
Little MiraclesBeamer
Lucky!
An Earthquake in American Lives
Did you ever think about
being the answer
to someone’s prayers?
If you are a doctor, a policeman, maybe a counselor or pastor, sure, it’s easy to know at the end of the day that you made a real difference in someone’s life. But I also think animal rescue folks answer a lot of pleas for help and never think twice about it.
I sat out by my Saturday night patio fire and thought about how wicked I was this week – I yelled at a man for taking a kitten out of its cage, I sure fussed at the Teen Court kids for slacking off, and I won’t even tell the other stuff. I was struggling to redeem myself.
I started thinking about all the good little differences we all make, often without thinking about what we are doing. Sometimes people come in who just need a lift and somebody to hear their stories, or maybe they phone in with a problem. Have you ever listened to Gini or Deb or Arlene on the phone, heard how patient they are and how they try to offer a solution, and they thank the caller for trying to help an animal? I have. It’s very heartwarming sometimes. We all just need a listening ear and a kind word once in a while. Kitty City is a ministry as much as a pet place.
Think about folks who come in, rub a furry head and leave with a smile on their faces. Did we make a difference by having Kitty City open?
Consider those kids who work with us, sometimes pesky and sometimes so wonderful when they’ll take out trash or wash litter pans. I know that in the six years since Kitty City opened, we have made some real changes in a few young lives. I often think of the 15 year old recovering cocaine addict who found a new direction in her life a few summers ago while working with us. You can see it this summer in the growing confidence of our new kids. Without this place, without real summer jobs, without a chance to bloom, what happens to them? I remember being painfully shy as a teenager. I was 20 years old before I began to gain any self confidence, and it made my high school years hard. Are we making it easier for someone who can focus on a little kitten and learn to speak with authority?
Sometimes, just taking a minute to teach them or praise them makes all the difference in the world.
I thought about the difference Jimmie and Dave make in the community when they help these little old ladies capture the kitties they are feeding to spay them. They’ve counted new faces at the food bowl and want to nurture them, but they are afraid of the growing numbers. And I thought about the abandoned cats at the strip malls – do they have little kitty prayers that the families who left them because they outgrew cuteness will come back? Do Jimmie and Dave save them, or at least provide a little food and kindness?
Did Duke the Min-Pin have a little doggie prayer when he was left at the rest stop – Duke, who so loved sitting in laps and sleeping in chairs and having familiar voices around him, and Duke who had such a painful ear. Was Arlene the answer to Duke’s puppy pleas? Were Ed and Karen the joy in his life when they came in afternoons to walk him? Did the little girl he now sleeps with make him appreciate the hard times even more? I wonder what he dreams about.
How about all those kittens left in boxes, picked up on roadsides, found in trash dumps? I thought of how scared the little black mama cat must have been, hiding her babies under Mullis Music Store until she came to live with us. The hardest part is always deciding who gets to come into our program. What forces guide those decisions?
In particular, I think very often of Dizzy, put out at the Emergency Clinic as a teenaged kitty who found her way to live with us for almost a year. She was coping with life in her cage, but don’t you think that Charlotte is the real answer to her kitty prayers? She is so happy and content now.
Picture all those fuzzy little faces when our folks take an extra minute while scooping their litter boxes to rub a chin or cuddle them close. What do they ask of us? Food and water, yes, but also a little kindness, compassion, reassurance that good times will come. What do their faces tell you?
My favorite part of Kitty City is where we get to be the conduit that connects a frightened unwanted cat or dog with a human who so desperately needs that link to calmness and love. There are so many of those stories.
We all make a difference and Kitty City makes a difference in all our lives. What a miraculous place! Animal rescue people are the best.
I have a newspaper article on my desk that says animals have no souls, no spiritual values or connections, and they just exist at the mercy of humans. That’s an interesting thought.
It made the person who brought me the article very angry. My reply is, who am I to determine such weighty issues as souls and theology when it concerns a lot of humans as well as the animals. But she and I can safely agree, anyone who believes that possession of an extra pair of legs keeps you from having a guardian angel has never spent much time in animal rescue.
The perfect example of that is a little
black one-eyed cat named Beamer who currently lives at 
Kitty
City in Concord.
He won’t be there long, I think, as he has some special kind of
sweetness that
makes all visitors reach in to stroke his scarred little head. It’s
almost as
though rubbing Beamer gives you good luck, like rubbing the Buddha
statue’s
belly. I don’t know about that, but Beamer is most deserving of a few
good head
rubs.
Beamer was found on the side of the highway on a 95 degree day by a DOT worker who was picking up the body of his dead mother. The tiny kitten was injured, but alive. How many hardened sweaty guys picking up roadside debris have the heart to reach down and save a tiny black kitten who could barely mew because he was so thirsty? Clearly the guardian angel was working hard to send the perfect person Beamer’s way.
After a few bites of a hot dog, Beamer traveled to the only rescue who answered a phone call in the middle of the afternoon, and as luck would have it, I was there to give the okay for him to come to Kitty City. His story was just heartbreaking, but I didn’t really have much hope for him.
When I saw how badly damaged his eye was, I sent him straight to the best emergency vet I know with the expectation that Dr. Roberts would put him down mercifully. A head injury like that is no simple matter. But within the hour Dr. Roberts called and said “I can fix that.”
Sure, I answered, but can I afford that? Not to worry – the office staff had already fallen for Beamer’s story and started taking up a collection to pay for his surgery. The guardian angel was kicking into overtime. How could I deny this kitten the chance to survive?
So Beamer had the eye removed, his head scars are now growing fuzzy new hair, and he likely does not remember having vision on both sides of the head – just as we can’t see behind us, Beamer probably thinks that everyone only sees only what lies to the left side. He’s charmed everyone, and my folks walk around with him cradled like a little two-pound toy to see all the good things his life will offer him. I swear, that kitten has a face like a cherub.
Throughout the recovery, I kept thinking of a lovely young woman who worked with Dr. Roberts and who had such passion for helpless babies like this. Laura Beam passed away last spring, but I suspect that from her perch in the heavens, she has a special watch out for the helpless and the needy. It’s the sort of kitten Laura would have swept up and cuddled as she worked.
Several people tagged names on the little guy, but I had no doubt who he would be named for. I think his guardian angel just has to be Laura Beam. Who else would have sent the perfect DOT worker to bring this fellow to the right rescue and to guide him to her boss and her friends to touch everyone’s heart?
So do you still believe there’s no
spiritual connection looking out for animals? If you read the Bible,
you know
the verse about “His eye is on the sparrow.” Surely, Someone had an eye
out for
a plain little black kitten who needs that extra eye, any way he can
get
it. And surely, if Laura is looking out
for these helpless creatures, heaven is a pretty happy place.
Patsy Beeker -
June 2011
I was thinking about a name for a tiny kitten who came into Kitty City Saturday, and Lucky was the first thing that popped into my head.
Picture a poster kitten, big round eyes in a tabby face, only about 3 weeks old so the ears still cupped over. Those eyes stared into mine with clairvoyant knowledge that her life had just changed from sure death to hope as she sucked milk from her bottle.
Shortly after that the teen volunteers discovered the maggots, and I won’t go any further with her issues. I sent Adrienne and the kitten to the Emergency Vet Clinic for the shot that brings peace to suffering babies. Dr. Ashe called me back shortly with good news that the wound was far less severe than it appeared on her tiny body, and in fact, would I mind if the vet techs kept the kitten to raise until she was older and stronger? Wow, good news all around! My youth corp was extremely pumped.
Yes, Lucky seemed to fit her. But then I remembered the tiny puppy I wanted to call Lucky. Ed had scooped her up at a yard sale with a big sign advertising “Free Puppies.” She was too young to leave her mama too, but this was the lucky one – her siblings had just been carted off by a family who wanted to breed them.
I’ve seen the complications of breeding Chihuahua-sized bodies who have beagle-sized DNA in their gene pool. This little girl was indeed fortunate.
Doesn’t the moniker “Lucky” fit most of the cats and dogs in Kitty City? Just about every one of them, from feral kittens abandoned in the center of a busy street when Mama Cat freaked and ran from traffic, to the gorgeous Himalayan that just came in cramped inside a dirty carrier after being abandoned by renters who took the sofa but not the fur coat kid. The kittens who survived a hot ride in the engine compartment or were pulled up from a drainage pipe. What about those red pups who were doomed to fighting and inbreeding with the rest of the family until they landed at our place?
But hey, you want to talk about lucky? That’s me when I think about cleaning and feeding and running that place all by myself. I am so blessed to have such great volunteers.
Sometimes I cringe when the cranky or whiny ones come in to tell me how I should do business. Then other volunteers tell me the horrors going on in that volunteer’s personal life. How do these people cope with life? I have no problems, just inconveniences.
Many times they come so they can have the release of an hour or three just interacting with friends and non-judgmental cats who appreciate every gesture of kindness. Aren’t we fortunate to have a “therapy center” that is open for hours every day where somebody, at least one body, is happy to see you? And where someone, if not twenty or thirty, desperately needs you?
Kitty City has become so much to
so many.