Photo provided Cat shelter maker Vickie Stover snuggles with one of her own cats at home.
As the weather has turned bitterly cold, Columbus native Vickie Stover’s heart has turned increasingly warm.
It has been that way for some time toward a group that she sees as innocent — and one that she feels needs love and protection.
They are cats without a home. She considers them especially significant in what she sees as a primarily dog-loving world.
She simply cannot stand the thought that, through no fault of their own, and often through human neglect and lack of responsibility, the sometimes very young feral animals are left to wander with no food, water, or warmth amid overnight temperatures that recently have dipped into the single digits.
She realizes that some families nonchalantly turn cats loose when an owner moves or dies.
“Despite what people may think, many of these cats are not accustomed to this kind of cold,” Stover said. “They’re also scared, sometimes soaking wet, and out of their element.”
So Stover, with the help of people such as Tom Burns, Tim Hughes and Joe Sanders, has been making free cat shelters — some large enough for three or four cats at a time — out of leftover and donated Styrofoam coolers — some provided courtesy of Columbus Regional Hospital. Stover then fills the coolers with donated straw from Jeff Gearhart and Pippa Dent for warmth. She has been been distributing them to people who request them for their neighborhood. Those people then agree to keep food and water at the boxed shelter site for the little nomads.
“When I drive through the city, I see kitties running loose everywhere,” she said.
Of course, she knows that some have homes as primarily outdoor pets. But some residents have told her that many of the cats have no one to care for them — a huge factor in a community in which the Bartholomew County Humane Society frequently has had more cats than it can comfortably shelter in recent years.
Stover’s voice cracks with emotion when she goes to the society’s building and sees cats reach out their paws to her from their cages. She grows even sadder when she hears of outdoor wandering cats being killed by cars, antifreeze, the cold, coyotes and more.
“They weren’t born just to die that horrible way,” Stover said.
Plus, she reads social media pages on the Next Door app and reads of wandering, homeless felines with no place to go — or of those who have run off temporarily and need protection, too.
“All they want is just to be loved,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking. And this involves nothing more than pure and simple kindness.”
Stover, who once dressed her childhood long-haired cat Susie in doll clothes and pushed her around in a baby buggy, is heartened by the work of others such as Julie Robbins, a longtime animal advocate (she offers a reminder that she loves people, too). Robbins has been a key area volunteer for several years taking cats for discount $30 spaying and neutering to Pets Alive in Bloomington for several years. Robbins said 325 cats have been fixed since April.
Robbins said that an Indianapolis-based agency, Pet Friendly Services, provides vouchers to cover the cost of the service. The sale of Pet Friendly license plates funds this.
“Often, people are happily feeding the (feral) cats,” Robbins said, including rural farmers in that group. “But they just don’t want them to reproduce. Most of the people I fix cats for right now are people who can’t afford” getting the animals spayed or neutered.
Generally, the price or neutering or spaying there is exponentially more expensive. A lot of people hear about Robbins’ work through word-of-mouth publicity, though she has marketed her volunteerism through business cards and more.
Generally, she returns free-roaming cats to the locale where she found them once they are fixed.
“Some are basically happy outside, especially like barn cats,” Robbins said.
But she wholeheartedly supports Stover’s work providing shelter for the outdoor felines.
“I don’t have any plans to quit,” Robbins said. “I guess this is my niche. For sure, I believe it certainly is.”
Mike Wolanin | The Republic A view of a cat shelter box made by Vickie Stover on the front porch of a home on California Street in Columbus.
