Ben Madilynn
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Like many a mythic heroine, her past is shrouded in mystery.
We only know that her pluck and perseverance must have kept her afloat until recently when, neglected and unwanted, she found her way to a network of benevolent strangers. Their kindness sustained her until, at long last, she reached the zenith: a loving home to finally call her own.
And that is how Cass Streeter-Zervitz, a.k.a. Mama Cass, a.k.a. Cass Elliot, a.k.a. Mamacita Cassarita, a.k.a. Bobo Jones, came to be snuggled into her new favorite hiding spot under the sideboard in my upstairs hallway, purring at me until I make her breakfast. So I’d better make this quick.
Our new calico cat, who became part of our family about three weeks ago, is one of roughly 12,000 animals that will come through the Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) this year. As with Cass, we don’t always know what their lives were like before they got there. But it’s easier to write the rest of their story if we help provide a happy ending.
“The message isn’t all doom and gloom,” said Bailey Deacon, director of philanthropy and communications at BARCS. The shelter is adopting out a record number of pets, but they can’t keep up with the number coming in. “The community is stepping up. We’re just running out of room.”
Deacon said there’s a high volume of animals in BARCS’ shelters and foster homes, which is common in summer and early fall. “We get 30 to 35 new animals a day, from the moment we open to the moment we close,” she explained. “The population really can change minute to minute.”
That’s why she likes when the public visits in person, during regular hours at the shelter and at live adoption events there and in the community. Just like with human dating apps, a photo on a website can’t always tell you the full story (though I imagine most cats and dogs aren’t posting purposely misleading 20-year-old selfies from when they had more hair).
“There are people who go in thinking ‘I’m looking for this specific breed, this age,’ and [if] they don’t see it on the website, they don’t come down,” she said. “But what happens all the time is that they come in looking specifically for a small young dog, but they’re going home with a 90-pound dog that’s six years old, because they fell in love.”
We certainly wound up with a different cat than we’d planned. This is the first time I’ve formally adopted a pet, having found my previous three kitties through what’s colloquially known as the cat distribution system, where felines just kind of show up in your life and claim you.
I went on the BARCS site hoping to find a young, scrappy female, perhaps 1 or 2 years old, who might be an enthusiastic mouser and grow up alongside my son, Brooks. But then we saw the beautifully unimpressed face of an 8-year-old, 22-pound calico called Mama Cass because she, like her talented namesake, is a gorgeous lady of size from Baltimore.
“Do you think she can move enough to catch mice?” Brooks asked, observing Cass’ substantial belly. I wasn’t sure, but we didn’t care. Something about her fluffiness, and the fact that older kitties are less likely to be adopted than younger ones, compelled us to email BARCS. They connected us with Lisa Geiger, director of marketing for Federal Realty Investment Trust, the leasing agency for The Avenue at White Marsh, where Cass had been living for about three weeks as their office cat.
“We all love animals,” said Geiger, whose property sponsored a pet adoption event this summer and asked what else they could do to help. Funny you should ask, she was told: There was an older, very large cat who was unhappy and cramped in her confines at BARCS. Would they consider fostering her?
The answer was an immediate yes, and by the end of her time in the office, Cass had become the official greeter, sometimes wandering to the cat gate erected for her so she could watch the birds and passersby. It was clear how much the staff loved her when we went to meet her, but all of them have pets at home and couldn’t take another.
This is what we know about Cass’ life before she came to BARCS and then to Geiger: She was surrendered to Baltimore City’s Office of Animal Control by a woman who said that when she rented a new home, she’d discovered “there was a cat there,” Deacon said. “She never wanted a cat and could no longer care for the cat, who she said peed all over the house.”
I’m not sure I believe all of that. I don’t know how you’d accidentally find a 22-pound cat who talks as much as Cass living in your new home before you rented it. She is super hard to miss. She’s been very fastidious about her litter box habits since she’s been with us, but if the peeing thing is true, it’s likely because she was stressed, which can happen if a cat — or a human — senses they’re unwanted.
I assure you she is absolutely, positively wanted in the Streeter-Zervitz household. We have, however, made the decision not to call her Mama Cass. The late singer has one of my favorite voices — I sang “Dream A Little Dream” to my son as a baby — but I didn’t love that my new furry feline’s name was about her weight.
We’ve also had to correct people online who have fat-shamed our cat, which Geiger said happened when she was at their office, too. “We would have the door open and people would walk by and talk about how fat she was,” she said. “They couldn’t see us, because we were not directly visible. But every time, we would yell, ‘Hey! She can hear you!’”
Cass, as Fergie once sang, is working on her fitness, both through diet food and living in a three-story house whose steps she gladly climbs when things get noisy or she hears the bag of kibble shaking. It’s taken a few weeks but Cass is finally exploring, letting us pet and scratch her more. She’s even killed at least one mouse, and left it in the doorway of the guest room where she hangs out — perhaps as a warning to any others. (We have legit not seen another mouse since.)
Geiger noted that adoption fees for pets 5 years old and above, like Cass, are waived at BARCS. The truth is we love her enough that the cost wouldn’t have mattered.
We’re not sure if Cass totally loves us yet. I cannot ask her how she feels about our home or her old life. We just hope she comes to enjoy her new one.
