There’s a little slice of kitten heaven in Tammy Cross’ 450-sq-ft Beaux-Arts apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Tammy is the force behind Kitten Little Rescue, an organization that rescues sick, abused or abandoned kittens and showcases them on summer weekends at 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue, in the hope of finding adoptive or foster families for the wee ones.
Tammy often fields calls from the Center for Animal Care and Control, the city’s shelter, seeking to place strays that might otherwise face certain death. In her tiny apartment, 6 to 18 baby kittens — and once as many as 22 — are bottle fed and nursed back to health. An army of volunteers, along with contributions from the public, help sustain her rescue work.
Tammy has been living a life defined by cats ever since she came to New York about 30 years ago. Her cheery apartment hardly looks like a crazy cat lady’s habitat, but cats are indeed in residence. There’s a pile of cat toys beneath the sofas, whose white slipcovers are washable in case of accidents. Grey industrial carpet wraps a door frame, providing an ideal scratching post without sacrificing floor space. The bathroom functions as a nursery for kittens who are ill or very young or cannot eat on their own. Tammy pads around her apartment barefoot to avoid injuring the kittens who are constantly scampering everywhere.
Tammy has been rescuing, bottle feeding and tending to sick and injured kittens for over 18 years. A recognized expert in this field, she has taught classes on critical kitten care and bottle feeding at the ASPCA. In 2005, she received the Companion Animal Guardian Award and was recognized for her humanitarian help to animals by the animal welfare group ‘In Defense of Animals’. She has rescued and adopted out over 2000 kittens and cats.
A grey and white kitten found by a field technician in the J. C. Elliot Landfill in Corpus Christie, Texas, has been rescued and immediately put to work as head office cat. Rescuers named him Elliot after the landfill.
Like most youngsters, Elliot has had no trouble at all learning how to use the computer. Most days he can be found, like most office workers, surfing the interwebs and filing TPS reports. Don’t forget the cover sheet, Elliot!
Don’t forget! You can leave a comment on this post for an entry in The Cat’s Meow’s giveaway of a custom oil painting of your cat by Linden Alley.
Kittens are only kittens for a year, but this short time is the most significant stage of a cat’s development. It’s important for kitten owners to recognize how impressionable kittens are and arm themselves with tools and expert advice to ensure they give their kittens the best start in life.
As part of its continuous commitment to sharing professional and practical knowledge with cat owners, Purina Kitten Chow is launching a video series featuring Board Certified Veterinary Behaviorist, Dr. Karen Sueda that will be posted on kittenchow.com. The series, titled The Kitten Connection, is designed to quickly and easily show new – and even experienced – kitten owners tips, tricks, and advice that allow them to make the most out of the lives they share with their kittens.
“Kitten ownership can be one of the most rewarding experiences in life, so it’s worth it to prepare ahead of time for every aspect of kitten care,” said Dr. Sueda. “The Kitten Connection recognizes the importance of helping kitten owners raise a well-adjusted kitten because it eventually leads to a healthy, happy and well-mannered adult cat.”
The thirteen webisodes of “The Kitten Connection™” cover the following common kitten care topics:
Litter box training
Kitten-proofing the home
First days at home
Introductions to resident pets
Children and kittens
Managing a multiple cat household.
Shopping for Kitten Necessities
First Vet Visit
Kitten Nutrition
Kitten Health Check
Establishing Behavior Expectations
Proper Socialization with People
Making The Transition From Kitten to Adult
Each video is full of easy steps to help owners enrich their relationships with their kittens and create foundations of well-being for many years to come.
These videos are designed to provide kitten owners tips, tricks, and advice that allow them to make the most out of the lives they share with their kittens. Certified Veterinary Behaviorist Dr. Karen Sueda guides owners through easy steps to help enrich their relationships with their kittens and create foundations for many years to come.
Last week, we reported the story of Lackawanna, New York animal control officer Fred Grasso, who gunned down a mother cat and her kittens but was subsequently found innocent of all charges by a judge who ruled that Grasso’s actions were justified.
In Sunday’s Buffalo News, Donn Esmonde tells us the rest of the story… a tale of a loving and affectionate mother cat who was a welcome guest at neighborhood barbecues, and an out-of-control animal control officer who, despite an excuse that he thought the cats were rabid, dumped the bodies in landfill instead of preserving them for rabies testing:
by Donn Esmonde
The white blanket still is there, on the shelf in the basement storage unit. Jackie Ceccarelli laid it there last spring, soon after the gray cat— clearly pregnant—came in through the broken cellar window. It walked up to her, purring.
It was the start of a nice friendship, a friendship that continued as the cat bore six kittens on that same blanket. The friendship grew as Ceccarelli, 22, and others in the Lackawanna apartment complex fed and petted the new mother. The friendship expanded to include the pet’s attendance at backyard cookouts.
The friendship between the stray— abandoned when a family moved out— and residents in the brick, four-unit apartment buildings ended June 10. On that day, what sounds to me like an out-of-control animal control officer shot the mother cat dead in her basement home, along with two of the kittens.
Fred Grasso—responding to what residents think was a complaint about a different cat— claimed in court he acted after the “hissing” cat and kittens “came at me.” The very idea of an “attack cat” sounds bizarre to me. Nor can I fathom why a man with a .22-caliber rifle felt threatened by a 10- pound cat and 6-week-old kittens. Nor do I understand why an animal control officer who supposedly feared that the cats were rabid—as Grasso claimed— discarded the corpses in a landfill, instead of preserving the bodies for testing.
It gets worse. I recently went to the building where the cats were killed. Grasso—despite the possibility of a ricochet— fired the rifle in a cellar with concrete walls and floor, four furnaces, four water heaters and two apartments directly overhead.
West Seneca Judge Richard Scott last week—to the disbelief of Ceccarelli and other residents, to the outrage of SPCA officials—dismissed animal cruelty charges and said Grasso was justified in executing the cat and kittens. We got a decision, but not justice.
At very least, Grasso showed such massively poor judgment that he should be taken off the job. I would not want this guy carrying a loaded rifle in my neighborhood. Yet Lackawanna Mayor Norm Polanski put Grasso back on the street.
“Did he use poor judgment? I don’t know, I wasn’t in that basement,” Polanski said. “The judge said he did the right thing, and that’s where it ends in my eyes.”
Grasso’s attorney called the cat and kittens “feral cats . . . a wild cat family.”
That is not what I heard.
“We’d have cookouts, and the mother cat would sit with us and we’d pet her,” Ceccarelli, a service station manager, told me. “The kittens were the size of your hand . . . Nobody here was afraid of these cats.”
Patricia Murtha lives across the street. She met the “attack cat” when it rubbed against her while she was gardening.
“She’d let us pet her, and then she’d run back to the basement to be with her kittens,” said Murtha, 58, a nurse’s aide. “She was such an affectionate cat . . . None of us can believe the judge let [Grasso] go.”
Murtha saw Grasso go in the building that day with a rifle and a black garbage bag. The bag was full when he came out.
“He dropped the bag on the ground, like [the cats] were garbage,” Murtha said. “I cried when he told me he killed them . . . He said the other [four] kittens ran under the dryer, so he couldn’t get them.”
Grasso did not return a call for comment left on his answering machine.
The four surviving kittens, healthy and friendly, have since been adopted. But the mother cat and two kittens are dead. Fred Grasso, and his rifle, are back on the street.
Which ought to make for a lot of nervous animal lovers in Lackawanna.
This is reportedly not the first (and not likely the last) time that Grasso has gunned down an animal. According to the Buffalo News, Lackawanna resident Melanie Wojcinski claims that Grasso shot her 2-year-old Labrador, Shadow, in July 2003 and dumped the dog’s body in a creek near her home. Although the police report on Shadow’s death stated that Grasso had disposed properly of the body, children playing near Smokes Creek found the dog’s body in the creek.
Here’s the contact information for the judge in the case:
Judge Richard B. Scott
West Seneca Town Court
1250 Union Road
West Seneca, NY 14224
You can get your cute overload right here today — serving up a video of a litter of Cedar Rapids flood victim kittens and their ma who are up for adoption. The very pregnant mother was extricated from the mud during the flood cleanup, and afterward gave birth to seven kittens. An eighth joined the litter when it was found, mired in mud and abandoned by its mother. The rescued mother welcomed the orphan into her brood.
“Mud Mama” and the kits are up for adoption. Just call Canine Corner in Cedar Rapids at 319-366-3284. Or check out other adoptables at the Cedar Rapids Animal Shelter. Cats like Tinsley (left) are eager to find new homes See related Cat's Meow entries:
Kittens are only kittens for a year, but this short time is the most significant stage of a cat’s development. It’s important for kitten owners to recognize how impressionable kittens are and arm themselves with tools and expert advice to ensure they give their kittens the best start in life. 
that will be posted on kittenchow.com. The series, titled 
“Mud Mama” and the kits are up for adoption. Just call Canine Corner in Cedar Rapids at 319-366-3284. Or check out other adoptables at the 
