Nina Malkin - Unlikely Cat Lady: Feral Adventures in the Backyard Jungle

i would like to thank all the people whove lent support and assistance to this feral adventure. Byran Kortis and Meredith Weiss of Neighborhood Cats, Jude Lassow-Sunden of Muffins Pet Connection, Rosemary Padua Kassel Stolzenberg, Gini Sikes and David Conrad, Matt Morgan and Amy Nathanson, Ashley DeVries, Faye Chiu, everyone at the Animal Clinic of Bay Ridge and the Prospect Park Clinic, Joe Hinkley and family for being such tolerant neighbors, and Mexicana Car Service. I would also like to thank my agent, the indomitable Laura Dail, and my editors, Ann Treistman and Maureen Graney, for their caring touch and guidance. Finally, much as I may blather, I have no words to accurately express my gratitude to Jason Shealy StuttsIll have to do so in kibble uh, kisses.

If this book has inspired you to do your part to reduce the feral cat overpopulation problemand not, you know, run screaming in the opposite directionyou dont have to DIY TNR. There are people who will help. To find a feral cat advocacy group in your area, start by plugging feral cats and your state into a search engine. Also try your local Humane Society or ASPCA. Check out the list below:

Humane Society of the United States (www.hsus.org)

SPAY USA (www.spayusa.org)

Alley Cat Allies (www.alleycat.org)

Neighborhood Cats (www.neighborhoodcats.org)

(Los Angeles) The Feral Cat Alliance (www.feralcatalliance.org)

(Santa Cruz) Project Purr (www.projectpurr.org)

(Denver) Rocky Mountain Alley Cat Alliance (www.rmaca.com)

(New Haven) Greater New Haven Cat Project (www.orgsites.com/ct/gnhcp)

(Miami) The Cat Network (www.thecatnetwork.org)

(Tampa) Fix and Feed Feline Feral, Inc. (www.fffelineferal.com)

(Northwest Georgia) The Sterile Feral, Inc. (www.thesterileferal.org)

(Honolulu) Cat Friends (www.hicatfriends.org)

(Champaign) Champaign Area Trap Spay Neuter and Adoption Program (www.catsnap.org)

(Statewide) Massachusetts Animal Coalition (www.massanimalcoalition.org)

(Ann Arbor) TLC/For the Love of Cats (tlconline.org)

(Raleigh) Operation Catnip (www.operationcatnip.org)

(Satewide) Pet Over-Population Prevention Advocates, Inc.

(POPPA) (www.poppainc.org/spayneuter.asp)

(Central Pennsylvania) Paws of PA (www.pawsofpa.org)

(Knoxville) Knoxville Feral Cat Friends (www.knoxvilleferalcatfriends.org)

(Austin) Austin Feral Cats (www.austinferalcats.org)

(Arlington) Metro Ferals (www.metroferals.org

brooklyn likes to brag about its diversity. But Brooklyn is huge. Two-point-five million people huge. More souls than San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, and St. Louis combinedjust not necessarily in a blender. I know all about itIm a native, born and raised in one of Brooklyns homogeneous zones, survivor of an adolescence that viewed Saturday Night Fever as cinema verit. That same area, my old hood, remains homogeneousa whole different kind of homogeneous, a full-180 homogeneous, parallel-universe homogeneous. The tip of East Flatbush known as Flatlands was pretty much exclusively Jewish and Italian back then; today it could be called Little West Indies (and I doubt the proximity to Jamaica Bay has anything to do with it). Yet it was the promise of Brooklyn-as-melting-pot that brought me home-after thirteen years in Manhattan, interspersed by a seven-year hitch in LAwhen I fell in love.

Jason Shealy Stutts was my boyfriend then, hes my husband now; we wanted to live together and figured, what the helllets mortgage ourselves up the wazoo and get a house. We wanted a brownstone, chockablock with original details like tin ceilings and hardwood floors, mantelpieces in every room. We also wanted what seemed to be a diametrically opposed domicile-one we could afford. But beyond charming touches and square footage and feasible down payments we wanted to live in a place where everyone looks different. That way, wed be more likely to blend in. Dont be alarmedIm not the Nina the Bearded Lady, hes not the Jason the Fish-Head Boybut most folks would consider us an unconventional couple. So we came house hunting here, to the borough of my birth, heeding Brooklyns rainbow boast.

Well, we know there are parts of Brooklyn that are still all white because we looked there. We know there are sections that are still all black because we looked there, too. We didnt belong in those places. We found where we belong in Sunset Parksimply Sunset, to us localsand if you take a walk around here youll see why Brooklyn has bragging rights. Some people will tell you Sunset is largely Latin, or largely Chinese. Im telling you that on our block every race, color, and creed except maybe Martian represents, plus all sorts of mix-and-mash cross-cultural pollinations as well.

Including, I am pleased to report, calico.

Its the day after Thanksgiving, and boy, am I thankful. Yesterday I fed a dozen people, with no runs to the emergency room. A big deal, since the turkey was in the oven seven hours and the juices refused to run clear. The juices, in fact, were running the color of cranberry juice. Pretty much the same color as the Code Red anxiety attack I valiantly sought to hold at bay. Among the guests was my new mother-in-law, Janelle, the sort of southern woman who makes everything from scratch, who not only owns Junior League cookbooks but contributes to them as well. This was the first time Janelle would eat something Id prepared, and it was only Thanksgivingaka The Most Important Meal of the Year. And lets be real: Im a New York Jew, one year her junior and sixteen years older than her son, so probably not the daughter-in-law she always envisioned.

The planets of the culinary cosmos ultimately aligned in my favor after I cranked the oven to eleven. Half an hour later, better late than never, I pulled out the bird to find that the popper had not only popped, it had exploded, blackened. The meat thermometer was off the charts. And the juices? What juices, we dont need no stinking juices.

Was I thankful? Damn skippy. In fact, Thanksgiving was the icing on my cake of thankful. This had been a banner year for me. Not that I didnt have a life beforegreat guy, steady job, nice apartment, plus all the people I cared about were healthy. But this year my first-ever functional relationship led to the altar (well, City Hall), and I found my dream house. Yeah, it was all good. Dinner was served, with no casualties to report.

So now its the following morning and Im waiting for Jason, Janelle, and her husband, Mike, to get their act together. The plan is to walk to Bay Ridgeabout a mile, or as we say in Brooklyn, a coupla blocksget slabs of Sicilian at Ginos, then poke around the two Salvation Armies nearby. (Jason and I are big thrift-shoppersthere is little in our wardrobes, not to mention our arts and crap home decor, that wasnt gently broken in for us by others.) Im chomping at the bit, so I wait outside, sitting on the stoop while in-laws arrange sweaters and scarves. Soon the stone steps chill my butt cheeks, so I get up to dispose of some of the advertising flyers that attach themselves to our iron gate like theyre printed on magnets instead of paper, and whoa! hey! holy crap! whats that?