Published: June 28, 2008 11:35 pm            

Unwanted no longer

Discarded cats find a good home at last

FAIRMONT — Jeff Burdoff has a “no cat left behind” kind of philosophy about cats.

The lifelong animal lover is making sure unwanted cats find a safe, loving home.

“I have a real calling for cats,” said Burdoff, treasurer of the Marion County Humane Society Inc. and former county employee.

First was Patch, the multi-color shorthair with a great big loving personality. She had two strikes against her when she allowed him to adopt her: She was about a year old and missing her right eye.

“The older a cat is, the less likely it is to be adopted,” he said. “Certain people out there want a perfect little cat, so I had to take her. She was just begging to be adopted.

“She just loves you. As soon as she finds a warm lap to sit on, that’s it. She’s there until it’s either time to eat or you get up.”

Next came V.

Originally thought to be a female, he was named Virginia.

“He was a fixed male” (oops) “so I shortened his name to V. He was in the paper. That’s the reason I went to the shelter,” Burdoff said.

“They told me he was the bipolar cat of the shelter. And to this day, he can be a loving cat sometimes, and then sometimes he’s moody and just doesn’t want to be around you.”

Two cats ... two buddies. A perfect set-up.

Ally, with the incredibly silky black-and-white coat and consistently pleasant personality, was the third to join the family.

“When I was at the shelter, she just stared at me from her cage. She didn’t meow or reach out or ignore me. She just stared. I saw that little black goatee of hers and ... .”

There was nothing else to do but bring her home. Now she greets him at the door at 5 p.m. and sleeps with him at night, even if he falls asleep on the couch.

Three cats. That’s enough. Right?

Not exactly. Two years ago this October someone told Burdoff of an adorable little orange — and orphaned — kitten.

“I said OK. I’m a huge Snoopy fan. I didn’t want to name him Pumpkin, like you do orange cats. But I said, Halloween, orange ... Linus! And it fits him.”

Four cats. That’s a lot of kitty litter.

Then came Bella, a demure little tortoiseshell he rescued from the brink of starvation.

“She was nothing but bones. You could see the bones under her fur. But as soon as I picked her up, she started purring.”

The vet checked her out and then the four Burdoff cats checked her out. She passed both tests.

Five cats. Hopefully, the vet gives group discounts.

Autumn came twice to the Burdoff house last year ... once on the calendar and again in the form of Autumn, the still-painfully shy long-haired tortoiseshell with folded ears. When he found her, she was so hungry she’d been eating string and birdseed, and, for some reason, was afraid of black shoes.

Six cats. With six you get catnip.

Enter Noah. A mere slip of a white kitten, he survived an attack that killed a litter mate. Here for only a week, he’s the new cat on the block.

“But it’s like he’s been here forever,” Burdoff said. “I wanted a name for a survivor. And one of the greatest survivors, in a biblical sense, was Noah.”

Cat number seven. (What, does this guy have stock in Purina?)

These are strictly indoor pets, all spayed or neutered, with all the necessary tests and shots that make a cat happy and healthy.

Rather than buy a purebred cat, he’s adopted these characters for a reason, he said.

“When you go to the shelter, you see how many cats are there. If everybody took just half an hour to go there and pet those cats that want to be petted, that’s that much better time they have to spend than they otherwise would.”

“It’s unusual for a guy to be a cat person,” he admitted. But then, he’s been an animal lover all his life. Burdoff was petless after leaving home as he moved from apartment to apartment. When he started working for the Marion County Commission, he began building his first house, in Colfax.

That’s when he found Hobbes, a large tabby who wandered into the courthouse one day.

“I loved that cat. He was such an interesting cat. But it wasn’t until I got three cats that I really realized something.

“I always encourage people if you get one cat, get two. They can have

someone to play with and cats need to play. Plus, it’s amazing how different their personalities are.

“The stereotypical way people look at a cat is it’s just this thing that sits over there and you call it and it doesn’t come.”

Well, his cats come when called ... “depending on their moods,” he said with a smile.

He likes the independence of a cat. He feeds them twice a day and cleans out the litter box.

“Other than that, they like it when I’m home but when I’m not home, they’re perfectly fine as well.

“My cats have spoiled me. They’re just so easy to take care of. They have me very well-trained. They pretty rule the house ... which they think is theirs ... which it really is.”

He’d like to have a cat or two at work, but he’s afraid they’d get out.

“I would just die if they got hit or had to battle with feral cats.”

While his kitties have a safe, permanent home, their brothers and sisters at the shelter — and even the feral cats that prowl and hunt the nearby woods — are in desperate need of homes.

“I saw this ad in the paper that said 25 percent off kittens. And here we are with 70-plus cats at the shelter. Why would anyone go out and buy a pet when you can rescue a cat whose life in danger?”

That count includes the box of seven little kittens dumped off at the base of the shelter’s driveway on Route 19.

“At least they put it there. They could have just tossed the kittens out. But now we have seven more cats that we don’t know their condition or history and have to take care of.”

With no funding from the city or county, the no-kill shelter has to subsist on donations.

“And it’s hard to come with all the money to keep it operating,” he said.

“I guess I put animals on a higher pedestal than people. I feel more comfortable with them.”

He would like to build an outdoor area at the shelter for the cats to play in and get fresh air and sunshine,

“Cats are so interesting and so smart and so fun to watch, especially in a group,” he said. “I’m fascinated every day.

“I can come home and sit here and just watch them playing. They’re little terrors sometimes. Linus loves that hallway,” he said, pointing to the long, hardwood hall.

“I was so excited when I took up the carpet and put flooring down. I knew that the first thing I’d be seeing would be cats flinging themselves down the hallway and not being able to stop and sliding into whatever.”

The Burdoff Gang is kind of mellow today.

“They’re not in play mode,” Burdoff said. “If they were, you’d see Linus and V all-out tackle each other.

Queen of all she surveys, Patch will sometimes deign to groom the other cats, both purring contentedly. When she’s had enough, she’ll growl slightly and the show’s over.

“She’d be completely OK by herself,” Burdoff said. “She generally gets along with the others, but she’s her own little cat.”

Ally proves that beauty has its rewards.

“She’s the most spoiled cat there is. She doesn’t like being down on the floor when she eats, so her bowl is up by the sink. And she has no fear in the world. She must have had a good experience before she ended up at shelter. She is the most pleasant cat.”

Linus likes to paw at the water, take a drink and do it again, while Ally will smack the water to see how far she can make it splash.

It’s time to break out the bubble wand, and suddenly Noah and V hightail it to the cat condo to join Patch, Linus and the reclusive Bella. (Ally is napping in her little cat bed and Autumn is still hiding out under Burdoff’s bed.)

“They’re like your own little tigers,” he said. “Every cat you see, they don’t all look alike. Even if you take the color away, they have different faces and ways of looking at you.

“If fortune smiles on me, maybe some day I’d like to have a small cat rescue here. Nothing elaborate or fancy, but it would have condos for cats that don’t like to be around other cats.”

Sometimes the stories and calls they get about animals are stomach-churning.

“Somebody threw two kittens against a wall,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “From what I understood, he’s going to charged with a felony. One will require $700 of surgery. The other died.

“As a humane society, we need to follow that story and make sure the prosecutor prosecutes as much as he can and put this guy in prison.

“For somebody to take a little kitten and throw it against a wall ... . I couldn’t tell you if I walked into a situation like that what I would do to that person. I cannot tolerate that. These animals don’t bother anybody.”

Like any parent, Burdoff worries about his “children.”

Ally developed a twist in her intestine that was easily fixed.

“She’s been fine ever since, but that scares me to death. How did it happen and when can it happen again?”

And like anyone owned by a cat, Burdoff has been given treasured “presents” by his furry children ... mice, bunnies, a flying squirrel, even a snake.

There is Cat 7 1/2, a black cat living in the woods across from Burdoff’s house that he’s been feeding off and on for the past four or five years.

He just kind of disappeared, then showed up again about three months ago, his front leg badly damaged.

“I bounced it around: Should I trap him and get him fixed? But I wasn’t able to keep him in here, so what was I going to do with him? He’s a feral cat. He’ll sit on the porch when I go out. He watches me, so he’s not afraid of me, but if I made a step toward him, he’d take off.”

But the cat is a survivor and his leg is healing. Burdoff feeds him wet food every morning to make sure he gets water.

“When he finishes, he stares in the window and then hops back into the woods.”

So, for now, Burdoff has only seven cats. But, like a certain gelatin dessert, there’s always room for more.

E-mail Debra Minor Wilson at dwilson@timeswv.com.

        

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