A Cat Tale
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Gardenia Janssen Animal Shelter Director Tiffany Reid holds Puffy, who is happy and healthy and a far cry from how he looked when he arrived at the shelter covered in tar (photo downpage). Photo by Jeff Wick -
This cat was brought to the Gardenia Janssen animal shelter June 6 covered in tar and fighting for his life. Brooke Ramon and Tiffany Reid worked for hours that night trying to remove the tar.
Sometimes the right collection of caring people come together – and it makes all the difference.
On Saturday June 6 a man who lives at The Carter Motel in La Grange found one of the stray cats he had befriended covered in tar from head to tail.
Around the motel, the gray striped cat is called “Jackson” by some and “Little Boy” by others. But this night the friendly neighborhood cat was in trouble.
“It was like somebody had thrown him in tar and I quickly realized that this cat was going to die if I didn’t do something,” said the man, who wanted to remain anonymous.
He called the animal shelter, but it was closed.
So he called 911 and prayed that God would send him “the right officer.”
That prayer was answered when La Grange police officer Steven Haynie arrived.
“He’s got a reputation of being an animal lover,” the man said. “He put him in his police cruiser and said he was going to get help.”
Haynie called the animal shelter’s new executive director Tiffany Reid, who met him at the shelter that Saturday night. Reid got the advice of local vets, Dr. Hatfield and Dr. Welch and it was decided the best course of action was to use baby oil and mineral oil to slowly and methodically remove the tar.
All involved were skeptical of a good outcome because they were worried the cat may have already ingested a fatal amount of tar trying to lick it off its fur.
Reid said she, and others, suspect this was a malicious act done to try to hurt the cat.
When Brooke Ramon, the shelter’s kitten foster coordinator, heard about the cat, she rushed to the shelter that Saturday night too.
Ramon and Reid worked from 8 p.m. to about midnight cleaning and recleaning the cat, alternating the oils and Dawn dish soap baths for the cat. Reid said Ramon did 99-percent of the work.
They had the cat’s head covered for their safety, but they wouldn’t have needed to do so.
“He did so good as we were cleaning him,” Reid said. “He could tell we were trying to help him. He never tried to bite.”
Over the next few days the cat, which the folks at the shelter renamed Puffy, has continued to get better and better.
Reid and Ramon bonded with him so much that they’ve decided to keep him at the shelter as a sort of mascot.
Every time Reid sees him, she’s struck by all the things that had to go right for Puffy to survive.
“This is what we are here for ... nobody through this whole process felt like this was just a cat,” Reid said.
“I just can’t thank them enough,” said the man at the Carter Motel, whose quick thinking jump-started a group effort to save the cat’s life. “From Officer Haynie, to Tiffany to Brooke, they are all angels.”