Fostering Cats

Illinois woman has been foster mother to more than 100 cats

February 9th, 2009 |

Author: admin

By Donna Vickroy
The (Tinley Park) SouthtownStar

BLUE ISLAND — Oddly, the cat woman’s reputation started with a dog. An ornery purebred Scottish terrier, to be exact.

Tammy Gray had been volunteering at Peoples Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) in Tinley Park for just a few months when she learned shelter staffers wanted to put an 8-week old dog to sleep because they believed it was too mean to be adopted.

“They said he was loco,” recalled Gray, a Blue Island resident.

“I told them I used to have a Rottweiler so I could probably handle him,” she said.

Gray, 50, took the dog home and he quickly bonded with her two other dogs. Outside the confines of the shelter, the canine seemed fine. Gray also discovered that the animal had a broken tail.

“He’d come from a puppy store and someone probably closed the cage on his tail,” she speculated. “That’s why he was so mean he was in pain.”

Within days, Gray deemed her new pet Oliver a keeper.

That was 2½ years and 110 cats ago.

Since that day in May of 2006, Gray’s home has become a veritable way station for injured cats and newborn kittens who need extra love and care until they’re capable of being adopted.

She averages about 14 kittens at a time, all of them needing round-the-clock attention. The babies need to be bottle or syringe-fed every few hours. They need to be bathed. And, in some cases, they need to be stimulated to urinate because some don’t know how yet, Gray said.

“You have to be with them all the time,” she said. “I’ve brought them along to Fourth of July events, birthday parties and funerals.”

She’s known as that crazy cat lady to family and friends, she said. Even feral cats in the neighborhood hang out Read the rest of this entry »