URGENT, URGENT: Please give Ari a home!

Claudia Vecchio, 19/05/2012
Founder of ORA

ARI was rescued in 2005 thanks to the Neighbourhood Cat Watch Program. This program provides logistic support to people who have stray and feral cats in their neighbourhood and are willing to cooperate with ORA to help them. The cats are sterilized and vaccinated and if tamable are placed in foster homes, otherwise they are returned to where they were originally picked up and the neighbours take care of feeding and looking after the released cats.

TNR (Trap Neuter and Return) is a practice universally used to provide a better life to the strays, ensuring regular checks and feeding - and no procreating. Feral cats are happier living outdoors rather than being taken indoors and having to live in strict contact with the humans whom they fear and mistrust.

Obviously released cats are still exposed to the risk of being killed in traffic or by dogs and wildlife and sometimes they may suffer abuse from people intolerant of animals.

Ari was part of a group of stray cats TNRed in Toronto's West end in a cat-unfriendly area. A neighbourhood leader with rescue experience took charge of deciding which cat, deemed tamable, should be housed in a foster home or await adoption, and which cat, being untamable, should be released back.

Ari, an older, large black cat, was going to be released. He was vaccinated and neutered; a tip of his left ear was cut off to indicate that he had been sterilized prior to release.

But he was not in the best of shape. He had spent many years already on the streets in an hostile neighbourhood. I had never seen him, but as I became acquainted with his story, I intuitively felt that Ari should not be released back to the streets, that he deserved a quiet, protected place to live out the last part of his life.

With all the ORA’s foster homes being full as always, and having to find a place for Ari on a minute's notice, I e-mailed and called anybody I could think of and finally found a place with a rescuer in Bayfield on Lake Huron. Ari spent one full year there, but he was not happy and over time he developed acute kidney issues.

We needed to take Ari back to Toronto right away to get him proper diagnostics and treatment. Again we did not have a single space in any of our foster homes, but we had Bev Smith, one of our best foster moms ever, who was always prepared to find a way to house a cat in need. When Ari arrived at Bev's home, his prognosis was not good, and it took quite a few months for Ari to reacquire his health under Bev’s vigilant eye.

This period gave Bev and Ari a chance to bond and Bev eventually decided to adopt Ari. Although she had quite a few cats in her lifetime and she had quite a few already at home when Ari came into the picture, she considered Ari her best cat - “My Big Boy,” as she used to call him. Ari spent plenty of time in Bev‘s lap and at nights, he would follow her upstairs and lie in bed close to her. Ari finally found happiness.

Unfortunately, Bev passed away, on June 23, 2011, and for Ari, there has been no peace since. We at ORA have taken in all of Bev’s cats, but due, as always, to lack of space, Ari has ended up at a foster home in Stratford. The new fostering woman is trying to do her best, but she has large dogs and Ari is afraid of dogs (probably due to some bad encounters during his previous life on the streets). To avoid the dogs, Ari spends all of his time in an unfinished and unhealthy basement sitting at the windowsill, looking outside, probably wondering what happened to his loving mom.

Ari is an old cat, probably 13 or older. It breaks our hearts that he is spending the last part of his life in such an unhappy situation and we are also upset that we cannot provide a proper home to Bev’s favourite cat. “Ari is very undemanding," his new foster home says, but we know he just wants a quiet home with someone to love him. If you do not have large dogs, please consider fostering or adopting Ari. He has had such a tumultuous life, please help him; Bev will smile to you from heaven.