Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for December 25, 2008 LIKE CATS AND DOGS

Yes, they really like cats and dogs...

If animal stories are not your "cup of tea", then skip this edition and go have another eggnog!

As for me and my furry friends, we shall paws and reflect...

Fleason's Greetings!

Rude Ranch a haven for animals down on their luck

By Alison Harding
CNN

(CNN) -- Thanks to dedicated people like Bob and Katherine Rude, many homeless animals in Maryland will have a warm home this winter.

The Maryland couple currently cares for 116 cats and six dogs at Rude Ranch Animal Rescue, which they run out of their home in Harwood.

"We take in a lot of abused and neglected animals; animals that for whatever reason find themselves down on their luck," Katherine said.

It all started a decade ago when the couple found a group of cats in an alley behind a restaurant. They began working with other organizations to help place the cats, but quickly realized that they could do more.

"The more we got involved, and the more we found out about the world of animal rescue, the more we found out there was a lot more need. ...We felt we could fill a void," Katherine said.

A few years later, they bought a ranch house in Harwood and converted it into a shelter. Eventually, Bob and Katherine left their government jobs to work at the shelter full time. They now work seven days a week, morning through night, caring for their cats and dogs.

"Now we're doing adoptions, we're doing search and rescue, we're helping people out with spay and neuters, and we're helping out other animal controls with animals that they can't place, but think deserve a shot at a life," Katherine said.

The Rudes originally planned on keeping the shelter on one floor, and living in the rest of the house. But they quickly found that many of the cats required full-time care, so they expanded the shelter throughout their home.

"We still have a bedroom that's sort of ours, but we share it with a bunch of special-needs animals. We have anywhere from two or three dogs and 10 to 12 cats that share a bed with us," Bob says.

The extra space has allowed the Rudes to take in cats that most shelters cannot. Cats that require special attention or medical care -- those that have been abused or are suffering from feline immunodeficiency virus, for example -- all have a place at the ranch.

Katherine says this was one reason they started their own shelter. "It was for ... the ones that maybe don't have an alternative, don't have somewhere else to go. We figured they had as much of a chance at a life as someone else," she said.

Working with the animals is incredibly rewarding, Bob says, but expanding the shelter has also increased the number of mouths to feed.

"For the evening meal, we go through about 25 cans of cat food. For the whole day, we go through about 40-50. ...We go through about 100 pounds of dry food a week for the cats, [and] 10,000 pounds of cat litter a year," Bob said.

Even buying in bulk hasn't helped the Rudes escape the financial woes that have begun to plague most business owners. Katherine says that so far, they have been able to support themselves but are concerned about rising costs and falling donations.

At the same time, demand for the Rudes' help is increasing. Higher costs of food and supplies, as well as the foreclosure crisis, have affected people's ability to care for their pets, Katherine says.

"[Pet] adoptions have pretty much dropped off the face of the earth right now, but people are calling more and more to turn animals in," Bob said.

And as more people turn to them to care for their pets, the Rudes have no plans to change their tune. Since 1997, they have helped rescue or place more than 3,000 cats. Katherine estimates that they have helped make 2,500 to 2,700 adoptions to families or individuals.

"They're getting a home, they're going to have individual people doting on them, and that's what we want for all of the residents here," Katherine says.

For a Va. Neighborhood's Dogs, Santa Arrives on a Mail Truck

By Nick Miroff

Washington Post Staff Writer

In the troubled and toothy history of canine-mail carrier relations, the northwest corner of Zip code 22101 is something of an anomaly. There, dogs do not erupt in an angry frenzy at delivery time, nor to do they savage the mail when it comes through the slot. Some are known to leap up and down in celebration when postman Scott Arnold arrives each day; others simply throw their heads back and howl.

But it is during the holidays that the humans along Arnold's route through McLean especially look forward to seeing him. That is when Arnold, a 27-year U.S. Postal Service veteran, transforms into a kind of dog-themed St. Nick, powered not by reindeer but by the force of a curious tradition he calls Santa Paws (he couldn't resist).

Each year, rain, snow or shine, Arnold delivers more than 100 doggy stockings along his route, writing each pooch's name in careful lettering across the cuff. He packs them with rawhide candy canes, dog cookies and rock-hard biscuits, along with an ornament, different each year, that features a photo of the dog taken with Arnold's 35mm film camera.

"They are like family to me," said Arnold, 54, a warm, bespectacled man with rough hands, a bushy moustache and a jolly physique worthy of Santa. By family, of course, he means the people and the dogs.

For 17 years, he has worked the same delivery circuit through the mansions and modest brick ramblers of 22101, becoming a daily presence in the lives of his customers. It is a long stint for a postal route, far longer than the life span of most dogs. And so, over time, Arnold has seen new puppies arrive, watched them grow up and grow old, until the day they no longer rush out to greet him.

That is the other purpose of Santa Paws, a shared sadness for the short lives of dogs, at a time of year their absence grows sharper. Because Arnold can no longer deliver a stocking when a dog dies, he writes the owner a letter, in the dog's voice, from the comforts of an imaginary place he calls North Pole Kennels. That is where dogs "retire" to work for Santa Paws when they are gone, where the treats are unlimited and the furniture is indestructible.

"If you feel the need to get another dog, please do! I won't be offended!" read the letter received by Martita Marx and Gerald Wein this year, their first without their chocolate Lab, Mozart. It was signed "Fleas Navidog!! MOZART."

"It's not just the ball or the doggy bone," Marx said. "He knows what pets mean to you, and he's able to capture that in how he touches you."

Her Christmas tree had 10 years of Mozart-themed ornaments of Arnold's creation, each photo showing him a little further along. The last, framed inside a plastic snowman, captured the 13-year-old just before he died, his muzzle white, his eyes clouded with age.

"Everything is so impersonal now. You go to the grocery store and you don't know anyone," Marx said. "And here's someone who knows our names, who knows who we are."

Marx has other photos from the Santa Paws package over the years, showing the neighborhood dogs' stockings lined up in long red-and-green columns of quirky names: Elwood, Snuggles, Zorro, Bandit, Bella, Moo-Moo, Warf, Butters.

"It's a weird situation," said Arnold, a Herndon resident who grew up in Falls Church. "Sometimes I know the dog's name before I know the owner's name."

Each Christmas stocking Arnold delivers also comes with a Santa Paws newsletter, stuffed with the comings and goings of the neighborhood's hounds. Written in Santa Paws's unmistakable style -- heavy on exclamation marks and puns like "Happy Howlidays" and "Fleasons Greetings" -- the letters welcome new dogs to the neighborhood, salute those whose owners have moved away and mark the passing of the dogs that have died.

Last year, residents along Arnold's route got an additional letter, with instructions not to open it until Dec. 26. It contained the news that Arnold's 13-year-old sheltie, Cody, faithful wearer of reindeer antlers and the reluctant subject of many Santa-dog costume photos, had moved on to North Pole Kennels. Arnold called him "the star of the Christmas sock" and told the neighborhood he was devastated.

Larry Fleck, who lives a few doors down from Marx and Wein, said Arnold understands what it's like to lose a companion. "We've had five dogs, and Scott has known three," said Fleck, owner of Carmen Ohio II, a 125-pound Newfoundland who resembles a black bear. Fleck, 70, has named two dogs Carmen Ohio, after the song of his alma mater, Ohio State University.

"My wife made his wife a scarf for Christmas," Fleck said. "He's a member of our family."

Arnold and his wife, Cindy, now have two 1-year-old shelties, Milo and Mischa. Arnold said he has always had dogs but, other than keeping a beer can collection, has never been much of a hobbyist. He makes the stockings and ornaments on the weekends while watching Redskins games.

Only one dog has bitten him in his career, back in the late 1980s (no stitches), and it was about that time Arnold began using an old postal carrier's trick to ingratiate himself with the other dogs on his route. A few Milk-Bones went a long way toward self-preservation, he found (he has since curbed the practice, per Postal Service rules). He made friends with dogs big and small, and as he'd deliver parcels during the holidays, he found himself turning to his new friends and saying, "And what are you getting for Christmas?"

So he began making stockings for them.

Until this week, the Postal Service was unaware of the existence of Santa Paws, and the agency said Arnold's activities are done on his time, without official approval.

Despite an ever-growing crush of holiday parcels, Arnold said Santa Paws will live on, even though this year he had to deliver holiday stockings at 5 a.m.

"I treat my job like a little country store," said Arnold, who also wears a Santa suit on Christmas Eve to pose for photos with kids. The dogs, and the people, he said, "make my day so much better. A lot of people think that's corny. But that's the way I think it should be."