February
2001
The “Dalai
Lama” of Cat Rescue:
Emma
DeRosa
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You’ve been called the “Dalai
Lama” of cat rescue. What exactly do you do?
I do a bit of everything, from fostering
animals that shelters won’t take in to helping train pets that
people otherwise wouldn’t keep. For example, a cat may not be used
to a litter pan and I work with them so the cat can use it, which keeps
another animal in a house. I also work very closely with people who
pick up feral or nonsocial animals from the street. I loan them cages
or crates—any equipment they need to keep the animal isolated until
they socialize it and get it used to their pets—and I help them
get it spayed/neutered locally. I’m a referral service for all
animal situations, but I focus mainly on fostering and working with
ones that would otherwise slip through the cracks. I’ve been doing
this type of work for almost 30 years.
I’m probably known in Brooklyn as the feral expert; there aren’t
many feral cats I cannot turn into lap cats. I work with a lot of large
organizations such as Muffins and Kings Highway Cat Rescue. They have
a very severe situation with animals that need rehabilitation, and I
get the animal walking and hopefully adoptable. I screen people and
arrange adoptions from my home.
Every animal, before they come into my home, is vet-checked and viral-screened.
They get a complete medical. I give them the shots and medications that
they need. My dad was a veterinary worker when I was a kid and he was
always bringing home puppies and kittens and giving them to me saying,
“I have to work all day; here’s the milk, here’s the
bottle—feed them.” And when the animal was old enough we would
find a home for it together.
What do your neighbors think about what you do?
Many of my neighbors and friends know what I do and they support
it, but they don’t know how many animals I have because I keep
the place spotless and odor-free so that it doesn’t draw attention.
How many animals do you have in your home right now, and what kind
are they?
Right now it’s all cats. I have 12 that are my own and another
12 that I’m fostering. About eight are currently up for adoption.
I did ten adoptions last month. I also do puppies now and then.
That’s a lot of cats under one roof. How do you manage to take
care of them all?
I’m home all day, cleaning constantly. My husband is a big
help to me. My niece is here two days a week and she’s very good
at giving intravenous fluid and shots and things like that, so I have
a very good support system here, a team.
I do a flea market a couple of times a year, selling things that the
community donates to me. It helps with the vet bills and the feeding.
And I also do my own newsletter; most of the time I do it all by myself.
What does it mean when an animal is “unadoptable” and how
do you turn that around?
Some of the cats you get from the streets are feral—I don’t
like to use the word ‘wild’—where if you go near the
cage they’ll attack you. These cats are just frightened, they’re
‘fear biters,’ and I don’t believe that they cannot be
turned around. It takes weeks and weeks to gradually approach the animal,
and within a few weeks, sometimes quicker, I can usually get them to
trust a human being (which is me) and then I get them out of the cage.
When they trust me, my husband, my niece and other people who are in
and out all day, I start to introduce them to strangers. Once they become
non-fearful of humans I will put them in the perfect home situation
where the person will realize that for the first week this cat is going
to just hide under the bed but then eventually come out. There have
been quite a few feral cats that were going to be put to sleep but I
took them in and they ended up being beautiful animals.
We have Buddy here, a big tabby who’d been beaten with a baseball
bat. The vet said “Emma, I heard you were taking this cat in. Are
you crazy? I call him Psycho-Cat. It took three of us to get this cat
in the carrier.” I said, “Just put the cat in the carrier!”
He said, “Well, I need you to watch him. His jaw has been wired
shut, he needs medication, he needs feeding but then we’re going
to put him back out. He’s feral, he’s not adoptable.”
Three days later the cat was in my arms, purring and cooing. Now we
call him Boo-Boo Bear. My husband ended up adopting him because he loved
my husband’s life.
Any other inspiring animal rescue experiences that you’d like
to share?
There have been quite a few, and they’ve appeared in the newspapers.
One in particular is Otis the cat. I got a call from one of the organizations
telling me that the family had left him behind when they moved home,
and he got his leg wedged in the elevator when he was trying to follow
them. The vet advised the organization to put him down because his leg
was broken in three places. They refused to do it. Instead he had surgery,
but later the vet told me that if the animal stayed in the cage he’d
lose the use of his leg. So I took him in. He was a terror! He had all
kinds of behavioral problems. I couldn’t place an animal like that
so we worked with him for five months. He eventually got the use of
his leg but he had a bad limp and he wasn’t able to jump up on
things. Everybody who came loved him, but he was not the “perfect”
cat. Then one day a woman decided to adopt him, though I said to my
husband that Otis, my “Dennis the Menace,” is going to terrorize
this woman. What happened is I got a phone message from her one night
saying, “I have to tell you what Otis did.” It turns out that
he had saved her life. She fell asleep with a cigarette, but she did
not have a fire alarm in her house, so Otis kept meowing, biting and
nudging her until she woke up. We get plenty of miracles like that.
