Sunday, June 06, 1999
Cat lover stays calm
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Jan Peek is that rare individual who manages to love animals without annoying the heck out of humans.
You won't find her throwing pies at Procter & Gamble executives. She isn't on a tear about hunters, trappers or women in furs.
She's a realist. Originally from rural Kentucky, she has that country perspective on the cycle of life. Animals die sometimes. It's natural. Sometimes it's even best.
Still, if you're talking her cats ... forget about it.
Ms. Peek lives on 7 acres in unincorporated Kenton County near Villa Hills. Since April, she and a Covington woman, Heidi Sahrbacker, have been taking in litters of kittens for the Kenton County Animal Shelter.
The kittens live with the women until they're old enough to be sterilized and placed for adoption.
This is cat-breeding season. The Kenton shelter gets as many as 20 kittens and adult cats a day. Last month, it accepted 205 and had to euthanize 126. No room at the inn.
ADOPT A CAT
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If you're interested in adopting cats or providing foster care, call the Kenton County Animal Shelter at 356-7400.
The shelter is at 1020 Mary Laidley Drive in Covington. To get there, take Ky. 17 south from Interstate 275. The shelter is two driveways past Gibson Greetings on the left, across from Pioneer Park.
Hours are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
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Ms. Sahrbacker is a little beside herself with worry. This weekend, she was out at the Wallace Woods neighborhood garage sale, showing off a litter of kittens. She and her husband can't keep anymore themselves; they already have adult cats.
Ms. Peek worries, too. But it's different for her. Pet overpopulation is the fault of irresponsible owners, and there are so many of them. What can one person do? Sometimes, small gestures have to be enough — such as keeping a few kittens warm and comfortable for whatever time they have left.
“You do what you can,” says Ms. Peek, 44. “Yeah, I wish I could save them all; but I'm not going to be one of those "little old ladies on the hill with 60 cats' that you read about in the news.”
She's laughing as she says this. Thing is, she already has quite a few cats. Two of them are feral — as wild as any animal found in the woods. A rescue organization trapped the cats, had them sterilized and then released them to live in Ms. Peek's barn.
Every few weeks, she returns kittens to the shelter and picks up another batch. On two occasions, she has been unable to resist taking an adult cat, too.
“Especially the ones that are stray or owner give-ups — not spayed, not neutered, not declawed — you know they don't have a chance,” she says.
One of these animals she intended to give to a friend. But that first night, she woke up to find him sleeping around her head.
The cat's name is Big 'Un. He isn't going anywhere.
Ms. Peek also has three horses and two dogs. She named one of her dogs Tyson because she found him on the way to a sales call at a Tyson chicken plant. He was sitting along the highway, looking starved and mangy.
So, yeah, she's an animal lover. Conveniently, she lives by herself and works out of her home, managing a sales territory for a spice company.
She loves animals, but she has no problem eating meat. After all, her cats do. They're always putting shrews and mice at her doorstep, she says.
Personally, she doesn't hunt. But she's not really against it. Not after watching a nature special in which a badger-like animal attacked a wild rabbit and bit it to death.
“I was thinking, "God, if I was a rabbit, I would much rather have a bullet through my head than go through this crap,'” Ms. Peek says. “What else kills rabbits? Hawks? That must be a horrible death, being snatched from above.”
Well. That's a way to look at it.
In the middle of suburban Northern Kentucky, Ms. Peek has a slice of country on which to watch life unfold. Her animals can't breed, so she's not observing any births. But sometimes she hears the wild cats in her barn, catching mice. She sees the kittens tumbling over each other, pouncing on her dogs, getting a little bigger and stronger each day.
She really, really hopes someone will give them a home.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or by e-mail at ksamples@enquirer.com
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