My mom told me about some older cats at a shelter that had to be adopted ASAP or be put down.  We’d love to adopt them, but my mom travels frequently and I can’t exactly have three cats in my apartment for months at a time.  This got me thinking.  I’d really like to start up a charity cat house where volunteers could help take care of cats and share the space with them in exchange for a place to stay and some food.  I’ve never really believed in the shelter scenario where these cats don’t get to roam around as their curious natures would usually dictate.  But having a house full of cats can get a bit crazy, so I wouldn’t want my household to be that chaotic.  Yet, I feel that cats do so much better with people living with them and not just being allowed free reign of a place when the humans go back to their homes at night.  Plus, some cats quite enjoy cuddling with a person at night!

And so I have conceived of this new idea where a normal house with pretty standard furnishings could be slightly altered to create a shelter for people and felines.  I’d add in some more beds than you’d normally get in an American household and invite homeless people to come live there while they straighten out their lives.  In exchange for a bed and daily meals, they’d spend part of their days helping with the chores of maintaining pets (including just playing with and petting them!).  I’d also want to get career guidance for them and get them the education they need to make something of themselves.  They could learn from each other how to cook, or if none of them have that skill, other volunteers could come in to teach them how to shop within a budget and cook decent meals, avoiding junk.

So this house could be a sanctuary for cats and humans alike, with the humans taking care of the cats and the cats providing companionship and a sense of purpose to the humans.  I think pets can be really therapeutic, but I prefer cats because they generally don’t make a fuss and can care for themselves in many areas.  We’d get cats from shelters that were going to put the poor creatures down and probably have a bunch of older ones.  If anyone wanted, there could also be the option of adopting these cats out, so it would, in a sense, be a halfway house for them too.  I guess I just want to bring in people and cats facing bleak futures and give them an environment to recover and move on to a better stage of their lives, whether getting a job and becoming independent or getting adopted to a caring family.

This is just an initial concept, but I really hope I can go somewhere with this one day.  I’ve learned recently that I’m a dreamer, thinking of all those wonderful “what ifs” while conveniently forgetting about how to fund those dreams.  So, I’m taking a step back before I get too caught up in the idea and thinking very practically about how this could work (which will take some time).  Still, it’s a nice dream to have and something to develop into a real plan when the time comes.