40,000 people apply to run cat sanctuary on Greek island

It began in 2010, when a cat gave birth in Joan and Richard Bowell’s garden on the Greek island of Syros. She had two kittens, and one was ill.

The Bowells took them in and gave them names: Pepper was the mother, Tiny and Ninja the babies. The trio joined two cats the couple had brought to Syros when they moved from Denmark, Joan’s native country, and the Bowells viewed it as a mere expansion of their two-person family. They now had not a small number of cats, but not so many that they couldn’t take the animals along when their plan to move to New York, where Richard worked with the United Nations, came to pass.

But this was Greece, where cats posing against white buildings become the subjects of many postcards, but not necessarily the objects of much affection. The Bowells kept finding felines bearing injuries and sicknesses and kittens, and soon the Bowells’ acre of island idyll had become a cat sanctuary they called God’s Little People. The name was not a statement about faith, they say, but about a philosophy - that cats are important as individuals, w ith a right to be free and to be cared for.

“People think animals are things that you pick up and put down, and that’s not how we thought about it,” said Richard Bowell, 66, a writer and philosopher who is originally from London. “So we had to, at some point, make a commitment that we would never leave them or leave them in a lesser state than we kept them.”

As the feline population roaming their property rose well above 60, the couple said, they realized space prevented the operation from growing much more. They wantedtofinallymakethat move to New York, where Joan Bowell planned to establish another cat sanctuary outside the city. So on Aug. 5, she created a Facebook post soliciting applications foramodestlypaidjob managing God’s Little People.

TheB owells had posted a similar ad a few years back and gotten a couple handfuls of responses. This time, they hoped for 25, maybe 50.

Within six weeks, they had nearly 40,000.

Each day in August, Joan Bowell received 1,000 to 1,600 emails. She kept updating the Facebook post, emphasizing t hat the job was indeed real, and clar- ifying that the tiny house provided to the manager would not accommodate families or pets brought from home, and that it is a job that entails scooping poop, cleaning vomit and making “heartbreaking” decisions about gravely wounded or sick cats.

Even so, the applications kept coming, and they came from people in more than 90 nations. Some were letters from refugees who wanted to send the pay to their families back home, and some were from women seeking to flee abusive relationships, Joan Bowell said. Several were from people who’d tried to run their own cat rescues, shes aid.

The Bowells enlisted a half- dozen friends to help review and sort the flood of queries, which they say astonished them. Although the position is in paradise and involves many cats, Joan Bowell said it is not exactly the “dream job” so many headlines about their story declared. There is lots of feeding, medicat- ing and taking cats to the vet to be neutered or spayed, as well as posting cat pho- tos to Facebook, and cob- bling together donations. There’s not much time for sleep, she said.

“It has been pretty much round-the-clock for me,” said Joan Bowell, 52, an art- ist. “The biggest challenge is to give each of them the attention they need.”

And then there are the rescues. Richard Bowell said his wife goes to extreme lengths to save cats, recounting a time she heard a kitten stuck inside a water tank. The tank could not be opened, so the cat would have to come out a small pipe it had entered. Joan Bowell sat at the tank encouraging t he cat for 12 hours, he said, and eventually she succeeded by broadcasting into the pipe a You- Tube video of a mother cat calling her babies.

Not long after they started the rescue, a veterinarian on t he island asked why they would bury an injured cat thatwasbei ng euthanized, Richard Bowell said.

“And we said to him, ‘Well, it’s to remind ourselves of our humanity,’” he said. “When you think you can just discard things when you’re fin- ished with them, then you do it with everything.”

The story o f the job ad went viral, and the Bowells are in talks with filmmakers about a movie. Richard Bow- ell said he believes the enor- mous response isn’t about one news report starting a spiral of coverage, or even about the Internet’s infatuation with cats. He says it, too, is about humanity.

“This is bigge rt han just a job on a Greek island,” he said. “There’s a kind of wish for people to return to some level of human ityatatime when things are degenerat- ing into such inhumanity … people want to see a future that can be worked toward.”

Earlier this month, the Bowells had whittled the towers of applications to a handful of finalists. Among those was 62-year-old Californian Jeffyne Telson, whose husband sent her the link to the job ad in August.

“He said, ‘Jeffyne, this job has you written all over it. Are you going to wait until you’re too old to try to access your dream?’ ” Tel- son recalled.

For 21 years, Telson has run RESQCATS in Santa Bar- bara, California, which takes onlystray s — the cats found roaming alleys, the kittens loca ted behi nd the shed. The cats like those on Greek islands, which Telson has visited three times.

“I didn’t do all the tourist stuff on the Greek islands. I separated myself from the tourists and walked up and down the streets looking for the kitties,” Telson said. “I thought, ‘There’s just so much to be done here.’ “

So Telson sent a letter to the Bowells, explaining that she’d placed 3,000 cats and kittens in homes over the decades. Those too sick or antisocial to be adopt ed stay at her sanctuary; currently, it has 15 residents, including four feline leukemia patients in their own isolated area. “I believe that every life is precious and worth saving,” Telson wrote in her application.

Her submission stood out immediately, Richard Bowell said. The Bowells traveled to Santa Barbara to meet Telsoninmid -Septemb er, and he said that “there was an instant connection between Joan a nd Jeff yn e- and the other way around.” Telson, like Joan Bowell, was an art- ist. She, too, had never had children.

“It was just a match made in heaven,” Telson said.

An offer, needless to say, was made and accepted.

Telson said she will leave her rescue in the care of volunteers this winter, when it shuts down for the season, and spend several months in Syros. Other finalists will probably pick up the management after that, while the Bowells focus on their U.S. plans and renovating a large manor that has been offered to them in Syros. It would allow the sanctuary to expand and serve as “a center for volunteers and an international center to show peop le how to work with cats,” Richard Bowell said.

Telson, who spends much of her time as president of a busy organization on administrative tasks, said she’s giddy.

“This will be a wonderful opportunity to spend with just cats,” she said. “And, I think, a time of reflection and gratefulness.”

Apparently it WASHINGTON — wasn’t so much the art work itself that puzzled Customs inspectors at Dulles International Airport in September, it was where the paint had been applied: to the shells of turtles.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, its inspectors “have seen some interesting things” in passenger baggage at Dulles, but the four baby turtles with the painted sh ells “was a new one.”

In a statement, Customs reported that a family of American citizens returning from China made a declaration at Dull esabou t the baby turtles with the painted backs.

Each of the turtles was covered by a painted design.

It wasn’t immediately obvious whether the reptil eswere admissible, Customs said.

So the quartet was referred for agricultural assessment.

It should be pointed out t hatt hese were turtles that had been painted, rather than the species known as the Painted Turtle.

Customs said an inspector from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service asked Customs to detain the immigrant animals for examination.

On the next day, a wildlife service inspector removed the paint, and scrutinized the new arrivals.

An identification was made. The baby animals were determined to be redeareds lider turtles.

On the website Wide Open Pets, the red-eared slider is

MEMORIALIZE YOUR PET

listed as one of 10 types of turtle that people can have as pets.

It is found in nature over a wide area of the United States.

In a statement, Customs said turtles imported as pets require import permits. It said the fish and wildlife service issued a one-time permit, along with a warning. The turtles were released to the family, Customs said.

In its statement, Customs said turtles pose public health concerns as young turtles are especially susceptible to carrying salmonella. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) connected a multi-state outbreak of Salmonella Agbeni infections la st yea r to pet turtles, Customs said.

But the Wide Open Pets website listed at least one reason why a red-eared slider might make a desirable pet: They live a long time.

“They can live anywhere from 50-70 years,” the pet website said.

However, it is not clear h ow the an ima lsw ill be affected by their detention at Dulles. I f th eywer eaware of it.

“As pets,” the Wide Open Pets websit es aid, “red-eared sliders can be slow to trust.”

However,the websit esai d, they do “become personable with time.”

It should be noted that several authorities criticize the practice of painting the shells of turtles. Apparently the paint prevents the ability of the animals to absorb needed nutrients, and may cause toxins to enter the bloodstream. Do you have a beloved pet that has passed away? You can honor a pet with Pet Memorial to be printed in the newspaper on our Pet Spot page. The memorial will include a photo. For more information, call 937-223-1515 or email coh.classified@coxinc.com.