Rent hike KOs kitten shelter
Homey refuge for at-risk cats can’t afford to remain in S.F.
It’s going to be a lot harder to be a one-eyed kitten in San Francisco, starting this fall.
The main animal shelter for one-eyed kittens and other physically challenged felines is leaving town. It’s a tragedy for one-eyed kittens and the people who love them, which is practically everyone, because it’s awfully hard not to love a kitten no matter how many eyes it has.
“We don’t want to leave,” said Amber Holly, 42, the proprietor of the Saving Grace kitten refuge on Cayuga Avenue. “But we don’t really have a choice.”
The rent just went up, again, to $3,500 a month. Holly is looking for a new home, both for her family and her kittens, perhaps as far away as Oregon. Practically everyone else has gotten priced out of San Francisco, and now it’s the one-eyed kittens’ turn.
Among the felines soon to hit the road are Chevy, a very cute striped kitten, and Gizmo, a fluffy black kitten, and Checkers, a black cat who used to be a kitten but grew up and so became less cute, through no fault of his own.
Holly has operated the
building in Balboa Park for six years. It’s been home to about 700 kittens — some one-eyed, some blind, some with three legs or two legs or a swollen brain. Some were abandoned at birth.
“We get ’em with their umbilical cords still on,” Holly said.
Some have other conditions that make them, in the parlance, “special-needs, at-risk” kittens, but never handicapped, disadvantaged or defective kittens.
“You name it, we get all the little wonky ones,” Holly said, “wonky” being a term of endearment that, as the premier guardian of wonky kittens, she has allowed herself to use.
Anyway, says Holly, there is no such thing as a disadvantaged kitten, only one whose advantages have not been properly understood. Chevy, who under Holly’s care had succeeded in putting her special needs behind her, was trying very hard at that moment to rip to shreds a cotton mouse.
The building is also home to Holly, her husband, their 16-month-old son and their dog, who all share the same space, the same toys and the same comfy cushions on the living room floor.
How it started
Holly, a veterinary technician, got her start rescuing at-risk kittens when she realized the fate of most at-risk kittens that were passing through her vet hospital. Most were sent to local shelters where they faced euthanasia, because shelters’ resources are limited and there is no shortage of two-eyed, four-legged kittens to adopt. So Holly got out of the vet tech trade and into the guardian angel trade.
Saving Grace is known to most Bay Area shelters, whose staffs send photos of soon-to-be-euthanized kittens to Holly’s phone. She invariably gives the OK for the kittens to be dropped off.
“People who send the photos are usually just like me,” she said. “Bleeding hearts.”
More bleeding hearts see the photos on Holly’s website and rush over to adopt the kittens or give them foster homes. About a dozen one-eyed or three-legged kittens come and go every month.
“Sesame may be blind but it isn’t slowing her down . ... Check out Liz and Moe, cuddled on their foster’s legs. ... Muldowney is in repose ...”
‘It’s a big loss’
The folks at Animal Care and Control, San Francisco’s primary animal shelter, say they are sorry to see Holly and her kittens hit the road. Saving Grace is one of dozens of Bay Area animal rescue and support groups, but it’s special.
“It’s a big loss,” said shelter spokeswoman Deb Campbell. “Amber takes the really, really special-needs cats. Shelter work is difficult enough, and what she does is beyond difficult.”
But it will all come to an end as soon as Holly can find a new location. Exactly where she isn’t sure. Someplace in the country and someplace to the north and someplace where the rent isn’t $3,500.
Just outside her rear window, a 100-unit apartment house is about to be built, and the caterwauling from that enterprise is not something she is looking forward to. The neighborhood is changing, and one-eyed kittens are not its future.
“It really sucks that we have to move,” said Holly. “Things change. Life just sort of tells you what to do.”