Felis catus - the “domestic house cat”. What does that label mean for the hundreds of millions of domesticated yet house-less cats - and how does the answer to this connect to both human and cat welfare? In this special episode, released during October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we’ll be joined by Community Cats Podcast host Stacy LeBaron, who will share success stories of the “mosaic of support” that benefits both humans and their feline family members. We’re grateful to also have two special guests from the Urban Resource Institute who shed light on the #1 cause of homelessness in New York City, and why cats are a part of the solution. And we’ll have a cameo from returning guest Jackson Galaxy, star of Animal Planet’s hit series, My Cat From Hell and founder of The Jackson Galaxy Project, a program of The Greater Good Charities.
If you or someone you know is healing from ongoing or past power-based interpersonal violence (IPV; domestic violence) you are not alone, there is never an excuse and you have resources - for U.S. listeners, thehotline.org has a clearinghouse of free, trauma-informed service providers. For international listeners, the No More Global Directory has region-specific hotlines at nomoredirectory.org. And if you’d like to get involved, visit righttobe.org for bystander intervention resources and more.
- Post-episode body scan exercise (materials courtesy The Greater Good Science Center at University of California - Berkeley): https://ggia.berkeley.edu/practice/body_scan_meditation
- Special thanks to Kristin DeFur of The Urban Resource Institute (URI) and Kyle of the TASC group for facilitating the URI interview.
Support the podcast at https://ko-fi.com/6degreesofcats for as little as $1 / month for stickers, early access to new episodes and behind the scenes audio. View the show notes and more on The Captain’s Log, the companion podcast newsletter here: linktr.ee/6degreesofcats.
And check out these supplementary episodes:
- Community CATalysts: Kosovans Caring for Their Animal Survivors
- Beyond Taylor Swift: Who Are Cat People?
- Our Feline Fictive Kin: Are Cats Full Fledged Family? [Season 2 Finale]
About the experts:
- Elizabeth Rose is a domestic violence survivor, mother and 2024 URI Celebration Triumph Award recipient. After escaping abuse in 2019 with her daughter Hazel and their cat Bebe, she found safety and healing through the Urban Resource Institute’s People and Animals Living Safely (PALS) program. Today, Elizabeth shares her story as a testament to resilience and the lifesaving impact of programs that keepfamilies and pets together.
- Teal Inzunza, L.C.S.W., is the Associate Vice President of Justice Initiatives at the Urban Resource Institute (URI), where she leads programs supporting survivors of domestic violence and homeless families. With a background as URI’s Director of Economic Empowerment, Inzunza is a nationally recognized advocate for economic justice, LGBTQ survivor support and systemic change. She co-chairs the NYC Domestic Violence & Economic Justice Taskforce and has been honored with awards from Her Justice and the Anti-Violence Project for her transformative work.
- Stacy LeBaron has been involved in animal welfare for over 30 years and considers herself a feline entrepreneur. She currently hosts the Community Cats Podcast where she interviews renowned experts about cat overpopulation and welfare solutions. The podcast hosts three certification programs covering the topics of Trap, Neuter, and Return, Surrender Prevention, and Return to Home. Stacy is also a partner of the Community Cat Clinic in Woodstock and Duluth, Georgia; President of PAWSitive Pantry in Vermont and Massachusetts; Treasurer at the Vermont Humane Federation, the Merrimack River Feline Rescue Society and Community Cat Champions; and Treasurer and Director of Strate
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
...but we have to get them comfortable in their carriers,
(00:01):
so they'll take them.
Come on, Snuggles.
She isn't going for the churro.
There's your blanket in here.
Snuggie.
This isn't working.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats.
The world's number one and only.
cat-themed culture, history, and science
podcast in which I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B,
(00:22):
and my feline co-executive producers, Binky, Snuggles,
and Peanut navigate the weird wild world from the past
to the present with the help of an exceptional array
of guest experts.
All aboard.
Hello, friends of 6 Degrees of Cats.
(00:42):
Before we start, we wanted to give you the heads up.
This episode will discuss domestic violence.
If this topic is especially sensitive for you,
we totally appreciate the need to listen another time, if at all.
In the show notes, we've linked some past episodes
you may want to check out instead, and some resources in case
you or someone you know may need support.
(01:03):
Please take great care.
And now, the episode.
When I was around six or seven years old,
the chimney in my childhood home caught fire.
I remember being rushed into our family car,
groggy, and still in my pajamas.
(01:23):
The rest of that night's kind of a blur
but I do recall asking my dad where ribbons
are then maybe two-year-old ginger tabby was.
And then, to my surprise and relief,
feeling his little body circling my ankles.
Somehow, he found his way into the backseat of the car with me.
Ribbons didn't accompany us to the days
(01:48):
and hotel that we stayed at for, I think several days,
until the smoke damage was cleared
and we were okay to return home.
I think ribbons was boarded at the local animal hospital,
a townover which I'm sure was an expensive undertaking.
So worth it, of course.
Despite the fact that I was and remain,
(02:08):
the sole true cat person and the entire family on both sides.
It wasn't just me who considered ribbons
an important part of our family, our home.
(upbeat music)
And in this episode of 6 Degrees of Cats
(02:29):
we'll be thinking more about our little animal homies
if you will and why it's so critical
we include them in our homes.
We'll be consulting with some incredible people
helping both humans and felines stay sheltered
and there's going to be a special guest cameo.
(02:51):
In my, uh, 21 years on this planet,
I've lived in dozens of homes.
Well, houses.
What's that saying again?
Home is where the heart is.
(upbeat music)
Only three places have really felt like home.
My childhood home in Michigan, my flat in Japan,
(03:14):
and now my apartment in Brooklyn, New York City.
It's hard to put my finger on what feels like home.
Is it the lack of roommates
or the ability to decorate it how I want?
Maybe it's the relative permanence of my stay.
I mean, those three places represent
the longest years I've ever stayed put.
(03:35):
I think it's the fact that my home
has always had kitties.
Ribbons and Tibbons, my Michigan ginger tabbies,
my little gray Japanese bobbetale, Fuzzy,
and my born and bred scrappy New Yorkers,
(03:55):
Binky, Snuggles, and Peanut.
Well, actually, Peanut's a Jersey girl,
but I guess Jersey people will claim New York,
so we'll take it.
Yeah, those kitties weight a lot of that anchor.
I think this is reflected in how we refer to kitties
as domestic house cats, domestic as in domicile, house.
(04:19):
Homes.
That's kind of interesting.
We call them house cats.
For one thing, we don't call dogs house dogs
or rabbits, house rabbits or house birds.
At least nobody I know does.
And in the United States alone,
there are 35 million abandoned or stray cats.
(04:43):
They're homeless.
That's actually nearly six times
the number of homeless dogs, by the way.
Why is that?
Okay, so this is a cat centered podcast,
but for a hot second,
we do need to talk about the simple cousin of cats.
Canis lupus familiaris,
(05:04):
(Expecto Patronum, Abracadabra, Bippity Boppity Boop)
As we've discussed in many seasons of this podcast,
it's kind of inevitable though.
Dog ownership and dogs kind of set the template
for how we view domestic indoor animal stewardship.
Demographically, dog owners have the clear advantage.
(05:25):
I mean, I live in Brooklyn,
which is like the city of dogs.
More and more, the expectation is that a dog
is welcomed into homes and into public spaces.
It's normalized to have them in
more of these affluent bars, cafes,
and even some of the restaurants near me.
I don't snitch to the health department, don't worry.
(05:46):
And of course, if you set foot in any grocery store
or especially a pet supply store,
dog supplies dominate the inventory catalogs.
There's a very specific reason for this.
I don't mean this in a negative way,
but this is the line which is cats or pets of the poor, right?
I'm a cat person, but I also think that our society
(06:08):
looks at them differently than our dogs.
I mean, 75% of revenues and veterinary practices
are dog revenues.
They only get about 30% cat revenues.
So it's an underdog situation too.
Our culture looks at cats differently
and cats are really an underdog.
That was one of the OG cat podcasters I'm super honored to know.
(06:31):
My name is Stacy LeBaron.
I go by she and her.
I do like to think of myself more like a feline optimist
or a feline entrepreneur.
The organization I am with is the community cats podcast.
I am head cat and host of the podcast.
If you're a video person, YouTube is great.
(06:53):
We have a lot of educational videos there
for folks who really want to turn their passion
for cats into action.
These days we call cats on the streets community cats,
they're houseless, and they too are incredibly difficult
to quantify despite the tireless efforts of those caring
(07:15):
for, say, barrel colonies or working in shelters.
One of the main challenges that came up
in researching homelessness both in cats and humans
across the world is how difficult it is to clarify
what that word actually means.
Does it count people who lack permanent housing
but are sheltered temporarily?
(07:36):
How is that data collected?
I'd like to be careful in not conflating these two parallel
but distinct issues, of course.
The circumstances and solutions for human problems
are very different to those facing wildlife
and the animals that we've brought into our homes
and industries.
The thing is they do relate to each other in some ways.
I'll let Stacy explain.
(07:57):
I think it's something like 60% of people feed cats
that they don't know who the owners are.
The source of our cat colony situation is an owned cat atom
and an owned cat eve.
And for whatever reason the family cannot keep the cat,
they cannot afford to get cat spader neutered.
Adam sprays in the house because he's un-neudered
(08:19):
and Eve goes into heat because she's unspayed
so everybody gets upset because the landlord's gonna
evict them if they're spraying around the house
so they get thrown out.
And that's where a community cat colony gets started.
My dream is that every cat that needs support
(08:41):
and access to care gets it all across the United States
and beyond it all around the world.
And so that is my ultimate goal in our programming
is being able to reach worldwide
with solutions for cats and their families.
Everybody in this world, I believe,
if they have access to the appropriate resources,
(09:02):
they're gonna be able to take care of the animals
in any community.
And I think that we just need to be able to provide
those tools for success and for sustainability.
I use the word mosaic a lot.
They need a mosaic of support of organizations coming in
(09:22):
to help them above and beyond just cat groups
or animal welfare organizations.
We have to realize it's not just us
I respect people and organizations for doing their part
because it's one piece of the bigger picture
and that it creates that full picture for us.
It's just giving the general community enough information
and access to resources to be able to support
(09:45):
the families that love and care for them.
I was involved with a project in Chelsea, Massachusetts
and went into the board of health
and they were like, we've got a huge cat problem
but we also have a huge rat problem too
and you need to help us with the rats and stuff.
They have long lines at the food banks
but most of the folks when they're getting food
(10:07):
from the food banks, they're feeding that food to their pets.
When you're starting brand new in a community,
number one, you're trying to engage the community members
in supporting the existing community resources.
So if you've got food banks, local churches
and their supportive programs like Salvation Army, Red Cross,
(10:28):
all of those organizations you wanna get involved
with those players first and say,
how can we support you support animals in the community?
I'm also president of an organization called Positive Pantry
and in Vermont, we raise money to buy pet food
but the pet food is bought and distributed
(10:49):
through the Vermont food bank.
We have much greater capacity that way
and now Meals on Wheels is looking at doing a program
with pet food.
It just makes common sense
that we don't have to create that whole operational system
and structure if we're gonna have our cats and our dogs
as part of our family.
Well, let's put the pet food and the medical resources,
(11:11):
the veterinary resources into that operational system.
It's holistic, collaborative, community-driven solutions
that help make sure all mouths get fed sustainably.
(gentle music)
(11:33):
There's so many stories of like children rescuing kittens
and bringing them to the folks that are feeding the cats
and not just saying, you know, I know you're the people
who can get help for those cats
and if they're asking on behalf of that cat
then if something happens to them,
they know that they can ask for themselves.
Just by even having a presence within the community,
(11:58):
there are resources if anything does happen.
One of the most important things about these
can currently beneficial solutions for humans and cats is,
well, the community that they catalyze,
the family, if you will, grows.
Cats play a role in neighborhood relations.
(12:19):
You'll have two neighbors fighting one another
over these cats and you get them spayed and neutered
and you set up appropriate feeding stations and shelters
and then they're loving the cats.
The cats are serving a purpose.
I heard some statistic recently that only 20% of people
know who their neighbors are because we all are on social media
(12:40):
and that's like our neighborhoods now.
I was talking to somebody the other day
and they were like, I did the paper-caller thing
and now I know 10 of my neighbors and it's great.
And so now something else came up in the neighborhood
and they all were able to talk about it
to resolve some issue or something
but it's like, oh my gosh, we have to have our community cats
be the glue in our neighborhood so we can talk to each other again.
(13:03):
The cats aren't gonna post on Facebook, right?
We're talking about compassion, humanity.
It's just getting this back into humanly
connect with one another and I think these cats
are providing that bridge for us.
What was I saying about how everything is connected?
(13:24):
That's right.
Our systems, our communities, all of us.
And when it comes to our community cat neighbors,
well, homelessness is a major crisis
that both humans and feline kind unfortunately share.
As a quick note, some people working in social services
may use the terms unsheltered or houseless.
(13:46):
But for the purposes of clarity,
I'll use the imperfect but colloquially common term,
homeless to encompass those temporarily
or long term displaced and unsheltered.
Right now, over 150 million people in this world
(14:06):
are defined as homeless.
Though according to the World Economic Forum Report in 2021,
this number is likely under-representative.
Speaking of representation,
another thing that is really poorly represented
is that homeless people are pet owners too.
It's time to take a little bit more of a look at
(14:30):
the folks who are generalized as the homeless,
which we'll do after the break.
(upbeat music)
Thanks to what our earlier season guest,
(14:54):
Trisha Hersey calls the death cult of rugged individualism,
people without permanent housing
are seen as incapable of caring for pets
and even undeserving of them.
(upbeat music)
It comes down to a malingering attitude
that I really hope we can eradicate.
I actually had an interesting conversation
(15:16):
with another person saying,
"Economists consider cats and dogs luxury goods."
And it's very interesting.
So as your income goes up, the number of dogs you have go up.
But as your income goes down, the number of cats you have go up.
So it's very strange that cats are considered luxury good,
but as you have less income,
(15:37):
you actually have more of them.
Crass comments about hoarders and mental health aside.
I think there's also a more nuanced reason
why people who have food and housing insecurity
would still find space for the companionship of a cat.
Even though we're entering the age of the adventure cat
(15:58):
and cats being more outdoors and hearted
and the backpacks and all that, I think they will always be
a representation of the safety we feel at home
and the sanctity of our home.
(upbeat music)
He's back.
The pater familia Felis Catus,
aka the cat daddy himself, Jackson Galaxy.
(16:20):
I'm the cat daddy pretty much everywhere on social media.
Find me on my YouTube channel where we put out brand new content
every week and look for river rolls.
Jackson doesn't just help individuals
with extra spicy cats.
He, like Stacy, sees cat welfare
as a collective community-based problem to solve together.
(16:44):
And in Jackson's case, we're talking about
the global community.
I'm working with the cats and their people
just to make life as good as we can for the cats
and to that end, the Jackson Galaxy project
with greater good charities.
The approach is just to create a new framework for cats
(17:06):
within sheltering and rescue
where the messaging is consistent
where we really advocate for cats in a unique way.
In season two, we had the chance to speak
about rock and roll kitties,
but we also discussed some of his work
with people and pets who have been displaced.
(gentle piano music)
(17:28):
When War broke out in Ukraine,
we were on the ground waiting at the border with Poland
to help those coming across the border.
People with their annual family members
in their arms as they crossed over the border.
The animals are considered family members
(17:49):
and you wouldn't leave your family behind.
And yet, more often than not,
the non-human members of our communities
still just aren't accounted for
when assisting displaced folks
who are, if temporarily, homeless.
We saw it during Katrina.
The FEMA shelters, the Red Cross shelters,
(18:13):
did not allow animals, so we had stray animals
and broken hearts across the US.
It was really sad.
(gentle piano music)
At the time of this recording,
we are 20 years out from the tragic impact
of Hurricane Katrina.
(18:34):
Some 1300 people's lives were lost
and countless pets were lost or left behind.
It will take generations for many of the millions
in that region who were impacted to recover,
both from the economic impact
and the trauma of losing their homes.
There is no there, there.
(18:54):
And yet,
(gentle piano music)
Home can mean a lot of things.
It may not mean a brick and mortar building,
it may move around.
Home can be found in community.
It can be found through the love of your best friend
(19:14):
the one who doesn't judge you.
The one you trust who's carried you through trauma,
who's witnessed you in your best and worst moments,
who's cared for you in ways others cannot.
Home is where those in our hearts reside.
So for those surviving the trauma of homelessness,
(19:35):
it's a profound mercy to have such an important part
of their home and their history still with them.
The problem of homelessness is systemic
and one of the leading causes of homelessness
is also the most under-reported.
(gentle piano music)
(19:56):
It's when people are forced to leave their home
because the home itself is not safe.
There's a program called Rescue Rebuild
and they get big projects that are like a weekend.
They swoop in, I work on the cat area.
(20:19):
We redesign the shelters
and one of those things that we do is work
on domestic violence safe houses
and try to remove that barrier that you're talking about
because I really is set.
I mean the studies all show
if there's any violence towards animals,
violence towards kids and family members the next step.
So that definitely plays a significant role.
(20:44):
(gentle piano music)
This form of violence is one of the most insidious contributors
to the crisis of homelessness.
I'd like to take a second to quickly define domestic violence,
also known as intimate partner violence or IPV.
I'm going to use both terms interchangeably in this episode.
(21:07):
(gentle piano music)
According to the National Coalition of Anti Violence Programs,
IPV is a pattern of behavior
where one intimate partner coerces, dominates,
or isolates another intimate partner to maintain power
and control over the partner and the relationship.
(21:28):
IPV may be perpetrated in many different ways,
including psychological and emotional abuse,
economic abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse,
sexual abuse, cultural and religious abuse,
isolation and intimidation.
Often the person causing harm
(21:50):
and the people they're hurting,
share a domicile, hence domestic violence.
What a terrible choice survivors face,
homelessness or the terrors of living
with the abuse in their own home.
Survivors with fur family face additional barriers.
(22:13):
There are currently only about 250 shelters
in the United States that are pet friendly.
That represents less than 20% of all shelters
in the United States.
Every minute, approximately 24 people in the United States
experience domestic violence,
and there are more than 10 million people
(22:35):
who experience abuse annually.
National stay in local domestic violence hotlines
receive more than 19,000 calls every day,
which is more than 13 calls every minute.
So the pervasiveness of abuse in this country
and obviously many others is profound
and the impact on families with pets is incredibly high.
(22:59):
So this is a crucial issue for us to focus on
because not being able to leave with a pet
is an incredible barrier for people,
especially for survivors.
I'm so grateful to have two guest experts
from the Urban Resource Institute or URI.
I'll let our first guest introduce herself.
(23:20):
My name is Teal Inzunza.
I use she and her pronouns.
I am the Associate Vice President
of Justice Initiatives at the Urban Resource Institute.
URI has been in existence for 40 years
and has been committed to ending domestic violence
and homelessness in New York City.
(23:40):
We have 15 domestic violence shelters,
10 of which are emergency shelters
and five of which are what we call transitional housing.
Survivors are able to stay in those shelters
for a longer period of time.
Pals, the people and animals living safely program
was founded in 2013.
As a result of seeing the need of the community,
(24:02):
hearing from survivors directly
that they wouldn't leave an abusive relationship
or situation if they couldn't bring their pets with them.
Now we think that makes so much sense,
but at the time that wasn't something
that was being talked about or understood.
Finally, a survivor-centered solution
(24:27):
and a real response to the question
so many survivors of domestic violence are asked.
Why didn't they leave?
Intimate partner violence is the leading cause
of homelessness in New York City.
There is a housing crisis across the country,
but especially in New York City,
people aren't always able to find housing
(24:49):
once they are timed out of domestic violence shelter.
We worked with the National Domestic Violence Hotline
to do a study and a survey of survivors
and we found that 50% of survivors
said they would not leave an abusive relationship
if they could not bring their pet into shelter with them.
(25:10):
So if we think about the number that I said earlier,
that's about 5 million people a year.
So this is a need, this is a barrier for survivors
to enter shelter to escape abusive relationships,
to seek safety.
The more clueless, callous among us might say,
(25:33):
"So what, it's just a cat, it's easy."
But as we've been saying this whole time,
in addition to being part of the family,
our pets also serve as one of the most grounding,
safe things in the home.
That means so much for someone navigating
through some of the worst moments of their lives.
(25:56):
I have had Bebe for every major turn of events in my life.
He was given to me the first time my abuser ever hit me.
We went to go adopt a cat.
It was his apology to me.
Bebe was there with me through all the abuse
that I survived through my pregnancy.
(26:18):
Eventually I ended up with you a ride pals
and I was very lucky to have him with me there.
And I think he was meant to be a part of my journey.
He's become, oh, he's coming over here.
He hears me talking about him.
Yes, sir, come here.
Come here, let me show you, please.
Folks, I am so proud to have connected
with our next expert,
entrepreneur and advocate, Elizabeth Rose.
(26:41):
I am a former client of URI and the pals program.
I was in URI for almost four years.
I stayed there while healing from spinal surgery, PTSD,
both myself and my daughter in my cat BB lived in URI
(27:02):
in the shelter.
Now I am an advocate for a couple organizations (27:04):
URI Pals.
My Dog is My Home and Women's Advocates in Minnesota.
So I advocate for pet inclusive shelters
and just domestic violence rights in general.
(upbeat music)
My family history comes from a long line
(27:26):
of trauma survivors, three generations specifically.
So this is a very important topic to me.
(upbeat music)
Poverty, homelessness and IPV.
(27:47):
All cycles that are incredibly difficult to break out of
in systems that reward the abuse of power
and punish the poor.
We have a lot of work to do.
It comes down to the mosaic of support, as Stacy called it,
which includes URI pals.
Thanks to them, folks like Elizabeth and Hazel
(28:08):
were able to find home with Bebe,
who is a rescue cat in so many ways.
(upbeat music)
I went through years of child abuse as well
as the domestic violence.
Having Bebe has been very supportive through might healing,
(28:30):
my trauma and my therapy.
And I'm just so happy to have him.
He means a world to me.
He's like my best friend.
He sleeps with me every night.
He checks on Hazel, tours the house.
He would hide when my abuser was around
and I noticed that, but when he would leave,
BB would watch Hazel as a baby.
(28:52):
I have pictures of him right next to Hazel.
Almost every event of her growing up.
I love seeing him being a part of our journey.
So I just, I love him so much.
I can't stop looking at him.
He's so soft and furry and squishy.
He makes me very happy.
We believe that pets are a part of the family,
(29:13):
a critical part, a healing part as Elizabeth mentioned
and we know how crucial it is that people stay together.
Our tagline is stay together, heal together.
I'm a licensed clinical social worker.
The goal of all of our work is that everybody gets what they need
(29:35):
to live the life that they choose.
Many times survivors can't bring anything.
They show up with nothing.
Literally the clothes on their back.
Often when I've seen survivors move into their apartment,
that's a time when they're the most emotional
because you're learning for the first time
(29:56):
what it's like to be in a space where you don't experience
violence and you get to set it up the way you want to set it up.
That often takes a period of time of grounding and reclaiming
and being able to feel safe, it doesn't happen right away.
Over time people heal and it's so grateful
that people get to do that with their pets.
(30:16):
Something these survivors so deserve.
Not just a bare-bones safe house,
a place of healing and rest,
a place that can feel like home.
There's a lot of stigma around shelter,
(30:38):
especially in a place like New York City.
And we expect them to look dark and dirty and gross,
but our spaces are really beautiful
and they're meant to be healing truly.
When we started building shelters in this way,
there was some feeling like, oh, it's too nice.
People won't want to leave because they're too fancy
(30:59):
and we responded by saying we want folks to feel at home here.
We want to feel like if our family member had to enter shelter
for some reason, somebody we loved,
we would feel good about having them here.
So really our philosophy around shelter
is creating these healing spaces.
And the PALS program continues to creatively integrate
these accommodations into other systems
(31:21):
to help keep more families off the streets,
including their fur family members.
We knew that once folks left our domestic violence shelters,
that they aren't able to bring their pets with them,
unless they have a service animal
or an emotional support animal.
And even then, it could be challenging
because some of these laws are not always understood
(31:42):
by folks in doing intakes or understanding
how those things work.
So over the last year, we've done a pilot project
with the Department of Homeless Services
to run PALS in one of our Department of Homeless Services
family shelters.
And we got permission to move survivors
who were timing out of domestic violence shelter
(32:04):
into one of our homeless family shelters.
We worked with Department of Homeless Services
to do that referral process, ensure that they could stay
with their pets and remain in homeless family shelter
united with their family, which has been a revelatory experience.
We've heard from members of DHS that before this,
(32:25):
they maybe didn't know as much because of course,
you don't always know what you don't know.
And through this process, they've really been such a committed
partner and we're super grateful for them taking a chance
on this pilot and really embracing it fully.
From the bottom of my heart,
(32:47):
I am so grateful for folks like Stacey, Jackson, and Teal
working in community on sustainable solutions
to the problems of homelessness and poverty.
Both for humans and feelings.
No one solution is whole, complete, or perfect.
But together, we form and stacey's words,
the mosaic of support.
(33:08):
Or if you want to call it something else,
a community cat quilt or something like that,
I also want to thank survivors everywhere.
Thank you for surviving.
We need you in this world, you know?
And on that note, here's some of Elizabeth Hazel
and Bebe's story.
I went through a lot of physical, violent abuse
(33:32):
that both my daughter and I went through
and I don't remember a lot of being a parent
for when she was zero to two years old.
I escaped him when she was two.
It was a six months period emergency shelter
before I went into a family long term shelter
for three and a half years.
(33:53):
My first night in shelter, my abuser was threatening
to throw my cat out.
I was in more of a shock state,
so I couldn't even understand
that this was just another abusive tactic.
I was just leaving this situation.
I hadn't been diagnosed with PTSD,
but the program at URI assisted me.
They said, you're gonna go to the local precinct near
(34:14):
where Bebe is, grab a police officer, go get him.
And when I came back to shelter,
URI had literally everything for me.
And actually when I had my spinal surgery
in the shelter, they are the ones that bought him
the electric litter box that I still have today.
(34:36):
And it's like five years old and it still works,
but that was to assist me during that time
when I went from a walker to a cane.
I'm just very thankful to have Beebe
because he's healed me physically, mentally, emotionally.
I don't remember holding my daughter.
I don't, all that abuse I went through.
So being able to have a baby that I can hold every day
(34:59):
because that's like something he heals at me too.
While I was in shelter, I also faced a lot of stigma.
I do have a whole bachelor's degree in fashion design.
I had friends, but those friends did not understand
homelessness.
They unfortunately stopped inviting me to things,
(35:22):
made me feel like I wasn't a friend,
but I always had Beebe.
I mean, even one time I slipped at felony came running to me.
And I think that is the beauty of cats is
they can also share their emotions
without verbally being able to tell you.
(upbeat music)
(35:46):
In my new home out of shelter,
he's been beneficial for my daughter.
She's growing into some hormones
and she's experiencing some more anger outbursts.
I think he should go take Bebe for a walk.
And she does, she does it around our backyard
and that helps her heal too.
So we go on walks with him now.
(36:07):
Thank you, Elizabeth.
Thank you, Hazel.
And thank you, Bebe.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
Thank you listeners for witnessing
these important messages and stories.
(36:27):
This episode is being published during the month of October,
which in the United States is domestic violence awareness month.
This was heavy stuff, so in the show notes,
I've also put a link to a body scan exercise
that you can do in a few minutes
after you stop listening, just in case it's helpful.
I know this impacts all of us,
if not directly, someone you know.
(36:48):
So take great care.
(upbeat music)
And get ready.
We'll be heading back to Egypt
and stopping over to Peru for our season finale.
I want to thank my wonderful experts, Stacy LeBaron,
Jackson Galaxy,
Teal Inzunza, and Elizabeth Rose.
(37:08):
While the opinions are my own,
the research and work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them,
please check out our show notes,
which also include the references and research
that went into this episode.
And if you loved it, please do continue leaving
those lovely five star reviews and kind words
on review forums, reddits, and in DMs
to influential people who must know about this now award winning,
(37:30):
quirky cat-themed culture history science,
and nature podcast.
If you would like to see a season four,
please consider sponsoring or donating to the podcast.
Visit ko-fi.com/6DegreesOfCats
or see the show notes on how to keep SS
6 Degrees of Cats afloat.
(37:51):
We're all part of this mosaic of support,
because remember, everything is connected.
(upbeat music)
6 Degrees of Cats is produced,
written, edited, and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
A.K.A. Amanda B.
Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to
linktr.ee/6degreesofcats
(38:16):
or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio
and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood,
the marginalized, the resilient, and the weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
(upbeat music)
(38:38):
I was supposed to be a guitar player.
My parents were huge doo-wop people,
you know, my mom being from New York
and being steeped in that culture
and my dad being an immigrant
who that represented sort of like the American dream
in a way.
I was probably 13.
(38:59):
I bought a Twin Reverb.
It's an amazing app, Billy Zoom from X.
We got a hold of that thing and turned it into like a jet engine.
When I first moved to LA, so broke,
my girlfriend at the time was a pet sitter
and I had to work for her for a while.
Her cat needed what's called the PU surgery
and if he didn't get the surgery,
(39:20):
he was absolutely gonna die.
And so we got this close to that amp having to be sold
in order to save him until this kickass that spotted me
Yeah - saved his life.
...but we have to get them comfortable in their carriers,
(00:01):
so they'll take them.
Come on, Snuggles.
She isn't going for the churro.
There's your blanket in here.
Snuggie.
This isn't working.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Cats.
The world's number one and only.
cat-themed culture, history, and science
podcast in which I, Captain Kitty, aka Amanda B,
(00:22):
and my feline co-executive producers, Binky, Snuggles,
and Peanut navigate the weird wild world from the past
to the present with the help of an exceptional array
of guest experts.
All aboard.
Hello, friends of 6 Degrees of Cats.
(00:42):
Before we start, we wanted to give you the heads up.
This episode will discuss domestic violence.
If this topic is especially sensitive for you,
we totally appreciate the need to listen another time, if at all.
In the show notes, we've linked some past episodes
you may want to check out instead, and some resources in case
you or someone you know may need support.
(01:03):
Please take great care.
And now, the episode.
When I was around six or seven years old,
the chimney in my childhood home caught fire.
I remember being rushed into our family car,
groggy, and still in my pajamas.
(01:23):
The rest of that night's kind of a blur
but I do recall asking my dad where ribbons
are then maybe two-year-old ginger tabby was.
And then, to my surprise and relief,
feeling his little body circling my ankles.
Somehow, he found his way into the backseat of the car with me.
Ribbons didn't accompany us to the days
(01:48):
and hotel that we stayed at for, I think several days,
until the smoke damage was cleared
and we were okay to return home.
I think ribbons was boarded at the local animal hospital,
a townover which I'm sure was an expensive undertaking.
So worth it, of course.
Despite the fact that I was and remain,
(02:08):
the sole true cat person and the entire family on both sides.
It wasn't just me who considered ribbons
an important part of our family, our home.
(upbeat music)
And in this episode of 6 Degrees of Cats
(02:29):
we'll be thinking more about our little animal homies
if you will and why it's so critical
we include them in our homes.
We'll be consulting with some incredible people
helping both humans and felines stay sheltered
and there's going to be a special guest cameo.
(02:51):
In my, uh, 21 years on this planet,
I've lived in dozens of homes.
Well, houses.
What's that saying again?
Home is where the heart is.
(upbeat music)
Only three places have really felt like home.
My childhood home in Michigan, my flat in Japan,
(03:14):
and now my apartment in Brooklyn, New York City.
It's hard to put my finger on what feels like home.
Is it the lack of roommates
or the ability to decorate it how I want?
Maybe it's the relative permanence of my stay.
I mean, those three places represent
the longest years I've ever stayed put.
(03:35):
I think it's the fact that my home
has always had kitties.
Ribbons and Tibbons, my Michigan ginger tabbies,
my little gray Japanese bobbetale, Fuzzy,
and my born and bred scrappy New Yorkers,
(03:55):
Binky, Snuggles, and Peanut.
Well, actually, Peanut's a Jersey girl,
but I guess Jersey people will claim New York,
so we'll take it.
Yeah, those kitties weight a lot of that anchor.
I think this is reflected in how we refer to kitties
as domestic house cats, domestic as in domicile, house.
(04:19):
Homes.
That's kind of interesting.
We call them house cats.
For one thing, we don't call dogs house dogs
or rabbits, house rabbits or house birds.
At least nobody I know does.
And in the United States alone,
there are 35 million abandoned or stray cats.
(04:43):
They're homeless.
That's actually nearly six times
the number of homeless dogs, by the way.
Why is that?
Okay, so this is a cat centered podcast,
but for a hot second,
we do need to talk about the simple cousin of cats.
Canis lupus familiaris,
(05:04):
(Expecto Patronum, Abracadabra, Bippity Boppity Boop)
As we've discussed in many seasons of this podcast,
it's kind of inevitable though.
Dog ownership and dogs kind of set the template
for how we view domestic indoor animal stewardship.
Demographically, dog owners have the clear advantage.
(05:25):
I mean, I live in Brooklyn,
which is like the city of dogs.
More and more, the expectation is that a dog
is welcomed into homes and into public spaces.
It's normalized to have them in
more of these affluent bars, cafes,
and even some of the restaurants near me.
I don't snitch to the health department, don't worry.
(05:46):
And of course, if you set foot in any grocery store
or especially a pet supply store,
dog supplies dominate the inventory catalogs.
There's a very specific reason for this.
I don't mean this in a negative way,
but this is the line which is cats or pets of the poor, right?
I'm a cat person, but I also think that our society
(06:08):
looks at them differently than our dogs.
I mean, 75% of revenues and veterinary practices
are dog revenues.
They only get about 30% cat revenues.
So it's an underdog situation too.
Our culture looks at cats differently
and cats are really an underdog.
That was one of the OG cat podcasters I'm super honored to know.
(06:31):
My name is Stacy LeBaron.
I go by she and her.
I do like to think of myself more like a feline optimist
or a feline entrepreneur.
The organization I am with is the community cats podcast.
I am head cat and host of the podcast.
If you're a video person, YouTube is great.
(06:53):
We have a lot of educational videos there
for folks who really want to turn their passion
for cats into action.
These days we call cats on the streets community cats,
they're houseless, and they too are incredibly difficult
to quantify despite the tireless efforts of those caring
(07:15):
for, say, barrel colonies or working in shelters.
One of the main challenges that came up
in researching homelessness both in cats and humans
across the world is how difficult it is to clarify
what that word actually means.
Does it count people who lack permanent housing
but are sheltered temporarily?
(07:36):
How is that data collected?
I'd like to be careful in not conflating these two parallel
but distinct issues, of course.
The circumstances and solutions for human problems
are very different to those facing wildlife
and the animals that we've brought into our homes
and industries.
The thing is they do relate to each other in some ways.
I'll let Stacy explain.
(07:57):
I think it's something like 60% of people feed cats
that they don't know who the owners are.
The source of our cat colony situation is an owned cat atom
and an owned cat eve.
And for whatever reason the family cannot keep the cat,
they cannot afford to get cat spader neutered.
Adam sprays in the house because he's un-neudered
(08:19):
and Eve goes into heat because she's unspayed
so everybody gets upset because the landlord's gonna
evict them if they're spraying around the house
so they get thrown out.
And that's where a community cat colony gets started.
My dream is that every cat that needs support
(08:41):
and access to care gets it all across the United States
and beyond it all around the world.
And so that is my ultimate goal in our programming
is being able to reach worldwide
with solutions for cats and their families.
Everybody in this world, I believe,
if they have access to the appropriate resources,
(09:02):
they're gonna be able to take care of the animals
in any community.
And I think that we just need to be able to provide
those tools for success and for sustainability.
I use the word mosaic a lot.
They need a mosaic of support of organizations coming in
(09:22):
to help them above and beyond just cat groups
or animal welfare organizations.
We have to realize it's not just us
I respect people and organizations for doing their part
because it's one piece of the bigger picture
and that it creates that full picture for us.
It's just giving the general community enough information
and access to resources to be able to support
(09:45):
the families that love and care for them.
I was involved with a project in Chelsea, Massachusetts
and went into the board of health
and they were like, we've got a huge cat problem
but we also have a huge rat problem too
and you need to help us with the rats and stuff.
They have long lines at the food banks
but most of the folks when they're getting food
(10:07):
from the food banks, they're feeding that food to their pets.
When you're starting brand new in a community,
number one, you're trying to engage the community members
in supporting the existing community resources.
So if you've got food banks, local churches
and their supportive programs like Salvation Army, Red Cross,
(10:28):
all of those organizations you wanna get involved
with those players first and say,
how can we support you support animals in the community?
I'm also president of an organization called Positive Pantry
and in Vermont, we raise money to buy pet food
but the pet food is bought and distributed
(10:49):
through the Vermont food bank.
We have much greater capacity that way
and now Meals on Wheels is looking at doing a program
with pet food.
It just makes common sense
that we don't have to create that whole operational system
and structure if we're gonna have our cats and our dogs
as part of our family.
Well, let's put the pet food and the medical resources,
(11:11):
the veterinary resources into that operational system.
It's holistic, collaborative, community-driven solutions
that help make sure all mouths get fed sustainably.
(gentle music)
(11:33):
There's so many stories of like children rescuing kittens
and bringing them to the folks that are feeding the cats
and not just saying, you know, I know you're the people
who can get help for those cats
and if they're asking on behalf of that cat
then if something happens to them,
they know that they can ask for themselves.
Just by even having a presence within the community,
(11:58):
there are resources if anything does happen.
One of the most important things about these
can currently beneficial solutions for humans and cats is,
well, the community that they catalyze,
the family, if you will, grows.
Cats play a role in neighborhood relations.
(12:19):
You'll have two neighbors fighting one another
over these cats and you get them spayed and neutered
and you set up appropriate feeding stations and shelters
and then they're loving the cats.
The cats are serving a purpose.
I heard some statistic recently that only 20% of people
know who their neighbors are because we all are on social media
(12:40):
and that's like our neighborhoods now.
I was talking to somebody the other day
and they were like, I did the paper-caller thing
and now I know 10 of my neighbors and it's great.
And so now something else came up in the neighborhood
and they all were able to talk about it
to resolve some issue or something
but it's like, oh my gosh, we have to have our community cats
be the glue in our neighborhood so we can talk to each other again.
(13:03):
The cats aren't gonna post on Facebook, right?
We're talking about compassion, humanity.
It's just getting this back into humanly
connect with one another and I think these cats
are providing that bridge for us.
What was I saying about how everything is connected?
(13:24):
That's right.
Our systems, our communities, all of us.
And when it comes to our community cat neighbors,
well, homelessness is a major crisis
that both humans and feline kind unfortunately share.
As a quick note, some people working in social services
may use the terms unsheltered or houseless.
(13:46):
But for the purposes of clarity,
I'll use the imperfect but colloquially common term,
homeless to encompass those temporarily
or long term displaced and unsheltered.
Right now, over 150 million people in this world
(14:06):
are defined as homeless.
Though according to the World Economic Forum Report in 2021,
this number is likely under-representative.
Speaking of representation,
another thing that is really poorly represented
is that homeless people are pet owners too.
It's time to take a little bit more of a look at
(14:30):
the folks who are generalized as the homeless,
which we'll do after the break.
(upbeat music)
Thanks to what our earlier season guest,
(14:54):
Trisha Hersey calls the death cult of rugged individualism,
people without permanent housing
are seen as incapable of caring for pets
and even undeserving of them.
(upbeat music)
It comes down to a malingering attitude
that I really hope we can eradicate.
I actually had an interesting conversation
(15:16):
with another person saying,
"Economists consider cats and dogs luxury goods."
And it's very interesting.
So as your income goes up, the number of dogs you have go up.
But as your income goes down, the number of cats you have go up.
So it's very strange that cats are considered luxury good,
but as you have less income,
(15:37):
you actually have more of them.
Crass comments about hoarders and mental health aside.
I think there's also a more nuanced reason
why people who have food and housing insecurity
would still find space for the companionship of a cat.
Even though we're entering the age of the adventure cat
(15:58):
and cats being more outdoors and hearted
and the backpacks and all that, I think they will always be
a representation of the safety we feel at home
and the sanctity of our home.
(upbeat music)
He's back.
The pater familia Felis Catus,
aka the cat daddy himself, Jackson Galaxy.
(16:20):
I'm the cat daddy pretty much everywhere on social media.
Find me on my YouTube channel where we put out brand new content
every week and look for river rolls.
Jackson doesn't just help individuals
with extra spicy cats.
He, like Stacy, sees cat welfare
as a collective community-based problem to solve together.
(16:44):
And in Jackson's case, we're talking about
the global community.
I'm working with the cats and their people
just to make life as good as we can for the cats
and to that end, the Jackson Galaxy project
with greater good charities.
The approach is just to create a new framework for cats
(17:06):
within sheltering and rescue
where the messaging is consistent
where we really advocate for cats in a unique way.
In season two, we had the chance to speak
about rock and roll kitties,
but we also discussed some of his work
with people and pets who have been displaced.
(gentle piano music)
(17:28):
When War broke out in Ukraine,
we were on the ground waiting at the border with Poland
to help those coming across the border.
People with their annual family members
in their arms as they crossed over the border.
The animals are considered family members
(17:49):
and you wouldn't leave your family behind.
And yet, more often than not,
the non-human members of our communities
still just aren't accounted for
when assisting displaced folks
who are, if temporarily, homeless.
We saw it during Katrina.
The FEMA shelters, the Red Cross shelters,
(18:13):
did not allow animals, so we had stray animals
and broken hearts across the US.
It was really sad.
(gentle piano music)
At the time of this recording,
we are 20 years out from the tragic impact
of Hurricane Katrina.
(18:34):
Some 1300 people's lives were lost
and countless pets were lost or left behind.
It will take generations for many of the millions
in that region who were impacted to recover,
both from the economic impact
and the trauma of losing their homes.
There is no there, there.
(18:54):
And yet,
(gentle piano music)
Home can mean a lot of things.
It may not mean a brick and mortar building,
it may move around.
Home can be found in community.
It can be found through the love of your best friend
(19:14):
the one who doesn't judge you.
The one you trust who's carried you through trauma,
who's witnessed you in your best and worst moments,
who's cared for you in ways others cannot.
Home is where those in our hearts reside.
So for those surviving the trauma of homelessness,
(19:35):
it's a profound mercy to have such an important part
of their home and their history still with them.
The problem of homelessness is systemic
and one of the leading causes of homelessness
is also the most under-reported.
(gentle piano music)
(19:56):
It's when people are forced to leave their home
because the home itself is not safe.
There's a program called Rescue Rebuild
and they get big projects that are like a weekend.
They swoop in, I work on the cat area.
(20:19):
We redesign the shelters
and one of those things that we do is work
on domestic violence safe houses
and try to remove that barrier that you're talking about
because I really is set.
I mean the studies all show
if there's any violence towards animals,
violence towards kids and family members the next step.
So that definitely plays a significant role.
(20:44):
(gentle piano music)
This form of violence is one of the most insidious contributors
to the crisis of homelessness.
I'd like to take a second to quickly define domestic violence,
also known as intimate partner violence or IPV.
I'm going to use both terms interchangeably in this episode.
(21:07):
(gentle piano music)
According to the National Coalition of Anti Violence Programs,
IPV is a pattern of behavior
where one intimate partner coerces, dominates,
or isolates another intimate partner to maintain power
and control over the partner and the relationship.
(21:28):
IPV may be perpetrated in many different ways,
including psychological and emotional abuse,
economic abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse,
sexual abuse, cultural and religious abuse,
isolation and intimidation.
Often the person causing harm
(21:50):
and the people they're hurting,
share a domicile, hence domestic violence.
What a terrible choice survivors face,
homelessness or the terrors of living
with the abuse in their own home.
Survivors with fur family face additional barriers.
(22:13):
There are currently only about 250 shelters
in the United States that are pet friendly.
That represents less than 20% of all shelters
in the United States.
Every minute, approximately 24 people in the United States
experience domestic violence,
and there are more than 10 million people
(22:35):
who experience abuse annually.
National stay in local domestic violence hotlines
receive more than 19,000 calls every day,
which is more than 13 calls every minute.
So the pervasiveness of abuse in this country
and obviously many others is profound
and the impact on families with pets is incredibly high.
(22:59):
So this is a crucial issue for us to focus on
because not being able to leave with a pet
is an incredible barrier for people,
especially for survivors.
I'm so grateful to have two guest experts
from the Urban Resource Institute or URI.
I'll let our first guest introduce herself.
(23:20):
My name is Teal Inzunza.
I use she and her pronouns.
I am the Associate Vice President
of Justice Initiatives at the Urban Resource Institute.
URI has been in existence for 40 years
and has been committed to ending domestic violence
and homelessness in New York City.
(23:40):
We have 15 domestic violence shelters,
10 of which are emergency shelters
and five of which are what we call transitional housing.
Survivors are able to stay in those shelters
for a longer period of time.
Pals, the people and animals living safely program
was founded in 2013.
As a result of seeing the need of the community,
(24:02):
hearing from survivors directly
that they wouldn't leave an abusive relationship
or situation if they couldn't bring their pets with them.
Now we think that makes so much sense,
but at the time that wasn't something
that was being talked about or understood.
Finally, a survivor-centered solution
(24:27):
and a real response to the question
so many survivors of domestic violence are asked.
Why didn't they leave?
Intimate partner violence is the leading cause
of homelessness in New York City.
There is a housing crisis across the country,
but especially in New York City,
people aren't always able to find housing
(24:49):
once they are timed out of domestic violence shelter.
We worked with the National Domestic Violence Hotline
to do a study and a survey of survivors
and we found that 50% of survivors
said they would not leave an abusive relationship
if they could not bring their pet into shelter with them.
(25:10):
So if we think about the number that I said earlier,
that's about 5 million people a year.
So this is a need, this is a barrier for survivors
to enter shelter to escape abusive relationships,
to seek safety.
The more clueless, callous among us might say,
(25:33):
"So what, it's just a cat, it's easy."
But as we've been saying this whole time,
in addition to being part of the family,
our pets also serve as one of the most grounding,
safe things in the home.
That means so much for someone navigating
through some of the worst moments of their lives.
(25:56):
I have had Bebe for every major turn of events in my life.
He was given to me the first time my abuser ever hit me.
We went to go adopt a cat.
It was his apology to me.
Bebe was there with me through all the abuse
that I survived through my pregnancy.
(26:18):
Eventually I ended up with you a ride pals
and I was very lucky to have him with me there.
And I think he was meant to be a part of my journey.
He's become, oh, he's coming over here.
He hears me talking about him.
Yes, sir, come here.
Come here, let me show you, please.
Folks, I am so proud to have connected
with our next expert,
entrepreneur and advocate, Elizabeth Rose.
(26:41):
I am a former client of URI and the pals program.
I was in URI for almost four years.
I stayed there while healing from spinal surgery, PTSD,
both myself and my daughter in my cat BB lived in URI
(27:02):
in the shelter.
Now I am an advocate for a couple organizations (27:04):
URI Pals.
My Dog is My Home and Women's Advocates in Minnesota.
So I advocate for pet inclusive shelters
and just domestic violence rights in general.
(upbeat music)
My family history comes from a long line
(27:26):
of trauma survivors, three generations specifically.
So this is a very important topic to me.
(upbeat music)
Poverty, homelessness and IPV.
(27:47):
All cycles that are incredibly difficult to break out of
in systems that reward the abuse of power
and punish the poor.
We have a lot of work to do.
It comes down to the mosaic of support, as Stacy called it,
which includes URI pals.
Thanks to them, folks like Elizabeth and Hazel
(28:08):
were able to find home with Bebe,
who is a rescue cat in so many ways.
(upbeat music)
I went through years of child abuse as well
as the domestic violence.
Having Bebe has been very supportive through might healing,
(28:30):
my trauma and my therapy.
And I'm just so happy to have him.
He means a world to me.
He's like my best friend.
He sleeps with me every night.
He checks on Hazel, tours the house.
He would hide when my abuser was around
and I noticed that, but when he would leave,
BB would watch Hazel as a baby.
(28:52):
I have pictures of him right next to Hazel.
Almost every event of her growing up.
I love seeing him being a part of our journey.
So I just, I love him so much.
I can't stop looking at him.
He's so soft and furry and squishy.
He makes me very happy.
We believe that pets are a part of the family,
(29:13):
a critical part, a healing part as Elizabeth mentioned
and we know how crucial it is that people stay together.
Our tagline is stay together, heal together.
I'm a licensed clinical social worker.
The goal of all of our work is that everybody gets what they need
(29:35):
to live the life that they choose.
Many times survivors can't bring anything.
They show up with nothing.
Literally the clothes on their back.
Often when I've seen survivors move into their apartment,
that's a time when they're the most emotional
because you're learning for the first time
(29:56):
what it's like to be in a space where you don't experience
violence and you get to set it up the way you want to set it up.
That often takes a period of time of grounding and reclaiming
and being able to feel safe, it doesn't happen right away.
Over time people heal and it's so grateful
that people get to do that with their pets.
(30:16):
Something these survivors so deserve.
Not just a bare-bones safe house,
a place of healing and rest,
a place that can feel like home.
There's a lot of stigma around shelter,
(30:38):
especially in a place like New York City.
And we expect them to look dark and dirty and gross,
but our spaces are really beautiful
and they're meant to be healing truly.
When we started building shelters in this way,
there was some feeling like, oh, it's too nice.
People won't want to leave because they're too fancy
(30:59):
and we responded by saying we want folks to feel at home here.
We want to feel like if our family member had to enter shelter
for some reason, somebody we loved,
we would feel good about having them here.
So really our philosophy around shelter
is creating these healing spaces.
And the PALS program continues to creatively integrate
these accommodations into other systems
(31:21):
to help keep more families off the streets,
including their fur family members.
We knew that once folks left our domestic violence shelters,
that they aren't able to bring their pets with them,
unless they have a service animal
or an emotional support animal.
And even then, it could be challenging
because some of these laws are not always understood
(31:42):
by folks in doing intakes or understanding
how those things work.
So over the last year, we've done a pilot project
with the Department of Homeless Services
to run PALS in one of our Department of Homeless Services
family shelters.
And we got permission to move survivors
who were timing out of domestic violence shelter
(32:04):
into one of our homeless family shelters.
We worked with Department of Homeless Services
to do that referral process, ensure that they could stay
with their pets and remain in homeless family shelter
united with their family, which has been a revelatory experience.
We've heard from members of DHS that before this,
(32:25):
they maybe didn't know as much because of course,
you don't always know what you don't know.
And through this process, they've really been such a committed
partner and we're super grateful for them taking a chance
on this pilot and really embracing it fully.
From the bottom of my heart,
(32:47):
I am so grateful for folks like Stacey, Jackson, and Teal
working in community on sustainable solutions
to the problems of homelessness and poverty.
Both for humans and feelings.
No one solution is whole, complete, or perfect.
But together, we form and stacey's words,
the mosaic of support.
(33:08):
Or if you want to call it something else,
a community cat quilt or something like that,
I also want to thank survivors everywhere.
Thank you for surviving.
We need you in this world, you know?
And on that note, here's some of Elizabeth Hazel
and Bebe's story.
I went through a lot of physical, violent abuse
(33:32):
that both my daughter and I went through
and I don't remember a lot of being a parent
for when she was zero to two years old.
I escaped him when she was two.
It was a six months period emergency shelter
before I went into a family long term shelter
for three and a half years.
(33:53):
My first night in shelter, my abuser was threatening
to throw my cat out.
I was in more of a shock state,
so I couldn't even understand
that this was just another abusive tactic.
I was just leaving this situation.
I hadn't been diagnosed with PTSD,
but the program at URI assisted me.
They said, you're gonna go to the local precinct near
(34:14):
where Bebe is, grab a police officer, go get him.
And when I came back to shelter,
URI had literally everything for me.
And actually when I had my spinal surgery
in the shelter, they are the ones that bought him
the electric litter box that I still have today.
(34:36):
And it's like five years old and it still works,
but that was to assist me during that time
when I went from a walker to a cane.
I'm just very thankful to have Beebe
because he's healed me physically, mentally, emotionally.
I don't remember holding my daughter.
I don't, all that abuse I went through.
So being able to have a baby that I can hold every day
(34:59):
because that's like something he heals at me too.
While I was in shelter, I also faced a lot of stigma.
I do have a whole bachelor's degree in fashion design.
I had friends, but those friends did not understand
homelessness.
They unfortunately stopped inviting me to things,
(35:22):
made me feel like I wasn't a friend,
but I always had Beebe.
I mean, even one time I slipped at felony came running to me.
And I think that is the beauty of cats is
they can also share their emotions
without verbally being able to tell you.
(upbeat music)
(35:46):
In my new home out of shelter,
he's been beneficial for my daughter.
She's growing into some hormones
and she's experiencing some more anger outbursts.
I think he should go take Bebe for a walk.
And she does, she does it around our backyard
and that helps her heal too.
So we go on walks with him now.
(36:07):
Thank you, Elizabeth.
Thank you, Hazel.
And thank you, Bebe.
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
Thank you listeners for witnessing
these important messages and stories.
(36:27):
This episode is being published during the month of October,
which in the United States is domestic violence awareness month.
This was heavy stuff, so in the show notes,
I've also put a link to a body scan exercise
that you can do in a few minutes
after you stop listening, just in case it's helpful.
I know this impacts all of us,
if not directly, someone you know.
(36:48):
So take great care.
(upbeat music)
And get ready.
We'll be heading back to Egypt
and stopping over to Peru for our season finale.
I want to thank my wonderful experts, Stacy LeBaron,
Jackson Galaxy,
Teal Inzunza, and Elizabeth Rose.
(37:08):
While the opinions are my own,
the research and work is theirs.
If you'd like to learn more about them,
please check out our show notes,
which also include the references and research
that went into this episode.
And if you loved it, please do continue leaving
those lovely five star reviews and kind words
on review forums, reddits, and in DMs
to influential people who must know about this now award winning,
(37:30):
quirky cat-themed culture history science,
and nature podcast.
If you would like to see a season four,
please consider sponsoring or donating to the podcast.
Visit ko-fi.com/6DegreesOfCats
or see the show notes on how to keep SS
6 Degrees of Cats afloat.
(37:51):
We're all part of this mosaic of support,
because remember, everything is connected.
(upbeat music)
6 Degrees of Cats is produced,
written, edited, and hosted by yours truly, Captain Kitty,
A.K.A. Amanda B.
Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to
linktr.ee/6degreesofcats
(38:16):
or look us up on all those social media platforms.
You'll be first in line for the extra audio
and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood,
the marginalized, the resilient, and the weird.
And of course, all the cats we've loved and lost.
(upbeat music)
(38:38):
I was supposed to be a guitar player.
My parents were huge doo-wop people,
you know, my mom being from New York
and being steeped in that culture
and my dad being an immigrant
who that represented sort of like the American dream
in a way.
I was probably 13.
(38:59):
I bought a Twin Reverb.
It's an amazing app, Billy Zoom from X.
We got a hold of that thing and turned it into like a jet engine.
When I first moved to LA, so broke,
my girlfriend at the time was a pet sitter
and I had to work for her for a while.
Her cat needed what's called the PU surgery
and if he didn't get the surgery,
(39:20):
he was absolutely gonna die.
And so we got this close to that amp having to be sold
in order to save him until this kickass that spotted me
Yeah - saved his life.
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