No, it’s not one of the awards we’ll be giving out tonight at the inaugural Best of the Bay awards show, but maybe we should of.
I just talked to Petra Gearhart — the woman who almost single-handedly saved nearly 100 cats from a South Tampa trailer park slated for demolition — and she has turned her personal cat-trapping pastime into full-time employment.
Gearhart is now the feral cat coordinator for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — the first position of its kind in the country, according to the ASPCA. She works as part of Operation Orange, the ASPCA’s newest campaign to “create a country of humane communities, one community at a time, where animals receive the compassion and respect due to them as sentient beings, and where there is no more unnecessary euthanasia of adoptable animals simply because of a lack of resources or awareness.†The project seeks to bring different organizations together to educate and prevent animal overpopulation.
Read about one of Gearhart’s latest successful feral cat projects here.
Here’s two tails up and a hairball to you, Petra.
This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2007.
