Victoria St. John to the Rescue

Making a difference

Story by Radhika Madana Mohan

When she was just 8-years-old, Victoria St. John made her first rescue. She rescued stray cats. "I would bring them home and hide them from my parents," the Plattsburgh native says. Since then, she has devoted her life to rescuing feral cats throughout the city.

Working with the Humane Society for a few weeks, St. John described was an eye opener for her. She realized she didn't like the manner the shelter was run. "Animals were cramped and kept in cages." And on top of that, St. John says, she was more focused on cats while the shelter was more focused on dogs.Wanting to be out on the field and to work more with animals, St. John left Clinton Community College where she had majored in psychology to begin her mission — rescue cats.

In 2000, she began feeding colonies. "I started as an individual taking 70 to 100 calls a week." Realizing the demanding nature of the job, St John had to quit her job and take on her charge at full-force. And finally in 2004, St. John Feral Cat Fund became an established non-profit organization. Teaming up with her sister, Amelia St. John tackled the task of controlling the overpopulation of feral in the area. The sister-duo as for now work from their home; making yearly mass-trapping rescues.

"It hits you with a surprise and makes your job harder."

They also work with PetSmart Adoption Center, where the cats they rescue are placed for adoption. They have 14 volunteers who work at the center. Being a non-profit organization, all the help they get is through volunteers, St. John says, "We have no-paid employees." The organization is committed to helping feral, strays and abandoned cats. However, they struggled with their non-lethal mission of rescuing felines and controlling the population, due to the high costs, and solely depending on donations to sustain itself. "We hold many fund raisers; selling raffle tickets, bake and even yard sales," St. John says. However, the concerned St. John reveals her worry of being unable to help as many as she wants ― "providing sterilization and medical attention can be very expensive," St. John says. Yet, St. John says she thinks that public has responded well to the organization, and this, she says, "is very promising."

In terms of the cats, "we save them from being euthanized and the good thing is the cats here are sterilized." St. John adds that they have people as far as Albany and Connecticut who adopt their cats. They have the animals transported to these places. She says they try to keep cats no longer than three month. And even though there are cats that have been there longer, she finds them foster homes, to avoid these animals being kept in cages for too long. "It creates behavioral problems."

"We usually go mass-trapping where we go into areas with large numbers of cats and sterilize them," St. John says. Her sister and she are the only two who go out on mass-trapping rescues. St. John explains the difference between a feral cat is that, unlike a stray, a feral is not a domesticated animal.

Talking about her rescues, St. John says one of her most devastating on-the-job experience was when her team had went out trapping cats, but instead found two dogs in worse condition. One dog, St. John remembers, was locked in a shed with a small hole for food to be thrown into. "The other, was locked in a cage without neither food nor water. What's worst, the cage could at most fit a 25 to 30 pound animal, and this dog weighed about 60 pounds!"

"It hits you with a surprise and makes your job harder, when you find the unexpected," St. John says about finding this painful and shocking display of animal cruelty. Her team contacted the Animal Cruelty which to their dismay could not do much. Her team then spoke to the owner and convinced the lady to release the animals. "The lady I think found it too hard to care for the animal, somewhat of a burden. She signed the documents and the animals were released for adoption at the Elmore Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals." One dog was eventually transported by an animal dog rescue group from Albany to that area.

On a lighter note, St. John describes her work as fulfilling and "working with animals was a much better decision than staying in school," for her. It allowed her to focus on what she believes in.

Have you adopted any cats?