Meet “Raven,” a super sweet, loving cat who was left behind in an apartment, with a few small dogs, when her former humans were evicted. I’m not sure why, but police did check the apartment after the eviction and they found the pets. The pets were lucky — discovered before they declined from lack of food and water. 

Raven and her cohorts were placed in a boarding facility. The people involved knew a cat rescue person who could help Raven. That person helped Raven find a great new home. 

Raven knows her new name (no one knows what her previous name was), and seems to have forgotten any bad things that happened to her. Her bent tail tells a different story, but she claims she doesn’t remember anything about that. She just wants more petting and a few more treats, please.

I saw in the news last week that the New York Senate recently advanced some new animal protection bills, meaning that the bills passed the senate vote, but have a way to go before they can become law. One bill aims to help pets left behind by people, in three days or less, by requiring inspections of vacated properties.

You can do your own deep dive into the details here:

This is the bill: NY Senate Bill S178

More info here about the status of the bill.

As usual, there are a lot of questions, such as how would any government entity know when a property is vacated and if someone inspected a property and found pets, alive or deceased? What if the finder is unable to locate a rescue group that can help right away? Who is going to report that no one inspected a property in three days or less? And of course, how would anyone actually be fined?

In the long run though, I would hope that if this becomes law, it will bring awareness to landlords and property management groups and timely inspections will become part of the “vacated premises action” checklist. Maybe rescue groups can help educate inspectors on how to really search for cats who might be hiding, in fear, in cabinets, holes in walls or floors, or inside of furniture left behind. 

If fines are ever collected, the money will go into the state’s animal population control fund. 

More info on that fund here: New York State Animal Population Control

Leaving pets behind, without telling anyone, is the ultimate abandonment, but hopefully we can help more “Ravens” move on to better lives and stop the lack of care towards animals that are completely dependent on humans for their lives.

Just a little public service announcement this week:

Whiskers Animal Benevolent League, situated right here in Albany, has a cat shelter that probably most of you have heard about. The organization is 100% volunteer-run, with almost 300 volunteers. 

Even with all of those people, believe it or not, the cat shelter needs more hands to help feed cats and clean, and any cat person knows that cats can be messy beasts! Not all of the volunteers work at the shelter.

Volunteering can involve as little as one hour a week, at the shelter. Actually, some people share a shift and go in every other week. The group mainly has morning and evening shifts, revolving around cat breakfast and dinner time. If you have extra time, the cats always need to have laundry washed, dried, folded and put away. Washer and dryer onsite!

There is hands-on training involved, and, as I covered in last week’s newsletter, there is now state-mandated online education required. 

The big needs right now are:

If you think you want to try it out, please fill out the online form at

https://www.ewhiskers.com/volunteer


And there are people who know the names of all of the cats at the shelter! You can try to learn them too!

So last week I told you about how I caught the orange kitten that was outdoors in January 2025, trying to eat frozen compost. This week I’ll explain what the next steps are in bringing in a cat from outside, evaluating its “catsonality” (as we call it, at home), and helping it get used to being indoors.

The only extra equipment needed for this phase, in addition to the equipment I mentioned last week, is a good sturdy table and a large-ish cage that is big enough to fit a litter box, food and water bowls, and a cat bed or small cat carrier. You can buy a good-sized cage for around $100.

We (my husband and I) discovered by accident, when we ran out of foster cat space one time, that if we bring a cat into the home as soon as possible (remember, they always have fleas, might be sick, and intact males might spray), putting the cat into a large cage, set on a table right in the living room, while covering it with some sheets for a week or more, the cat will acclimate and become socialized much faster than if we had the cat closed up in a separate room.

One thing we have learned is that all of the cats we have brought inside warm up to our free-roaming cats before they give humans the time of day. Even though we have had a variety of cats over the years, they all seem to be unfazed by the fosters in the cage. As a matter of fact, as soon as start setting up the table and cage, they are curious and I think they know someone new and interesting is coming. 

We cover the cage to help the cats feel more secure at first. Most of them will hide in or under cat beds or in a cat carrier (for the really feral ones) in the cage. The sheet lets them peek out. The living room has two windows and there is street noise, so they are often nervous about that at first, as well. 

Being in the main part of the house, the cats hear all of our daily activities. Remember, cats that are living outside might have never heard doors open and close, toilets flush, dishes clanking, people talking, the radio, and other household noises. They are sometimes freaked out just by having a ceiling … we had a recent feral that would stare suspiciously at the ceiling at first. 

They usually love seeing the other cats. Our sofa is right in front of the cage, so the foster can see the cats sit with a human on the sofa, or on a lap. They see the cats getting petted and playing. It really helps move socialization along. I keep reading that cats do not meow at each other, they only meow at humans. We have found this to be entirely false. The caged cats almost always talk to the free-roaming cats, trying to get their attention (or to get help to escape, most likely, haha). 

The other thing we need to do is name the cats. We foster with Whiskers cat rescue. To keep cat records from getting mixed up at the shelter and veterinary offices, there is a list of “Names to Not Use.” You don’t want to re-use a name for a few years. Currently, there are over 1,200 names to not use, so you do have to get creative! 

At home, we come up with a theme, so starting with the orange kitten, we decided on using the names of birds of mythology. There seemed to be enough names to last us a while!

The orange kitten was going to be named “Griffin,” but of course, someone had used that name already. A different spelling would be ok, so the little orange guy was named “Gryphon.”

Gryphon was a little shy but warmed up to the indoor life very quickly! It is always so cute when a cat seems to realize, “All this is mine?!” He graduated from the cage quickly and we moved him into a room with a screen door, which is also used as a work-from-home office three days a week. 

The next goal was to catch his brother, the black kitten, and reunite them. In the meantime, he had room to run and play, sit on laps and get petted more. 

The black kitten was much more wary and it took me a few days to catch him. He looked so big on the trail camera, but he was just a small kitten. 

I thought the kittens would have a good reunion, but “Roc,” the black kitten, decided that he was completely freaked out and he didn’t know his brother. Roc certainly did not like people. He hid, so we ended up putting him a cage, on the floor, in the same room Gryphon was in. It still took a couple of weeks for Gryphon to win his brother over. For a while, I wasn’t even sure I should bother trying to adopt them out together. 

Gryphon weighed 2.5 lbs and Roc weighed 2.0 lbs. That would make them 2-3 months old. I’ll generally assume cats from outside are underweight, so we guess that they were probably around 4 months old. They needed to put on some weight before getting vaccinated and neutered, so while they got used to being indoor cats who always had food and water, heat, and a soft place to sleep, they put on weight and had their appointments. 

Roc very slowly came around to his brother and then to people. We decided to get them a home together. Through Whiskers, they got a great home nearby, and their foster mom sometimes sends me photos of them. They are big cats now! Here are their St. Patrick’s Day photos from 2026!

Next week, I’ll reveal who else I saw on the cat trail camera!