09/20/2024
Taking a moment here to honor Midnight, a 2 -or 3-year-old black community cat first encountered behind the Hopeworks Crib in Camden. Unlike so many community cats, Midnight didn’t run away when you spoke to him. Instead, he sauntered confidently over to Shakur (not his real name), a current resident of the Crib. After Shakur was done loving on him, Midnight came over to me for pets. (Shakur and I were taking a quick break outside while working on a lengthy college application for a remarkable college program at Camden County College for special needs students.)
I was drawn into cat rescue on Thanksgiving Day 2017. While that’s a story for another time, what I can tell you that is germane to my purpose today is that in March of 2022, I was inspired to create a page, Cats & Kids: A Therapeutic Alliance. I knew this was a direction my soul was urging me toward, but I wasn’t clear on the “whole” of it yet. For a time, I used my healing skills to provide emotional healing for traumatized community cats (of which there is seemingly, no end.) But with Midnight and Shakur, the purpose of Cats & Kids came into clear focus. Here was a loving little cat, likely abandoned on the streets of Camden, and in need of love and food. And here was a special needs young man from a very dysfunctional home living in transitional housing, also in need of love, and especially so because he is differently-abled and maybe not the “coolest” kid at the Crib.
When I watched Shakur’s bond with Midnight grow stronger, and I learned from him how time spent with Midnight absolutely erased the anxiety he lived with–daily–as a young person with lots of buried trauma, I came to see first-hand the potential of animal-assisted therapy, an emerging field with application to prison populations, nursing homes, colleges, etc. As I did the research, I was so inspired by the possibilities, I signed up for a Certificate Program in Animal-Assisted Therapy. My idea was to create a model program for at-risk youth, especially those so screwed-over by adults, they’d trust an animal before they’d trust a human being again. I envisioned bringing this service to Hopeworks youth, and other Camden and Kensington-area community centers.
My interest in animal-assisted therapy sharpened even further when I read a passage in Conversations with Animals: Cherished Messages and Memories as Told by an Animal Communicator, by my first animal communication teacher, Lydia Hiby. In that passage, she recounts the story of one of her clients, who ran a daycare center and who had rescued a brown and white patch tabby. The tabby grew particularly close to the little boy who had been afraid of him and who learned to overcome that fear. One time,the boy was absent for two days. During that time, the cat–who was strictly indoors–developed respiratory symptoms. The owner became concerned, and called Lydia for a consultation. Lydia tuned in and asked the cat to explain what had happened. He flashed her a picture of him lying on the boy’s chest, and told her, “I’m trying to take the boy’s illness away.”
Just imagine! Cats can do this because they are energetically sensitive, and tuned into the higher frequencies. There are many stories of cats (and dogs) who know who to approach in the room, and who are in real need of love. Unlike people, cats are not judgmental. Midnight did not look at Shakur the way I imagine some of his housemates did. He didn’t judge him as “not cool enough” to befriend. Instead, Midnight wholeheartedly gave his love, companionship, and comfort.
After Midnight was spayed, Shakur broke the rules and snuck Midnight into his room at the Crib. The nights he slept cuddled next to Midnight he slept deeply, for the first time in months. His anxiety temporarily abated.
That couldn’t continue because the Crib, understandably, has a “no pets” policy. Shakur campaigned mightily for an exception; he even created a GoFundMe and raised enough money to see a therapist and get an Emotional Support Animal document. In the meantime, I found a foster and paid for Midnight’s upkeep. And then when that foster had to stop to honor another commitment, I found another. I myself was hoping against hope that the NJ Division of Vocational Rehabilitation would follow its own timeline, and help find Shakur a decent-paying job that made good use of Shakur’s brilliance with tech, and at repairing electronic goods. Then Shakur could move into an apartment where the ESA letter would be honored. That wasn’t to be, either. The NJDVR tested Shakur and found yet another handicap, a hearing issue, and somehow the process stalled. And without a solid job and paycheck, Shakur is still stuck in a home that for good reasons of its own won’t allow him to have that much-needed healing relationship.
Midnight, meanwhile, remained in limbo from July until just yesterday. His second foster was getting ready to start graduate school, and wanted Midnight gone. Shakur came to the conclusion that he couldn’t afford to take over Midnight’s care after I joined the legion of older adults pushed out of a job so the company could reclaim my salary, and could no longer afford to sponsor Midnight. And so, painfully, Shakur made the decision to give Midnight up and have me find him a permanent home. This was tough for me, after having invested so much into this cat (who was so confident and friendly, he would have been the perfect therapy cat.)
Thanks to the prayers of my parents, my friends, and me, my persuasive appeal, and the power of social media, I found the perfect home for Midnight. After spending even more money to get him tested to make sure he didn’t have any cat-communicable diseases,I brought him there this past Thursday. Last report I got, Midnight was happily playing with his new, look-alike cat brother. Shakur and I are happy for him, and are still adjusting to our individual sense of loss, each in our own way. Shakur, who doesn’t have the tools, is stuffing those feelings down on top of other hurts, disappointments, outrages etc from a lifetime of hunger and trauma, and me, well, I am writing about it here.
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My involvement with Camden youth dates back to 2008. I was working as a senior editor for Wolters Kluwer when I felt an inner call to provide care for the young people in Camden. I left that job and found an opportunity to work for the Townsend Foundation. I started off teaching English–in a Camden church basement homeschool–to young adults who had dropped out of Camden’s high schools and now wanted to earn their GED. I went on from there to mentor the gifted parochial school students chosen by their principals for a coveted scholarship to Camden Catholic High School. Under the auspices of Townsend Press CEO John Langan, his business partner, George Henry, and John’s wife, Dr. Nadell, I created a program that helped over 60 deserving students navigate the path from high school to college to their first professional job. I took a break for one year, to create educational content on health and finance for an FinTech start-up, and then Mr. Langan introduced me to Hopeworks, and gifted my salary for the first two years. Through Hopeworks, I expanded my reach to young people in Kensington.
During that decade and half, I have come to know intimately the pain our youth are in. We’ve all seen the reports about how young people across the board are struggling with anxiety and depression. Well, imagine being the have-nots in a social media-saturated society. Imagine suffering the slings of profiling, and other racism-related slights on top of that. Imagine being someone like Shakur, who knew hunger far too often, who was raised by parents who both have recognized mental illnesses, and who, because of his parent’s inability to function, is trying–as a special needs student with hearing and speech issues–to survive on his own. The Crib is not free; rent still needs to be paid every month; as does the cell phone bill. Imagine the pressure of trying to find a job when there are cognitive and physical impairments, while you are attending college. Imagine reaching out for the one thing that brings you comfort–life with a loving little cat– campaigning for that with all your might, and being denied. And then stuffing down one more disappointment and forcing yourself to go on.
The point is, we have to do better for our children growing up in poverty, in homes where the parents can barely hold it together. We have to help them get a head start on mental health and well-being at a much earlier age. Animal-assisted therapy can be a useful tool here, especially for children so traumatized by adults they’ve lost all faith in people. Focusing, a therapeutic process Eugene Gendlin created while at the University of Chicago, also has powerful and effective applications for children, some of which can be taught to primary school teachers. Amy Edelstein’s Mindfulness program, tested in schools in the worst Philadelphia neighborhoods, is extremely effective with high school juniors and seniors.
If we don’t make the effort in a systematic way, our children will remain in a fog of pain, a fog that grows denser each year that trauma isn’t addressed and more accumulates. The denser the fog, the greater the degree of stuckness, and the more difficult it is for our young people to take steps forward to a better future, even when they have coaching support. From what we are seeing, it is economic su***de to remain fogged and stuck at a time when the marketplace is shifting so rapidly, that individuals must have the resilience to adapt and continually re-invent themselves. That’s why, if we truly want to break the cycle of poverty, we can’t wait until our young people are old enough to enter workforce training programs or college to clear that fog. The effort has to begin much, much, much earlier.
