Colleen Cason: Animal rescuer is in a category all her own

Colleen Cason
Special to Ventura County Star
Colleen Cason

Ask yourself: Would this describe your dream job? 

Empty litter boxes, mop up vomit, cleanse festering abscesses and retrieve the occasional hairball.

Not for a million bucks and all the employer-paid Botox treatments in the world, you say? Well, about 40,000 people from more than 90 countries begged to take it on. That’s how many resumes a European couple received in response to their Facebook post seeking a director for their God’s Little People cat sanctuary.

Perhaps the fact that the rescue operates from the Greek island of Syros and overlooks the azure Aegean had something to do with the resume tsunami.

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In the end, the coveted post went to Jeffyne Telson, of Santa Barbara. For the past 21 years, the Texas-raised graphic artist has stood between cats and catastrophe as founder and operator of Resqcats. In that time, Telson and an intrepid team of volunteers have placed 3,000 felines rescued from throughout Southern California, including Ventura County. 

“For me (this job) was about the cats and taking care of the cats. For others, it might have been the view and being on a Greek island,” she told me. “This is an opportunity to get the word out about cats, their plight and how we humans treat them.” 

In her cover letter to God’s Little People, this cat woman listed what the squeamish among us can only call superpowers: Administering oral medication (ouch!), giving subcutaneous fluids (eek!) and caring for kitties with irritable bowel syndrome (ick!). 

“If a cat is too shy, too feral, has too many health issues or is just too anything … it stays,” she said of the 18 residents that live in powder-room-size enclosures at Resqcats’ seaside compound.

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To state the keenly obvious: Of the two types of people on Earth, the 62-year-old Telson falls doggedly into the cat-person category. The moments when a feline and a human intersect to their mutual aid are perfection to her. She speaks of a widow who adopts a cat, giving her the companionship she needed to go on. Or a woman diagnosed with breast cancer way too young who endured her treatment entertained by the antics of two kittens she adopted. 

Telson recently compiled stories like these in her book “Cat Tails: Heart-Warming Stories About the Cats and Kittens of Resqcats,” with all proceeds going to support the shelter. 

Her husband, Mitch, a retired CEO of Petco, encouraged Telson to go for the post. 

“This has you written all over it,” he said of the job description. “You don’t want to wait until you are too old to pursue your dream.”

The Telsons vacationed in Greece three times. While others dashed off to see ruins, Jeffyne roamed the back alleys, feeding the strays roasted chicken bought from street vendors. 

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Greece has a conflicted relationship with cats, as Telson tells it. Snapping photos of tabbies on sun-washed sidewalks and blue-tiled roofs is on the tourist’s must-do list. Souvenir shops peddle calendars and postcards depicting the cats of Greece in all their glory. But too often, humans treat them as vermin, Telson said. 

Syros, she points out, measures 8 by 10 miles and has a population of 22,000 people and 13,000 stray cats. 

Telson is in a mad scramble to place all her sanctuary’s adoptable cats before she leaves for Syros in early November. She’s confident that the 20 kittens will find homes without a problem. Placing three 1-year-old moms is more worrisome. When she has space, she rescues pregnant cats from high-kill shelters and then devotes the time and space it takes for the mama to deliver and wean her offspring. 

“I joke I am running a home for unwed teenage moms,” she said. 

The work involved is no joke. She wakes up long before dawn and goes to her office, which she calls the dungeon. There she attends to the bottomless stack of adoption paperwork and reports on grants the shelter receives for spay-and-neuter efforts. Moments with her charges are short and precious. 

On Syros, she believes she will enjoy less paperwork and more time with her four-legged charges, getting to know them individually and to earn their trust.

This job, she says, is bigger than caring for cats.

“This is about humanity,” she said. “The world needs more kindness.”

Email Colleen Cason at casonpoint101@gmail.com