Angel's Story

When Rebecca first saw Angel one evening last fall, she watched a quick flash of white fur scurry across the long shadows of a parking lot. He was thin. His coat appeared dirty, and he looked injured, with a large dark spot on one side of his face. She watched him run between two buildings and out of sight. "I knew that this cat wouldn't survive out there alone," said Rebecca, who is the Executive Director of Silicon Valley Animal Rescue. "When you see a cat like Angel, the thing that goes through your mind is that's not where you want that animal to die. The death process is really painful. Cats don't just curl up somewhere and go to sleep... It's a lingering death. And you don't want that animal to go through it out there."

"Out there" is the East Bayshore area, a vast and often unseen world that thrives in a sea of dense shrubbery and mud. It's where many of the Peninsula's feral cats live out their short, typically violent lives. Lives that are often plagued by starvation, ongoing territorial fighting, and the threat of illnesses such as feline AIDS and skin cancer from too much exposure to sunlight. It's a place Rebecca and other SVAR volunteers know well. "The way animals become feral is they're either born in that environment, and their mothers teach them how to survive, or, they're a totally tame cat that someone has dumped. They either die, or they learn how to survive," Rebecca said. "Our job is to help them survive. People think that cats can catch a mouse and survive out there but they can't. And it's a horrible, lonely death. Cats are so accustomed to being held. It's frightening for them."

SVAR volunteers set up managed homeless cat communities, where the animals can find food and fresh water each day. These communities serve not only as feeding stations for the cats, but a place where volunteers can keep tabs on their conditions. If a cat appears sick or injured, volunteers can trap it, take it to a local veterinarian, and eventually find it foster care.

But Angel wasn't part of a managed community. "I spotted him one day near an office complex, and he didn't look good at all. I knew I had to do something or he would die there." She set up a temporary feeding station near the complex to establish a central location for Angel, hoping he'd visit daily for nourishment. For two weeks, Rebecca returned every evening to replenish the food and water supply. "Some animal was eating that food, and I could only hope it was Angel."

On the final day, Rebecca set up a humane trap to capture Angel. She returned every hour to see if he'd been trapped, but as evening came, there was no sign of him. Rebecca resolved to make one last check at 9 p.m. and resume the process the next day. That evening, she and her husband drove up and saw Angel peering inside the trap. "It just all fell together. I wasn't going to come back after that final check, and when I showed up, he was there. He just went into the trap, and we had him." Rebecca could finally get a good look at Angel. "It's really upsetting to see an animal that far gone. He was emaciated, his bones were poking out, his fur was filthy. The whole side of his face was just flesh."

They rushed Angel to the hospital, where a veterinarian and assistants had been waiting for him. She told the team to do "whatever it takes to get this cat well and stabilized. But the doctor just said, we're not doing that. There's nothing left here. When you try to save these animals, the goal becomes that you have to bring them to the hospital and try everything you can. What you're hoping for is some miracle. In this case, the chance of Angel's miracle was so remote that the doctor just said there's no way this animal will leave here alive."

When the time came to say good-bye to Angel, Rebecca knew what to expect. "Having gone through the rescue process, we have to see these cats die all the time. We don't just say, let's just euthanize it. We say let's give this animal a chance. We put a lot of time, effort, and emotion in trying to get animals back to health, and sometimes we have to watch them die. It's part of the care process."

The veterinarian carefully placed Angel's tired and emaciated body into a Plexiglas box and sealed it. A anesthetizing gas filled the box, and in a few moments, Angel fell into a deep sleep. This was likely a relief for him, after suffering from several months of starvation, loneliness, and pain. No longer would he have to worry about finding his next meal or where to hide from angry predators. It was sleep. Pure, uninterrupted peace. Then, the injection, a needle straight into his heart, finally stopped Angel's life. "The best thing was to let him go," she said. "I kind of knew that was coming. But, it's still difficult because it's so contrary to what our philosophy is. But at the same time, it would have been selfish to try and keep him alive, because he was death already."

Rebecca and her husband took him into a private room and cleaned him up. The wet fur only revealed the skeletal frame of their tiny friend, who would never come to know their affection. The couple buried Angel in the rolling foothills of Portola Valley and said good-bye. "We wanted him to look his best," she said. "We thought about how beautiful he must have been once, how someone may have loved him, how he might have curled up on someone's lap. You don't ever feel good about something like this, because you know this happens all the time. People dump their cats thinking they'll survive, and this is how they end up."