I have gone to the dogs. I knew someday it might happen. My day has come. I made the mistake of answering a plea for help for a Dalmatian/pointer mix (with a little pit bull thrown in just for fun) named Milo who was set to be euthanized by a city agency. Being a cat rescue person, I don’t have that many contacts in the dog rescue world. Well, that was yesterday. Today is a different story.

All of a sudden, I became the eye of the storm. I never thought it would happen, but I created a furor and a flurry of activity by everybody, my boss included. Elena, a cat rescue person, was begged by a contact she has at Animal Care & Control to take Milo. He is super sweet and friendly and would have had to be put down due to space restrictions.

I think the key word here is euthanize. As I passed the email around, complete with cute doggy portrait, I could almost hear the collective gasp going up and through the electronic cosmos. Apparently, the few dog people I know know a lot of dog people.

The next thing I knew, I was getting emails from people I’d never heard of before. Then there’s my boss. Big animal lover. Because this dog is part Dalmatian, his rescuer thought he could be adopted out to a firehouse. Since my boss has two sons who are firefighters, I forwarded the email to him.

He asked me all day long if anyone had stepped forward to temporarily foster or adopt the dog. He, too, was calling everybody, firefighters included, and had me forward Milo’s information to his business contacts. Heaven forbid I get any real work done.

Since “Hurricane Milo” breezed into town, Elena was able to get a temporary foster situation for him, but he still needs a permanent home. Suddenly, the “crisis” is over. But, in fact, there still is a crisis because Milo doesn’t have a new family yet.

Then there is Buster. Buster is part pit bull, but may have some mastiff in him. Elena had rescued him earlier and he was supposed to go to his forever home, but his new parents backed out. As it turns out, as of this writing, Buster got a home after all.

Please excuse me for talking about dogs here, but it was quite a shock to me to be working on rescuing dogs as well as cats, particularly since I had no idea who to contact. But, since I am an equal opportunity animal lover, there’s always room to learn something new.

And now, we move on to Fred. Fred is a beautiful female calico cat. She also is distinctive because she is the first cat I have trapped in 2009. Trapping situations can be a lonely business. I have spent many an hour in cold, unfriendly environs, dark alley included, waiting for a cat to go into a humane trap.

Fred’s human moms, Pamela and her daughter Tara, live in a very nice home near me in Queens. As Pamela beckoned me into her well-appointed home (Tara was out of town for the weekend), the smell of homemade baked bread assaulted my nostrils. I nearly went into a swoon. I didn’t know anyone still actually baked bread anymore.

Pamela offered me homemade biscotti, oatmeal cookies and tea inside their nice warm home while we waited for “Miss Fred” to make up her mind to get caught on the patio outside. I wish the rest of my trappings could be so comfy. Hopefully, I’ll be doing a lot more trapping in the near future. Now is the time to get them before they get pregnant. Kitten season is just around the corner.

As for my House of Ten, Antonio is still sick with renal failure and a heart murmur. Unfortunately, this is not a situation that will get better. So, I’m spending lots of cuddle time with him. Now, it seems the only thing he really likes to eat is baked chicken. Yes, I am actually cooking for a cat.

I have tried getting him to eat everything from Fancy Feast to baby food. My poor baby even turned down tuna fish. So, baked chicken it is. I’ve been keeping in touch with my vet just to make sure I’m doing everything possible to help him stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible. His heart murmur precludes some treatment of his renal failure, as it may make his heart condition worse.

And this is the last week that the shelter I work at on Saturdays, Animal Haven, will be open. After that, they will only have a small adoption center and pet boutique open in SoHo, New York City. For over 31 years, Animal Haven took in unwanted animals in Flushing, Queens, and helped them get adopted. Now, things will be quite different. Animal Haven’s closing leaves a void as it was the largest shelter of its kind in the immediate area.

So, 2009 has gotten off to a very mixed start for me. I will go searching for another part-time job, hopefully working again with animals. If someone wins the lottery, maybe they’ll open up another shelter in the area. Maybe I could be a dog walker and go completely to the dogs. Perish the thought!

Debbie Graham lives in Flushing, New York, where she is slave to ten cats. When she is not tending to them or her feral colonies, she is writing, sailing, drawing, or watching Humphrey Bogart movies. She works as an administrative assistant during the week and part-time on the weekends at a local animal shelter.