From the Chicago area help column.
Kittens finally get ticket out of O'Hare
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Jon Yates
What's Your Problem?
November 26, 2006
As the employee shuttle bus passed the parking lot outside Terminal 5,
Angela Gill did a double take.
There in the grass, smack-dab in the middle of O'Hare International
Airport, sat a gray-and-white cat and her four kittens.
"I almost jumped out of the bus," said Gill, a concierge at Air Canada.
When she arrived at the terminal, she did what any animal lover would
do. She rounded up a posse of fellow workers, grabbed a service van and
doubled back for a rescue.
Gill and her cohorts crossed the tarmac, pulled up to the curb, put on
the van's flashers and tried rounding up the animals. The cats
scattered.
Dejected but determined, Gill returned to the terminal and started
making calls. She logged every call she made--22 in all--asking shelters,
the city and airport personnel to save the cats. No one, she said, was
willing to come get them.
Over the next three weeks, Gill left food out for them every day and
offered a reward to anyone who caught the cats. She said two of the
kittens disappeared. Although she has no proof, Gill believes they were run
over by passing cars.
Worried the remaining three cats would suffer a similar fate, she
borrowed a humane trap from animal control in Northbrook, where she lives.
She spent a Saturday afternoon trying to catch the cats, but couldn't.
A Northbrook animal-control officer then gave her some advice: Contact
What's Your Problem. She promptly fired off a heartfelt e-mail Nov. 14,
pleading for help.
"Everyone I work with thinks I'm nuts, but I'm very persistent when I
want to help an animal like that," Gill said later.
So is the Problem Solver, who immediately called Anne Kent, director of
Chicago's Department of Animal Care and Control. Kent said she would
contact airport officials to see what could be done.
Within two days, John Antonacci, the Department of Aviation's general
manager of operations, had trapped the remaining cats and handed them
over to Animal Care and Control.
Antonacci said he had heard about the cats when Gill called earlier. He
did not try to catch them, he said, because Gill was feeding them,
making it difficult to lure them with food.
After Kent contacted him, Antonacci said he tried a humane trap loaded
with tuna and got the two kittens. He returned the following day and
was able to get the mother cat.
"As far as animals are concerned, nobody wants to see them getting
hurt, so if we can catch them, we catch them," Antonacci said.
It's unclear how the cats got on airport property. Gill said she heard
that a white cat had escaped after touching down with her human
companion on an international flight, but airport officials said they had no
reports of a missing feline.
Animal Care and Control officials said there were no tags on any of the
cats, and the mother did not have a microchip for identification.
On Tuesday, Animal Care and Control veterinarians spayed, neutered and
vaccinated the cats. Other employees gave the cats names--the mother
was dubbed Hara, the kittens Jet and Runway. Officials at the facility
said the cats appeared to be in good health. The mother cat was
domesticated, but the kittens, about 3 months old, were apparently born and
raised in the wild.
Gill adopted Hara Wednesday afternoon.
"I'm almost ready to cry," Gill said before taking the cat home from
Animal Care and Control.
When they got home, Hara joined Gill's other cat, Spunky, whom Gill
found in an O'Hare garbage can shortly after she started working for Air
Canada 18 years ago.
Kent said Jet and Runway need more socialization and will spend several
days with a licensed foster care taker. The kittens should be offered
for adoption in about a week.
Animal Care and Control is open for adoptions from noon to 7 p.m. seven
days a week.
"Everything's turning out to be a happy ending, thank God," Gill said.
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