Photo by Evgenyi
I’m hoping that this will attract a few sports fans, but I’m kidding myself unless they like cats. But we are hoping for a slam dunk to win a pot of money for Stray Cat Alliance (SCA). SCA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Los Angeles whose mission is to empower communities to ensure that every cat is safe, healthy and valued. The organization’s Return-To-Field program at Long Beach Animal Care Services (ACS) has helped save thousands of community cats. They presently have several adoption locations throughout Long Beach, Garden Grove, Signal Hill, Cerritos as well as Los Angeles.
Petplan, the nation’s largest pet-insurance company, is presenting The Spirited 16 rounds of matchups between dogs and cats for its March Madness for Shelter Pets championship. The tourney is set up like any sports competition—don’t take my word for that, because I have really no idea, but it goes like this: There’s a daily matchup in which a couple of shelter or rescue pets engage in a “friendly competition,” according to Petplan’s web page, and the pet with the most votes in each pair advances to the next round. Petplan makes a donation to every participating organization and gives additional amounts every time one of them moves up.
SCA’s star tail-switchin’ Momma Marcia is jumping through hoops, often literally, to win for her team. Petplan, said SCA Director of Development Missy Woodward,discovered Momma when the company was sending out scouts for their tournament and selected her to represent SCA. A high-scoring point guard, she’s training hard for the big prize (check her out in the video on her fan page), and she’s been on the fence—again literally, in her former life—between first and second place. Not one to forget her indigent roots, Momma’s goal—wrong metaphor? wrong sport?—is to win the $5,000, which SCA will use toward its successful Operation Kern 100 campaign, in which they’ve pulled 100 cats from the Kern County Shelter and finding foster homes for them in the West Coast states and Arizona. They’re in great need of the prize money for the cats’ medical expenses and transport to foster homes.
Point guard Momma Marcia—check out the Sparks in her eyes. Photo courtesy of SCA.
And we need the help of our team players—you. It takes less time to do than to run to the kitchen for beer, chips and salsa during a commercial break to access the page here, find Momma’s photo, and click on it. Her next round begins this evening, March 23, at 9:01PM PST (adjust to your own time zone if you live somewhere else besides the coast) and ends Thursday, March 24, at 9:01PM).
Momma Marcia was picked up from the street by the Long Beach SCA chapter volunteers, near the borderline of Wilmington and Long Beach. She was a single mom with four newborn kittens, and she was starving. They were all brought to safety. As the kittens were adopted or fostered, Momma Marcia was placed in a foster home.
“She had an unfortunate accidental escape and came back later that day with major injuries,” Woodward said. “Veterinarians assumed she’d been kicked. She had major surgery to repair her internal organs. She’s been resting comfortably and now is thriving post-surgery.”
Her injuries aren’t keeping her out of the court, and she means to win. When asked what her post-game ambitions are, she twitched an ear, yawned, and said that she’s forgoing cat food endorsements and would rather to live out her years in the home she’s always wanted. If you want to rub elbows, ears, chins and noses with a real star, email [email protected].
Vote for Momma Marcia starting tonight at 9:01PM.
SCA is in great need of donations for the medical care of the Kern 100 and the effort to find foster homes for them. Click the donation button on the organization’s home page to participate.
“The cat has too much spirit to have no heart.”
~ Ernest Menault, French Zoologist and author of L’intelligence des animaux (The intelligence of animals)