In Kalispell, Mont., people know one person to call about cats in need.

On a bright spring day in 2008, Darcy Albert received a desperate phone call. She remembers the caller’s words well. “He said, ‘I’m a mail carrier and have heard screaming kittens for three days in the field next to our house,’” Albert recalls, “‘and I decided to get to them before the predators could. Can you help them, Darcy?’”

That’s all it took for this retired drafting technician with 36 years of dog training and competition experience to welcome the abandoned kittens into her home. “I could hear the kittens screaming desperately in the background,” Albert says. “I told him, ‘Of course, I can. I’ll pick them up in 10 minutes.’”

When Albert arrived, she was handed a red, white and blue cardboard box, labeled United States Postal Service Priority Mail. It contained six kittens. Five of them were crying and strained to lift their heads to see her. The sixth was cold and unresponsive.

“They were all weak and dirty and I guessed they were just hours away from death,” Albert says. “I rushed the kittens home, with the unresponsive one tucked under my shirt to warm him, though I wasn’t sure he was even alive. As soon as we arrived home, I bottle-fed the five that were alert and put them on a warm heating pad. They all immediately fell asleep. An hour later I felt a little twitch from the kitten in my shirt.”

Albert stayed awake all night, dribbling kitten formula from a bottle into the kitten’s mouth and comforting him. Within a couple of days, she felt confident of his chance of survival and named him “E.T.,” because the kitten’s long, thin neck and big eyes reminded Albert of the 1980s’ extra-terrestrial movie character of the same name.

From Dogs to Cats
Albert has been a lifelong dog owner. At 12 years old, she began obedience training her family’s black Labrador Retriever. When in her early 20s, Albert began competing in American Kennel Club obedience trials with an Australian Shepherd. Since then, she has competed in trials off and on with Australian Shepherds and German Shep­herd Dogs, and with a black Labrador Retriever that she also competes with in rally obedience trials.

Albert volunteered for 15 years, educating 4-H Club youth about dog obedience. In that time, the 4-H class grew from six to 60 kids. Seeing a larger opportunity, she began a business, “Darcy’s Dog Obedi­ence & Good Manners Classes,” offering obedience classes from April to October.

“I think a well-trained dog is less likely to be abandoned by his family,” Albert explains. “Dogs are better citizens when they are trained. They get along better with neighbors, and they are appreciated more by their owners.”

Even though the economy has squeezed the northwest corner of Montana, just as it has around the United States, Albert says her dog training business has thrived. Just 30 miles from Glacier National Park is Flathead County, which includes Kalispell, a resort and retirement community where many senior citizens spend the warmer months between winters in Florida or Arizona.

“They contribute a lot to my obedience training business,” she says. “They want good travel companions that mind well, travel well and get along well with others.”

Still, economic pressures impact the rural region. “A lot of people are keeping their dogs and giving up their farm animals, because it’s easier and cheaper to care for the dogs,” Albert says. “But the economy still has made this the worst period yet in my five years of rescuing cats.”

In 2004, Albert was asked by a friend at the Humane Society of Northwest Montana in Kalispell if she’d take in a litter of four abandoned kittens. Still working full time then, Albert would take the kittens to her office. She kept them in a basket placed atop her computer to keep them warm, and co-workers joined Albert to bottle-feed the kittens on breaks.

“I started slowly with cat rescue, but once you start doing something like that, word gets around,” Albert says, laughing. “Then I got addicted to helping cats and kittens. So when I retired in 2007, I went into it with every shred of energy I had.”

Albert volunteers on Fridays at PETCO, helping the Flathead Spay and Neuter Task Force, which offers her discounted services for the cats she rescues. Albert charges a $35 adoption fee, which covers the costs of food, litter, spaying or neutering and basic medical care. Careful budgeting and the Task Force’s support helps.

Around 225 cats have been adopted through Albert’s KittyMOM Cat Rescue, which is housed in a large room in the house Albert shares with her husband, Bob. Many have been newborn kittens grateful for Darcy Albert’s tireless compassion. “Many a night, at every hour, I have dribbled formula one drop at a time from a bottle into a newborn’s mouth, trying to help them survive,” she says.

“I just can’t get enough of watching them grow, fatten and prosper,” she says. “Before I started rescuing cats and kittens, I’d only owned one or two in my lifetime. I had never known there were so many cats out there trying to survive. I was completely oblivious. Then I realized there was such a problem and not a lot of people have the space or time to offer, but I do.”

Stepping Up to the Plate
“I was not enamored with felines,” says Lana Bajsel, director of Give Me Shelter Cat Rescue in San Francisco, who had spent time around a cat when in college. Bajsel didn’t care for the cat’s aloof independence. She loved animals, but wanted interaction with them.

After becoming a veterinary technician, Bajsel spent more time with cats and became intrigued. She started caring for neighborhood strays. In the early 1990s, she adopted an orange tabby kitten she named “Ziggy.” In 2003, she launched into cat rescue when she founded Give Me Shelter.

When a friend took Bajsel through the San Francisco Animal Care and Control facility, it led to a realization. “There, I saw an older, temperamental calico that was scheduled for euthanasia the next day,” she says. “I couldn’t leave her there, knowing she’d die for no real reason other than she was an older cat and her time at the shelter had run out.”

When Bajsel found “Spitfire Rose” a prospective owner, the calico nipped the adopter on the hand. “I thought, ‘Well, now she won’t take her,’ but she did,” Bajsel says. “We called it ‘love at first bite,’ and everyone was happy. Her owner loved her.”

Spitfire Rose helped clarify Bajsel’s focus for Give Me Shelter, proving older cats not only deserve love, but also that people are willing to give it to them. “At the time, dogs were doing relatively OK in San Francisco,” she says. “Kittens were being taken care of, too, but no one was stepping up to the plate for senior cats. The senior-aged cats were the ones most in danger of not escaping euthanasia.”

Give Me Shelter now has a network of more than 30 foster families that care for more than 100 cats. There are about 20 part-time and full-time volunteers who help adopt out more than 200 older cats per year. They have found homes for cats as old as 18 years. “It’s rewarding work,” says Bajsel, “but it’s also heartbreaking work. There are peaks and valleys.”

After 10 years as a veterinary technician, Bajsel left the job to open a pet-sitting and dog-walking business, with an eye on the benefit for cats. “Having my own business gives me the freedom and flexibility to devote to cat rescue,” she says, “but I love working with the dogs, too. I’ve found myself to be more of an all-around animal person over the years.”

Now 17 years old, Bajsel’s cat Ziggy still is a companion for her and her two Pit Bull Terrier mixes, “Pinky” and “Blue.” “Pinky and Blue are the best dogs I’ve ever had,” Bajsel says. “And they get along great with my cats. Believe it or not, the cats even groom them.”

Bajsel also has two other cats, plus cares for a handful of fosters at any given time. “I really have become fond of cats,” she says.

A Change of Pace
With a broken heart after the loss of her own dog, “Logan,” while in college, Diana Duncan felt she needed to steer away from dog rescue. She couldn’t imagine not helping other animals in some way though.

“I love all animals and knew I’d be involved with them,” says Duncan, vice president of Homeless Animal Rescue Team (HART) in Cambria, Calif. “I’ve been part of rescue, of one type of animal or another, more or less my whole life.

“As a kid in the early 1960s, I’d get the other kids in the neighborhood together to help me match stray dogs with owners,” she says. “We’d go door to door and hang fliers. Then, in high school I started walking and bathing dogs at the local animal control shelter. I already had the best dog in the whole world. That’s why I just couldn’t go on with dogs after I lost Logan.”

In college in the early 1980s, Duncan and some friends founded Stanislaus (Calif.) Wildlife Care. That often meant rescuing birds, which, she says, California has so many she couldn’t keep up with the nests full of them, falling every time the wind blew. “After 15 years, I just got tired,” she says.

Having helped a local humane society at an adoption event one afternoon, Duncan later received a call from the group. They asked her, “We have nine kittens we need help with. Will you do it?” That sparked something in her.

Duncan began to see the bigger picture of cats in need. She started working with a colony of around 60 homeless cats on Morro Bay Rock, helping remove 46 of them for placement in foster and adoptive homes. “I opened my eyes to cats,” she says. “There were so many abandoned. It was an easy decision for me.”

Joining the efforts of HART in 1991, Duncan saw opportunity to reinvigorate the rescue organization that had begun in 1983. “I was the youngest in the group, and the numbers who participated were dwindling,” she says. “We had four volunteers in 1991. We now have 34 active members in the group.”

HART rehomes around 350 cats a year, and spays or neuters an additional 50 to 100 abandoned ones. This spring, the group will launch the use of its adoption mobile, a refurbished 16-foot truck, with hopes of increasing adoptions by 200 per year.

“Where there’s a will there’s a way,” Duncan says. “I guess I’m just for the underdog in life — even it that underdog is a cat.”

Pushing Allergies Aside
Eight years ago as a young teen, Rebecca Graham started volunteering at the Parma (Ohio) Animal Shelter. Her mother, Paula Graham, started contributing at the shelter four months later. Due to Paula’s cat allergies, mother and daughter worked in the dog section of the facility. They adopted two dogs from the shelter, too.

“Growing up, I was always told we couldn’t have cats, because of my mom’s allergies,” Rebecca Graham says. “But when I was volunteering at the shelter, I started crossing over to the side of the building where the cats were, and I’d play with them. Shortly after that, my mom occasionally visited the cats, too.”

Four years ago, a black kitten was rescued from atop a telephone pole and brought to the shelter while Rebecca Graham was there. Three weeks later, “Lucky” still waited for a loving home. “He came down with a terrible respiratory infection and needed to be placed into foster care so the other cats didn’t get sick,” she says. “I’d become so attached to him when I’d visit for playtime. He was the first cat there who returned the affection I was giving him. I begged and begged my mom for us to foster him. Eventually she gave in.”

When he was healthy again, the Grahams would take Lucky to the group’s adoption events at PetSmart. “No one would even look at him,” Rebecca Graham says. “So we took him back to the shelter where he could be seen and have a chance of getting a forever home. Every day he became more depressed. He wasn’t eating well and he didn’t even want to play with the other kittens. We missed him so much at home. Even our dogs were looking around the house for him.

“One day my mom had enough of seeing Lucky looking so sad at the shelter and said, ‘I can’t stand not having him here with us. I’m bringing him home from the shelter tomorrow.’”

Rebecca Graham has since become a veterinary technician and moved out on her own, leaving Lucky with her mother. “That was the first house he’d stayed in, and he was comfortable with the other pets there,” Rebecca Graham says. “I didn’t want to break them up when I moved.”

Rebecca Graham still volunteers at the Parma Animal Shelter, caring for the dogs and fostering cats. She owns three cats now, too. Paula Graham, who has since retired, volunteers around 40 hours a week at the shelter, owns three cats and fosters more.

“Before I had cats I didn’t know anything about them,” says Rebecca Graham. “Now I can’t imagine living without them. I still love dogs, but both my mom and I have become cat people, strangely enough.”

If residents of Kalis­pell — even those who’ve never met her — ever think it’s strange that Darcy Albert, known for her summer dog obedience classes, is also a savior of cats, they push it aside and welcome her help.

Thanks to a grapevine, which includes a sizeable network of friends and fellow retirees, Albert is used to hearing from strangers. “People know to call me if they have a cat in need,” she says. “I get a lot of phone calls that begin, ‘My mother knows you,’ or ‘My friend said I should call you about a cat that needs …’”

Albert welcomes the calls, though she is amused at how this all came to be. “This isn’t at all what I thought I’d be doing in my retirement,” Albert says. “I thought I’d probably be shopping or golfing or having tea with the neighbors.”

As much a dog lover as she ever was, Albert’s admiration for cats continues to grow. “I’ve been so impressed with how smart cats are, with their resilience for survival, and how appreciative they are for my help,” Albert says. “I’m just so passionate about rescuing cats. I get so much satisfaction out of rehabilitating one, helping care for its injuries or illness, and helping it have a home where it will be loved.”

In the case of E.T., now 1 ½ years old, that loving home still is with the Alberts. He was as much a miracle to Darcy Albert as the dog trainer of Flathead County no doubt was to him.