Hope and Diamond need a home

            May 3, 2007

My mom had Alzheimer’s disease. She lived at home and was taken care of by home health aides. One day she told Rose, the aide, that she saw two kittens in her backyard. Rose thought she was hallucinating and didn’t look out the window. Two days later, my mom told me about the kittens, I looked out and that was the moment when Hope and Diamond entered my life. After a month, when they were still quite wild, I had them spayed. This necessitated the services of a cat trapper named Mary. She is a woman who is dedicated to trapping, spaying and neutering. She asked me for nothing, I gave her what I could at the time and only wished it could have been more.

            Up till the time that my mom was able to, she would look out the window and call to her kitties. While they were outdoor cats, they occasionally would come in to visit her and bring some happiness and connection to my Mom’s life which had become increasingly joyless and isolated. Hope and Diamond were the last two parts of the outside world to bring out my mothers childlike sense of wonder and enthusiasm. As they grew, they became less and less what people call feral, a word which only really indicates a reaction to being cold, alone and unloved.

I live in a small apartment and have a cat who never goes out and hates other cats, and have a landlord who doesn’t allow outdoor cats, so taking them in was not an option.

            My mother Mabel Sturniolo died on a Sunday morning in early December. In the weeks after I made numerous calls to try to adopt Hope and Diamond. There was no luck till two months ago, when someone agreed to let Hope and Diamond live outside their house which was a half mile away from where they were living. Three days before the closing on my mom’s house, a sudden change of circumstances caused them to pull out of the agreement. I spoke to my Mom’s neighbor who also feeds the cats and lets them sunbathe by the side of his pool. He likes them, but doesn’t want to own cats but will feed them whenever he sees them. He is willing to do this on a temporary basis. He feels that when the couple indicate their displeasure and don’t feed them, that Hope and Diamond will then avoid their home and spend time in his and other yards. The couple who bought the home wants no part of the cats. Our lawyer, who is a cat lover, feels that when you take away the cat’s igloo where they sleep and don’t feed them on their former property, that they won’t come by any more frequently than other cats in the neighborhood might. The real estate agent felt that this was unsatisfactory and that no cats on the property doesn’t mean that the cats can stay next door

            Who are Hope and Diamond? Hope, the calico is beautiful and reserved. She likes to be petted but on her own terms. Both of them knew the sound of my car and would come out to greet me.  Diamond rolls on her back when she sees me. They loved to stretch out and put their paws on my Mom's storm door and meow because they were hungry. When I brought their food out Hope usually would dig right in while Diamond had to be petted and fussed over before she would eat.  My Mom’s neighbor believes that they are sisters from two different litters. In two years I’ve never heard either one of them growl or hiss. They’re a bit confused now. The world that they’ve known has been turned upside down.

 The couple closed on the home two weeks ago, but won’t be moving in till the middle of June. While the rhetoric has toned down, I fear that time may not be on my side.

I want Hope and Diamond to have a home, to love and to be loved. But while the thought of anything happening to Hope and Diamond, these two innocent creatures whom I have given sustenance and love to fills me with pain and sadness, I know that there are many Hope and Diamonds out there waiting in the cold for scraps of food. They all need to be taken care of.

The absolute horror of the last few months as the fate of these two wonderful fellow beings has lain in the balance, has shown me what I want to do. While at this point, like most of the world I have to work at my job to make a living, I would love to devote my heart and soul and energies to attempt to bring as much comfort as I can to animals. I’d love to see Trap, Spay and Neuter become so commonplace that the term feral cat would disappear from everyday language and young people in the year 2020 would have to look in a dictionary to find out what it meant.

I am prepared to help out financially any individual or organization that can help out Hope and Diamond. It would be the very least that I can do for my friends and beloved teachers who have taught me more about love and gratitude than I would ever have learned if I had  read a million books.

Thank you for your time. Hope and diamond thank you.

Joseph Sturniolo

631-581-6282 (H)

631-273-7883 ext 329

jsturn4068@aol.com