Children find calm and companionship at Pittsboro cat refuge
Refuge’s rescued cats offer children comfort and communicationBy Dave Hart,
dhart@newsobserver.comRead the entire story at
http://www.carynews.com/2012/05/09/56983/children-find-calm-and-companionship.htmlPITTSBORO - Half a dozen kids knelt on the floor around a cage in the kitten house at Siglinda Scarpa’s Goathouse Refuge, peering at the litter of four-week-old kittens and mama cat inside.
“What would you name them?” asked Mary Ruth Coleman, a senior scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute. “These kitties don’t have names yet.”
Blake Levow-Guerra, 8, pointed to one. “I would name that black one Brownie,” he said. “And that one with the patch, I would call him Patchy.”
The 14 children, accompanied by several parents and teachers, who visited the Goathouse Refuge last week are students at the Jordan Lake School of the Arts, a small school in Apex that focuses on arts, nature and active learning. Many, though not all, of the students have autism or other developmental challenges.
Visiting the 16-acre Goathouse Refuge, where most of the approximately 200 cats free-range in their spacious and beautiful wooded enclosure and several outbuildings, offers such children unparalleled opportunities, said Beth Kuklinski, who founded the Jordan Lake School in 2009.
When the students first went to Goathouse last week, they visited the chickens and geese, and explored the pond, where they were especially intrigued by the tadpoles. Then they entered the cat enclosure, where each child wound up pairing up with one of the cats in a bonding process that happens naturally, Coleman said.
Learning to speak cat
The diminutive and charismatic Scarpa, who was born in Italy, knows first-hand what a difference an animal can make in a young person’s life. The internationally known ceramic artist as well as an animal welfare activist founded the cat refuge on the grounds around her home, off N.C. 87 north of Pittsboro, in the late 1990s.
She demonstrated the different shades of meaning in a cat’s vocalizations. A soft meow with an upward lift in pitch at the end is a way of calling someone. A low drawn-out moan conveys worry or sadness. Discomfort at being played with too roughly evokes a sort of chirp: “Meep! Meep! Meep!”
