USA : Saturday, 8 January 2011 (Local Time)
Cats perch in sunny windows and sleepy-eyed dogs meltonto beds. Feline castles — their carpet cladding hanging in tatters — line the wall. Tantalizing bowls of dog chow clang the canine dinner bell.
The scene at Texas A&M University's Stevenson Companion Animal Life-Care Center could come straight from a 19th-century painter's vision of the “peaceable kingdom” — lions, lambs, babes and bulls all lolling in blissful communion.
For 17 years, the center, adjacent to the university's college of veterinary medicine, has been a cushy retirement home for pets whose owners have died or no longer are able to care for them.
Home to 21 cats, 16 dogs and one llama, the center is poised for its second expansion in seven years. With construction set to begin in June, the addition will provide quarters for cockatoos, parrots and other large birds, and screened porches and added rooms for four-legged guests.
The 2,600-square-foot addition, which would bring the total to about 11,000 square feet, is needed to keep up with the center's growing enrollment.
Director Dr. Henry Presnal said 359 animals from 20 states are registered to become future residents.
Presnal, a one-time farm boy who practiced veterinary medicine 27 years, marvels at the intensity of the bond between humans and their pets.
“It's been an evolution,” he said. “Growing up on the farm, dogs would be outside and cats lived in the barn. To go from that as a kid, to a practicing veterinarian ... I'd see big, grown, tough men cry when you'd give them a poor prognosis for their pet. To me, it was just unbelievable how things had changed. Animals have become children substitutes.”
People desiring to place pets at the center can do so through an endowment, either by bequest or up-front payment. The fee is contingent on the owner's age; for a 30-39-year-old client wishing to place a small animal, a minimum $100,000 bequest or $10,000 up-front payment is required. The fee doubles for large animals.
For that money, the lucky animals are pampered for life and, after life, enshrined as cremated remains in a tasteful hallway shrine to the departed.
On a typical day, the center — one of only a few such facilities in the nation — is a-bark with activity.
Chester, a big black dog who lost a leg to cancer, lopes around a dayroom as if nothing were amiss. A one-eyed cat surveys his domain with imperial disdain, and a punchy puss from Virginia is warned about bullying the pups.
In a blur, a vortex of energy whirls from Presnal's office, then materializes as a black and white terrier dancing at the director's heels.
“That's Cricket,” he says with unabashed affection. “She's my guard dog.”
A&M's animal house was the “burning concept” of the late Dr. Ned Ellett, head of the veterinary school's small animal clinic, and named for La Porte's Madlin Stevenson, an early benefactor.
Ellett, a veterinary ophthalmologist, was a “very warm, genuine guy,” who shared the concern of his elderly clients about the fates of their pets, Presnal said. Ellett, who died the year the center opened, viewed the program as a way to ensure quality care for masterless pets and as a tool to further medical research on aging animals.
The latter goal, Presnal said, is achieved through the four veterinary students who live at the center and through the attention the animals get at the adjacent vet school clinics.
Stevenson, an inveterate rescuer of stray animals, responded enthusiastically to the proposal, providing an initial $250,000 donation to get the project rolling.
When Stevenson died 10 years ago, her dogs, cats, horse and llama all moved to College Station.
“Aunt Madlin had so many animals,” her niece said. “They all came with different backgrounds, different ages and stages of needing help. But it all worked. They all knew that they were at home.”
Story and Foto from : www.mysanantonio.com (reported by Allan Turner)
