Feeding the FORGOTTEN
Judith Currin’s Fight for Memphis’ Stray Cats
Memphis, Tenn. — “I’m not giving you my blood until you water your fucking plants,” Judith Currin said.
Currin walked into her doctor’s office and scanned the dull, tight room. Her eyes skimmed over the ugly carpet and noticed the minimal effort to make the space seem personable. There was only a chair for her on the left and a few pictures on the desk.
She looked straight ahead at the dried-up potted plants sitting on the windowsill. Her chest grew tight. As if he could sense her patience dwindling away, the doctor stepped into the room.
He took her comment as a joke and asked routine questions. Currin interrupted him about watering the plants.
“This is somebody else’s office, not mine,” he said.
Soon, realized he would not get any answers from Currin until he gave her a water cup.
Three months later, Currin walked into the office and heard a laugh from the receptionist when she noticed the blooming plants by the window.
This isn’t the first time Currin stood up for a living object that can’t communicate with humans. When she noticed that her neighbor was abusing a cat, she took it to the veterinarian and stood her ground against the previous owner.
“I can’t stand to see any living thing suffering,” Currin said. “A homeless couple kept saying that they were trying to get a ride to Nashville week after week. Finally, I just got them in my car and took them to Nashville.”
Jet soaks up the sun while laying in the windowsill Currin added to her house specifically for her cats. Outside is Tabby, enjoying one of the first nice spring days in Memphis this spring.
Photo Credits: Sophia Aiello
She has a community of cats at her house, including a black one named Jet, a kitten named Triscuit and a tabby named Bruno. She rescued her “babies” from the streets.
“Even if you call a Memphis animal shelter, there’s not much you can do,” Currin said. “Nine out of 10 times, animals are euthanized.”
Currin works closely with Jim and Ginger Lord who started helping strays over 35 years ago when they spotted abandoned kittens behind Cozymel's Coastal Mexican Grill.
They went to Mewtopia Cat Rescue, a local shelter and adoption agency. They were handed a 30-inch trap and learned how to use it themselves. The process they were taught is called trap-neuter-return, or TNR. It’s a humane way to help stray cats, also known as feral cats, get spayed and neutered.
Jim and Ginger described how two cats can turn into 22 cats in just two years. Cats start having litters by the time they reach 5 months old, and after being pregnant for nine weeks, the mother cat returns to heat in just four to six weeks.
“Mama” has become familiar with Currin, often coming close to her and walking around her car while she feeds.
Photo Credits: Judith Currin
The Lords have successfully neutered over 43 cats at the just one trapping location. There is one cat that they have been struggling to trap one cat for over a year. They call her “Mama.”
“She keeps having litters,” Currin said. “The last time she had babies, we put them under a drop trap, and she wouldn’t even go under there to get her babies. She’s too smart.”
The danger of feral cats is that they are wild and cannot be tamed. The cycle repeats until feral kittens are born, making it significantly more difficult to help them adjust to life in a home. Trappers do their best to capture and place them in foster homes.
“It’s like the book ‘The Little Prince,’ where they tame the fox by doing that every day,” Jim said. “The cats get used to coming out at the same time every day, and then you can start trapping them consistently to get them fixed.”
The trapping community may seem intimidating to join, but Jim explained how simple the process really is.
“Everything is volunteer,” Jim said. “You could just be a feeder or help them overnight. There are lots of little jobs people can do.”
Person successfully trapped a feral cat, the first step of the TNR process.
Photo Credits: Sophia Aiello
Judith’s trip to the trapping location at Lowe’s on Sunday, March 29, started at 5:32 p.m. and lasted until the sun started setting. Her responsibilities include feeding on weekends. When Judith pulled into the parking lot, Melody Person was already there with a trap.
Retiring after 30 years in IT at FedEx, Person started her own company, The Organized HOME by Melody. Another passion of hers is animals, which is evident when scrolling through her Facebook posts. Of her 12 most recent posts, 11 are about animals.
“Before I do anything, since this is not my trapping location, it’s courtesy to each other to reach out to who’s here,” Person said. “Someone reached out to Ginger about me coming, so we don’t get into each other’s areas.”
The first hour of Currin’s feeding time consisted of Person showing her a cat she just trapped and figuring out a plan for how to get it fixed. Person purchased a new magnetic trap that retails for $69.99 at Germantown Hardware out of her own pocket.
“I have been doing this for 30-something years,” Person said. “Judith has probably been doing this her whole life. For me, and probably the same as Judith, if someone in the community has a stray dog or cat in their neighborhood and they want to help it get safe and adopted, they'll reach out to us volunteers. Before we do the process, they tell us where the animal is going to go after it’s trapped.”
Person draped a worn-out bath towel over the trap to block out the evening sun.
“Cats like cave-like spaces, and dogs want open spaces,” Person said.
The two arranged for Currin to stay for another hour until Jim and Ginger could pick up the cat. Person left, meaning it was officially time for dinner.
On weekdays, her friend Richard feeds the cats in the morning.
“He told me he wanted them to eat the same kind of food, so now I buy fancy food,” Currin said. “He drives an Alfa Romeo. I’m like, dude, some of us don’t drive an Alfa Romeo.”
In her trunk, Currin had six 96-fluid-ounce Family Size Welch’s Concord Grape juice bottles filled with tap water, a variety box of 40-count Friskies Shreds in Gravy and a bag of Purina Fancy Feast Filet Mignon with Real Seafood & Shrimp Flavor Dry Cat Food.
She used the bottles to rinse and refill the water containers, create a moat for food and wipe off the feeding station. The feeding station is cube-shaped and is 53 inches tall. Currin ordered two online, setting up one at Lowe’s and the other outside her house.
Currin and her neighbors worked together to build cat food shelters that are insulated with regular shingle roofs. She ordered them online, setting up one at Lowe’s and the other outside her house.
Photo Credits: Judith Currin and Sophia Aiello
“It comes in pieces that you have to put together. It was a couple of hundred dollars,” Currin said. “They can go in here and eat, and it keeps the food dry when it rains. I put down this pan with water, then the bowl with the food.”
The shelter is an eight-foot-long by four-foot-tall box made out of moving crates with insulation and a removable roof.
Photo Credits: Sophia Aiello
Three feet away sits a larger shelter that Currin had custom-built.
“I don’t think anyone else would pay someone $300 to make a house for them to keep them warm in the winter that Nick built,” Currin said. “Obviously, if they were going to do it, they would have, and they didn’t. Personally, I think I made an impact.”
Currin met Nick Aiello when she was helping open The Doghouse in 2018. Aiello is an independent contractor who was asked to convert the commercial building into a dog-care facility. Currin has been a loyal client, often asking him to build furniture for animals over the past eight years.
“As we were building, I would see her every day,” Aiello said. “Every time she went for lunch, she asked me if I wanted anything. I would always say no, and then she would bring something back like a sandwich and a sports drink.”
I asked her why she cares so much for people and animals she doesn’t know.
“The real answer is that I have suffered greatly as a human being in my life,” Currin said. “When I found out about the #MeToo movement, I was like, ‘Holy shit. It happened to everybody.’ I thought it was just me, you know. You feel so alone. I don’t want anyone else to feel that way, so I’m insane about it.”
Claiming she’d bankrupt herself for a feral cat, Currin has always been giving up her own time and money for animals. She grew up exchanging work that sometimes started at 4 a.m. in order to ride horses for free.
“I’m so glad I grew up before cellphones because I have so many happy memories of being by myself in nature, not thinking about what other people are doing or would think about it. In retrospect, I realize how lucky I was,” Currin said.
The cat colony that Currin feeds is located at a Lowe’s on the corner of Summer Avenue and North Perkins Road. Memphis has been dubbed the “homicide capital of America,” with a violent crime rate almost five times the Tennessee average. While growing up in Memphis, I was told to be cautious when driving down Summer Avenue.
“I lived in New York City for 25 years, so if you’re careful and mindful of what’s going on around you, you can mostly mitigate the chance of any horror stories,” Currin said. “I don’t carry a gun. It’s just a risk I’m willing to take.”
It’s human instinct for Currin to go out of her way to help others. She stands out for focusing her priorities on the positive aspects of life.
To some, Currin may be known as a “crazy cat lady.” To others, she may be known as the woman who feeds the stray cats at Lowe’s. After spending a Sunday evening with Judith as she fed the feral cats, I realized that she’s not crazy at all. The only thing that’s crazy about her is her compassion.
“If someone isn’t compassionate toward animals, I will question if I really want to get too close to that person,” Currin said. “If someone doesn’t have that compassion, they aren’t going to have compassion for anything. How can you not have compassion for a suffering animal? How can you just walk past something that’s suffering?”
The only thing Judith wants people to know about the work she does is that if you want to own a cat, take care of it. Or else, she’ll have to.
“Sometimes I think that’s why God put me here,” Currin said. “I’m here because they need me.”
Want to help feral cat colonies in your town? Visit the Alley Cat Allies website where you can learn more, take action and donate.
