Abandoned cat steals hermit's heart

SANDPOINT — This is the story of a man who decided to hang a “closed” sign on his heart and shut himself off from the world. He had given up on people and given up on God.

After barely making it through high school, he hit the road and never looked back, glad to be shut of his parents and having no desire to ever see them again. His rambling brought him to Sandpoint, where he built a place up top of Baldy Mountain and slammed the door tight against the life outside.

And then one day the most unexpected thing happened to the man. A cat named Jake came to save his soul.

Before the grey tabby came into his life, Michael Sowders was entirely self-sufficient. He had no friends — didn’t need any. The full extent of his human interaction was limited to monthly trips into town to stock up on groceries. He avoided eye contact at the checkout stand and didn’t mumble a word when some well-meaning cashier would try to engage him in idle conversation.

People were cruel. Parents could be abusive. Relationships cut like knives. Better not to open up at all than risk the heartache and the hurt.

Which is just the way things were when Jake crawled up onto Michael’s deck one winter day and mewed good morning from underneath a picnic table. He had become wholly unaccustomed to conversation — with people or animals — and the tabby’s greeting hit him like a brickbat.

He responded quickly and in anger, stomping his foot to shoo the visitor away. It worked. Jake flew off the deck to hide in the surrounding woods. But he wasn’t done with Michael. Not yet, he wasn’t.

From the corner of his eye and in the back of his mind, Michael watched for the cat to reappear and felt a little twinge when it didn’t. On his next trip into town, he added a can of cat food to his grocery list. The next time he saw Jake, the cat was lying, half frozen, on the deck. He spooned out the food, filled a bowl with water and watched the little guy eat. Later, he looked out and found the tabby gone. Yeah, well — good thing. Cat food costs money. Who needs him around, anyway?

A day or two later, Jake was back, this time, scratching at the door and demanding to be let inside. In spite of himself, Michael acquiesced. The grey cat ate another can of food, hopped boldly up onto his bed and began to purr. For the next three years, he made himself right at home.

When he died, something long dormant in Michael Sowders came to life.

“For the first time in a long time, I felt something,” he said. “I actually felt something.”

Jake’s passing marked the threshold of a new era for the man who had been a self-described hermit. He began to volunteer at the animal shelter and learned there were dozens of abandoned and feral cats roaming the county, ever increasing in numbers and multiplying the homeless animal problem. At first one and then a couple and then a few at a time, Michael began to take them in, going out-of-pocket to pay for spay and neutering and taking care of vet bills with his own money.

Just as Jake had done before them, the felines moved in. A few cats became a dozen or more, and Michael sold his Baldy Mountain home to move the brood onto a 10-acre parcel near Careywood. Along with his own home, he began to build what he calls his “cattery” — a network of six heated buildings with cat doors and no cages, so that his boarders could roam freely inside and out.

The enterprise became big enough that its founder felt a name was in order and dubbed it the Life-Time Friends Animal Sanctuary.

Neighbors became concerned about the newcomer with the animal obsession, some accusing him of being a “cat hoarder.”

“But I’m not like one of those ‘cat ladies’ you hear about whose animals are sick or starving,” Sowders explained. “The difference between a sanctuary and hoarding is that hoarders don’t work with a veterinarian like I do; they don’t put sick animals into quarantine and give them medical attention.

“I work with animal control from the city and the county,” he added. “And I have the cats on four acres that have been ‘cat-proofed’ so that no cats can get out and no predators can get in.”

The cat population continued to grow at Life-Time Friends — there were even several dogs and a few geese among the menagerie — and Michael applied for and received licensing from Bonner County to care for up to 200 cats at a time. At the hearing, some neighbors opposed the plan. Once they discovered how much work the founder had done to care for the animals, however, several of them contacted him afterward and asked how they could lend a hand to the cause, he said.

In 2004, three local women stepped in to help fund the mounting costs of running the sanctuary. None too soon, as it turned out, since the founder had about $200 left in his bank account when Dixie Stansell, Valle Novak and her daughter Olivia Rue started the Sanctuary Seconds thrift shop to help fund operations.

Now in its third location, the shop recently has struggled in a challenging economic environment, as well as from increased competition.

“There are now twice as many thrift stores as when we started up six years ago,” said shop manager Jill White. “I think it’s just a matter of awareness that we’re still here and we have a lot nice things at really flexible prices.”

“I want to stay positive about it, though,” Sowders said. “It could be the time of year, because it’s always slow at this time. It’s just that, right now, it has been unusually slow. It takes people who have a heart to care for animals, but it also takes money.”

The shop funds nearly all of the costs of veterinary services, care and feeding at the sanctuary, as well as what the founder calls a “trap, neuter and return” program for feral cats.

Life was a lot simpler when it was just Jake, a cat bowl and a few cans of food, before Michael’s daily to-do list included feeding an average of 160 cats, cleaning 65 litter boxes and administering medication to the sick animals in quarantine at the sanctuary.

“But with all the struggle and the conflicts, I wouldn’t change anything,” he said. “I was someone who wanted nothing to do with people, with animals or with anything else — and then this gray tabby showed up. For me, life has become purposeful and more meaningful.

“There are so many homeless animals out there — the number of them that people abandon or throw in the dumpster is in the millions,” he continued. “We’re doing our part, in our little corner of the world, to help them.”

Quality donations of furniture, clothing, household goods and other items in good condition can be dropped off at Sanctuary Seconds, located at 806-B Lake St., near the intersection with Hwy. 200. The shop is open Monday-Friday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

For information about making tax-deductible donations or volunteering, call (208) 263-0300 or visit: www.ltfas.org