Dot studied the toy mouse and patiently waited for the opportunity to use her paw to attack.
Each time she struck it was success, and Dot was rewarded with a giggle from Justin Boone, her playmate for the morning. Justin is a fourth-grader at Abbett Elementary School and says Dot, a white cat with black spots, is not only his favorite, she’s also a genius.
Justin has visited the Allen County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals every Wednesday for the past five weeks. He’s never owned a cat and hasn’t had much experience with them.
But Justin is becoming accustomed to the cats’ behavior. Last week, Justin was reading out loud, and two cats sat in front of him as if they were listening.
“I wish I had a camera,” said Jeannette Harris, Justin’s teacher. “It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Every week, a group of special-education students from Abbett visits the animal shelter for a therapeutic activity. They read out loud to the cats and learn how to read the cats’ moods and attend to them based on the signals they receive.
Abbett has one of the largest populations of low-income students in Fort Wayne Community Schools, with 97 percent of the students receiving a free or reduced-priced lunch, a common indicator of poverty in schools. A lot of the students are dealing with anger issues and other problems and are in what Harris calls a “needy classroom.”
“A lot of children have to deal with a lot of issues, and there’s problems in everybody’s life, and one of the things we wanted to develop in our children is that all living creatures go through tough times. Some are neglected, some are abandoned, some are abused and they all handle that differently,” Principal Robin Peterman said. “Our kids have dealt with some hardships, so what the hope was between us is this would benefit the children as well because they would learn that it’s OK to handle things differently.”
The students read to the more reserved cats that sit in the background, the more frightened ones who will climb up to a top ledge and watch from afar and the attention-hungry ones who can’t get enough of being petted.
The activity is also beneficial to the cats because they learn to equate a human voice with love and kindness, said Jill Borkenstein, SPCA director.
“The more interaction, kind loving interaction these cats can have with adults and kids, … I think it really benefits the cats,” Borkenstein said.
Borkenstein tells of a cat named Ram, who came to the SPCA when he was 8 weeks old and stayed until he was 10 years. Ram was adopted last week, and Borkenstein thinks it might have been because he was more socialized – thus attractive to a family – because of the interaction with students.
After each visit, the students return to school and write journal entries about the day. It’s an experience that can cure even the worst of problems, even if it’s just temporary.
“I noticed the other day, a couple (students) were having kind of a bad day,” Harris said. “The minute they came in, you just saw their shoulders relax, and it’s therapeutic to be around animals. I think it’s a win-win situation for both of them.”
