VAN BUREN, Maine — When Dana Kasian, a longtime pet rescue volunteer and special education teacher at Caribou Middle School, heard from friends in the pet rescue field that 20 cats had been found living in a van with a man in Florida, she was horrified.
“The cats were kept in two dog cages in the van, and when they were finally found by the authorities, not all of the cats were alive,” Kasian said Wednesday. “I knew I had to do something for one of them.”
With the help of Thyra’s Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization in central Florida, 12 cats survived and were made available for adoption.
Kasian said that she and her fiance, Brian Knox, both board members of Halfway Home Pet Rescue in Caribou, decided to adopt 4-year-old Red and add him to their menagerie of rescued cats, dogs, bunnies and even a chicken.
With the support of others she had worked with in the pet rescue field in New York and Florida for more than 20 years, Kasian got a plane ticket to fly Red from Florida to Portland. The couple drove to the city from Van Buren to pick him up on Dec. 31, 2015.
What she didn’t foresee was how her other household cats and the newcomer would interact.
“At first, I was really worried about the behavior I might see from him, considering the conditions he’d been in and what he’d been through,” she said. “But it was amazing. My other cats immediately seemed to sense that he’d been through a trauma. They cuddled him and nurtured him. One has almost been like a mother figure to him.”
She said that all of her cats have embraced Red, sharing their beds with him, giving his sodden fur baths, and sticking close to him around the house.
Kasian said she believes that because of that love, Red has not suffered any adjustment issues.
He has had no behavioral problems and fits in “like he has always lived here,” she said.
Red suffers from a heart murmur and is recovering from malnutrition and dehydration after his time in the van. The pads on his feet are permanently stained from filth.
The couple are fielding the veterinarian bills, which Kasian said she and her fiance “don’t give a second thought about.”
“We love these animals.” she said. “The love we give them and the love they give back to us is just incomparable.”