ALMOST HOME FELINE REFUGE: A SINGULAR LOVE STORY

Sanctuary. A place of refuge and protection.

Roseanne and Tom Hayes, “Tommy and Rose” to their friends, created a unique sanctuary together in Mount Pleasant called Almost Home Feline Refuge. Within the confines of their own home they created a unique sanctuary where feral cats experienced comfort, safety and, of course, love.

It was Rose who was the driving force of the sanctuary. But then, this past September, she passed away unexpectedly and the fate of the sanctuary was left to her husband of 46 years, Tommy. “She had the biggest heart. She was an advocate of all animals, of all creatures,” Hayes said of his wife. “She would have done anything for cats. It was her passion, her goal in life, her purpose. So I’m going to carry that on.”

The couple first met in the late 1960s in college in Bloomington Indiana. “She was full of life. Friendly. No one was a stranger.” said Hayes, and laughed when he recalled, “She was dating a guy in my fraternity and she would come down to my room and bum cigarettes.” He said it wasn’t long after that they became inseparable. “I don’t think we spent more than a couple of dozen nights apart in 50 years.”

The two moved to Indianapolis where Rose attended nursing school while he was completing graduate school. She continued her nursing career for 25 years, including after they moved to Mount Pleasant.

Hayes said after Rose retired from nursing she “transferred her care from humans to animals.” They ran a pet sitting service from 1995 until 2012, and also had a grooming business they started in 2006. During this time stray and feral cats would show up at their home and they would feed them and eventually many were brought into the house and were spayed.

“From there we volunteered at an old cat rescue in town and the lady sent us out to Isle of Palms to rescue a mommy and five kittens that were under a house. So that’s what kind of started the rescue business — bringing in the strays to our own house,” Hayes said. “I think Rose transferred her motherly instincts. We didn’t have any children. They were all her babies. All their cries… everything about them.”

Eventually they moved to a larger home in Mount Pleasant which backed up to a boat landing. Hayes said there were a lot of stray cats living in an area behind their house “so they would come through the fence to our neighborhood.”

“Members of the community were kind of upset about all the stray cats so we volunteered to trap and spay or neuter. We would bring them in. That turned out to be 40 cats. We tried releasing them, through a trap and release program, but that didn’t work out well as there were people who were still upset about the fact that they were still there. They were getting hit by cars and Rose wasn’t happy about that at all. So we ended up bringing them in and keeping them.”

Hayes said his home started out at about 1,800 square feet, but now it’s 2,800 square feet. “We added on for the kitties. It’s all about the kitties. The more cats we took in, the more room we needed. They were all fixed. Never in any cages.”

Taking care of so many cats has obviously been a labor of love, but just as obviously there is a lot of labor to be done. The Hayes have had help over the years from volunteers and friends. And also use a professional cleaning company. Laureen Deibert became a volunteer through a good friend “about a month before Miss Rose passed,” she said. She helps with public relations and social media. “All of us bring something different to the table and that’s how we make a good team,” she said of those who work with the sanctuary.

“I was only able to work with Rose one day and she was such a spark that drove Almost Home and then to find out she had passed … that left us all wondering what was going to happen,” Deibert said sadly. “We all just started talking about how it could continue without Rose. It would be different, but in her memory. It just had to continue. It had to.”

Deibert said she and her family also rescued feral cats at their home on James Island. “When we bought our house in 2015 there were probably 12 feral cats and we live on a loop so it’s a small neighborhood. We started trapping them and getting them fixed so we could stop the population. Then we built them a house outside on our front porch and in the back where we have a tidal creek, so it’s pretty wild back there.”

“Then we started feeding them and pretty soon they were all pretty fat, healthy cats,” she continued. “As they should be. They are beautiful. But one by one they started disappearing and we got calls from people in the neighborhood who said ‘we think we have one of your cats in our backyard and it’s dead.’ So we’re down to six and it’s just sad because there is nothing we can do. I don’t want to put them in cages. I just don’t want to do that.”

Hayes emphasized that feral cats are a community problem. “There are thousands of stray cats in the community of Mount Pleasant,” he said, explaining that people treat cats as if they are not living creatures. ”People move away and leave their cats. Inside an apartment, outside. They just move away. They’re treated as disposable. It’s just awful.”

Deibert agreed. “People think cats don’t have the same kind of love and emotions that dogs do, but they do. They absolutely do. And to leave an animal behind is unconscionable. It really is.”

“At Almost Home they are taking care of these animals,” Deibert said. “They are seen by veterinarians, they are well fed, and they are loved. It is an awesome place. It really is. Tommy works so that he can keep this place running. Donations are really needed in order to continue this.”

Hayes said the mission of Almost Home is simple. “We are after the feral, stray, abandoned, abused cats that really aren’t adoptable. But they deserve a good life, they deserve a roof over their heads, they deserve food, they deserve not to be hit by a car or eaten.”