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About · the long version

Just one person, and the cats who needed her

My name is Sherilee. I live in Turkey with four resident cats, and whoever is currently passing through — usually a kitten still figuring out whether to trust hands.

Raven, the namesake
How the days look

Mornings are bowls. Evenings are trust.

I've been doing this for nearly fourteen years. Not as a charity, not as an NGO — just as the person who happened to keep saying yes.

Mornings are bowls. Afternoons are vet calls and laundry. Evenings are the slow work of sitting on the floor with whoever is new, doing nothing in particular, until they decide it's safe. It's not glamorous. It's mostly very, very quiet. But it works.

What this isn't

  • a charity or an NGO
  • a place to drop off a cat — please don't
  • a tragic place. these animals are happy now

What it is

  • one person, doing what she can
  • a small army of supervisors, four full bowls
  • readers like you, chipping in when they can
Why here

Because every time I said "no more", another life turned up

Because I tried not to. Because every time I told myself "no more for a while", another small life turned up at the back door and looked at me like well, what are you going to do.

Over the last fourteen years I've cared for five paralyzed cats — Bachè is the only one still with us. So many other animals, too, have come through this house on their way to somewhere better. The people who read these pages have, against every cynical instinct I had, made it possible to keep saying yes.

Yoshi, the gentle one

That's the whole thing. Thank you for being here.

— truly, Sherilee