Excerpt from Chapter 2

CHAPTER II:
Good Samaritans


OUR FRIEND, CHARLOTTE YATER
By Anna Briggs

The first time Charlotte Yater met me, she wasn’t very happy about it. Friends have gone behind Charlotte’s back to call the National Humane Education Society about the stray cat she was sheltering in a basement room in her Brooklyn, New York apartment building.
The animal was a little orange ball of fur they called “Rusty,” cute as could be but impossible to housebreak. The odor was getting to be more than the residents were willing to put up with – except, of course, for Charlotte.
She loved that little cat so dearly, she was close to tears when, suddenly one Saturday morning, I arrived from faraway Virginia to carry her Rusty off to an animal sanctuary called Peace Plantation.
I was so taken by Charlotte’s allegiance to this little cat, that I suggested she accompany me back to Virginia so she could reassure herself that Rusty would be in good hands. Charlotte declined my invitation but took to heart my parting words: “Anytime you want to come down to see him, you’re perfectly welcome.” The very next week, Charlotte caught a plane to Virginia and arrived at Peace Plantation, where her reservations disappeared when she saw Rusty ensconced in the window of my Leesburg office – “just like he owned the place.”
From that day on, Charlotte became one of the Society’s staunchest champions and a close personal friend to me and my daughter, Virginia “Ginger” Dungan, the society’s vice-president. Charlotte has been a member of our Board of Directors for the past decade.
And Rusty became one of Peace Plantation’s more famous “trustees,” living out his natural life in our care.
From the time that Charlotte Yater was a little girl growing up in Hamilton, Illinois, a small town in the Mississippi River, she had an abiding love for animals, especially strays. She was known to coax them to follow her home.
When she was 21, Charlotte moved to New York City and found her first job at Columbia University’s Teachers College. As a resident of Manhattan who worked days and took courses at night, she found it practically impossible to indulge her love of animals.
Only when she moved to Brooklyn some 35 years ago was Charlotte able to join like-minded friends in rescuing strays and finding homes for them. Brooklyn Heights was a good place for that kind of humane activity. The people there were fond of animals, and it was often said that people who wanted to abandon their pets would drop them off Brooklyn Heights because they knew they would be well cared for.
When a home could not be found for a stray dog or cat in Brooklyn, Charlotte would turn to me and Peace Plantation – but only as a last resort.
“That’s the way it should be,” says Charlotte. “Rather than have to send it to Peace Plantation, which is always nearly full, it’s better to find a home here.”
Whenever the Society has mounted rescue efforts in New York city, Charlotte has been there to lend a hand. One of the most memorable roundups was the sweep of the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn, which had become a residency facility and a haven for animals on the loose.
Charlotte joined Ginger and earl Dungan in trapping some 15 cats in the basement and courtyard of that venerable building, which only recently was destroyed by massive fire. “A dreadful fire,” says Charlotte. “I only hoped the other people who lived there took their pets with them where they fled.”
Charlotte has three cats of her own: Barry, a black-and-white whom she adopted six years ago when he was eight, and two tabbies, Eloise and Emily, whom her sister left behind when she died two years ago. These are the latest in a long line of cats that have shared Charlotte’s apartment. “All the cats I’ve had were ‘found’,” she says. “I never went out and bought a cat or went out looking for them. They found me.”
People in her apartment building have found Charlotte to be the perfect pet sitter. While she is getting beyond the point of walking dogs any longer, she is still available for cat sitting. “Everybody wants me to take care of their cats because I treat them so well. I like to brush them or play with them – whatever they like; they are always glad to see me.”
So are we always glad to see Charlotte Yater, a dear friend, whose love for animals and concern for their welfare energizes the Society in its work for humane education.