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An a cappella song – a musical tale from a feral cat lover – is now a big hit with animal lovers.
Karen Green made her “debut” last month by performing the stylized song before 650 people at Best Friends’ No More Homeless Pets Conference in Las Vegas. Her performance was videotaped and is now on YouTube for all the world to see and hear.
By changing the lyrics to “Fever,” a rhythm-and-blues hit from the '50s, Karen added punch and renamed it “Feral.”
So, what moved Karen, a former Best Friends employee who now works in Oregon for the nonprofit Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs, to write and sing a soulful yet humorous song about feral cats?
“It occurred to me that it would be fun to write a parody of ‘Fever’ using [the word] ‘feral’ instead,” she says. “I had a few vacation days and just sat down and wrote the song. When I thought of the punch line – snuggling with the anesthetized feral cat – I knew I had something true to the feral-cat/caregiver relationship.”
Often, feral cats are afraid of people, Karen says, so caregivers never have a chance to hold or even touch the cats they care for and feed. Still, she says, “There’s the desire to interact with them the way one would with a socialized cat.” And that’s why she wrote the song, to address that desire.
The song isn’t about just one cat, even though it sounds like it. “I've never managed a feral cat colony,” she says. “But I worked with feral cats at Best Friends, and later with caregivers and trap/neuter/release programs.”
Her first job at Best Friends in 1996 was as a veterinary technician in Cat World, the area at the sanctuary where the cats live. “When a feral cat was anesthetized for a procedure, it was not uncommon to take advantage of their state and sneak in a squeeze or a kiss,” she says.
And that’s what she wanted to come across in the song – that special moment when a caregiver has a chance to hug an unsuspecting “sleeping” cat.
“It’s the same kind of thing that makes me want to put out nuts for the squirrel that lives in my yard,” Karen says. “If I ever had a chance to cuddle with him, I’d be all over it.”
Written by Cathy Scott
Video and photo by Clay Myers
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