Cat Lover Compassion Begets Human Compassion
Below is a canvas, box-framed remembrance of Josh that showed up in my mailbox today from a very dear friend in Minnesota.
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He is a cat lover and has personally raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for cats in Minnesota.
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He single-handedly generated so much financial support for the spay and neuter program in St. Cloud that the number of cats coming in decreased so much that they began being able to allocate funds he raised to help caregivers feed cat colonies that had been TNR'd (vetted and returned to their location) and others.
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He has also personally trapped, spayed, and neutered 30+ cats from negligent neighbors around his home in the last year.
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He adopts senior cats to live out their lives being spoiled by him and those stories could fill a book.
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He openly states that his first cat changed his life and motivated him to become an advocate for cats.
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He also raises funds for battered women's shelters and has served on the boards of multiple such centers.
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His day job is monitoring and jailing repeat domestic violence offenders who the courts released on good behavior and when they violate the terms of their release, he sends them back to jail.
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He even goes out of state to retrieve those who skip bail.
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He talks the talk and he walks the walk every waking hour of his life.
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To me, his actions confirm that a person who is kind, respectful, and protective toward animals will be the same toward people.
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In my book, he is compassion personified and this kind gesture is exemplary of his nature.
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I wish Josh had gotten to meet him.
Josh ran quickly and fearlessly through his 9 cat lives,
his sonorus purrs drowning out death’s rapidly pursuing footsteps,
until all that remains are his indelible pawprints forever on my heart.
-- Phil Duncan
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