Interview with Jonathan Rosenberg
Jonathan Rosenberg is the founder of Tabby's Place, a sanctuary for cats that come from hopeless situations. The facility was inspired by his cat Tabby, who had become ill and died in 1999. When Tabby became sick, Rosenberg decided to change his life and build a special facility for homeless cats. Tabby’s Place opened in Ringoes, New Jersey in 2003, and cares for 100 cats. Some of the cats at Tabby’s Place have health problems that require expensive treatments, such as Corey and Alex shown here.
Many people daydream about quitting their regular jobs and dedicating themselves to their passion, but very few do so. You're one of the rare people who have actually done it. What was the process like? Was it scary to consider radically changing your life this way?
What was the process like ... As the history page (http://www.tabbysplace.org/history.html) explains, it was realizing that Tabby was going to die that was the impetus. When I realized he was going to die, I felt like I had been hit between the eyes with a sledgehammer. I didn't know here to go or where to turn for "help". It was such a painful realization for me.
I finally realized there was no way to run away from this pain. Instead I felt that the only way "out" was "in". I had to go deeper into dealing with these kinds of situations. This led me to envision Tabby's Place, a sanctuary where we would not turn cats away for age or disease.
Once I came to this conclusion, I wasn't scared by any of my ongoing decisions. I just "knew" I was going to do this.
How did you raise the money to build Tabby's Place?
I was an early employee of CNET (www.cnet.com), a successful internet startup.
I love the fact that Tabby's Place has 4 solariums. Do you actually have dozens of cats sleeping together in the sunlight?
Sigh ... For some reason we haven't been able to deduce, most of the cats hate being in the solariums. They act scared and try to hide. We do have a handful of cats that love them & they occupy them at every opportunity.
Cats have their own personalities, and of course, some of them may not like each other and get into fights. Is that a big problem with so many animals in one place?
It's an issue, though not a major problem. We do, indeed, have cats that do not like other cats. But they learn to live together and, at least, tolerate each other. So far, the only exception is Scarlett (http://www.petfinder.org/pet.cgi?action=2&pet=2350132), who is now my office mate :-)
Obviously the number of cats that a small organization like Tabby's Place can help is very limited. Nationally, there are many cats still being euthanized in shelters or living wild in very poor conditions. Is there any grand strategy that you think can address these problems?
Let me start by saying that I'm no expert on this topic, as our mission is to provide a very high level of care for the cats that we accept. We make decisions based on what is best for each specific cat, not based on optimization of resources, etc.
I think the key has got to be to decrease the number of cats that are unneutered/unspayed. There are lots of ways to approach this, but I'm thinking the key might be education. At least, I hope that's the key, since it would mean that humans (as a whole) aren't inherently clueless about animals, they just need to see the truth.
Many of the cats at Tabby’s Place require sponsorship to pay for their medical care. Please visit http://www.tabbysplace.org/ to learn more.
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