The Back Story Of Yvonne: The Cat Whisperer
In the book, there is a model animal training law for local governments to adopt. The author desires to encourage local governments to adopt the law to provide people with disabilities access to private and government facilities with certified animals. Local governments should have a process to certify dogs and cats for people with disabilities.
In 2012, I named the first edition of this book after my sister Yvonne. On November 26, 2016, my fourth daughter was born. This edition is named after them. Ebony and Unique inspired the first edition; they have since passed away. Cindy, Sam, Robin, and John motivated me to draft this edition. Grammarly edited this edition, which includes a model emotional support animal and service animal law. My natural daughter Yvonne is indeed the cat whisperer. Cats love her.
This book gathers, organizes, and classifies cat training information for cat lovers. It also describes the use of cats for medical, therapeutic, and daily activity purposes for the elderly, children, patients, and individuals with disabilities.
The journey toward writing this book started in October 2012 when my wife Jen rescued three kittens outside our home in Carmona, Cavite, Philippines. My initial reaction was one of concern because we already had five rescued cats, so I thought we were at our limit. As of the date of this publication, my reaction was well-founded because we have rescued four more kittens: Free, Light, Moon, and Air. Using my imagination, I thought of training cats for persons with disabilities. I Googled the subject and found therapy cat pages.
The October kittens died, but another feral cat was pregnant. We caught her, and she had three kittens, but she ate one (I was unaware that sometimes cats eat their offspring). We removed the other two kittens from the mother and let her go. We named the kittens Unique and Ebony. They were two weeks old. My wife bought kitten formula and a nursing bottle and fed them each night. We took them to the veterinarian to verify that they were healthy. We had our cat handler with a disability make uniforms for them, and we started taking them to the mall.
My prior profession was as a disability lawyer. I have cerebral palsy. Naturally, I enjoy researching, so I decided to study cat training for people with disabilities. I was not able to find any comprehensive training guide on the subject. I did find many brief articles about cat therapy. I gathered, organized, and classified this information to teach my staff to train our cats to provide animal assistance or therapy. During this process, I discovered that the U.S. Department of Justice redefined ADA service animals to only include dogs, but 504, ACAA, and FHA service animals include cats and dogs. However, in explaining the redefinition, the Department reasoned that other animals might be a form of reasonable accommodation or modification by relying on court decisions.
Based on the Department's explanation and the court cases, I created the terms Accommodating Cat and Modification Cat. Accommodating or modification cats may be protected under disability laws if they meet the requirements described in this book. It is important to note that all the information can be found on the Internet for free after months of research. I simply gathered, organized, and classified this information in a usable form. I am an expert at researching subjects but not an accommodation or modification cat expert. My research shows that although there are many service dog experts and schools, there are no experts or schools for accommodating or modification cats. Of course, there are cat-training experts.
As a U.S. citizen residing in the Philippines, I have had the opportunity to discover new experiences. One unique experience is the reverent beauty of holding new kittens in my cerebral palsy arms and saving their lives. There are many street cats in the Philippines. We rescue some and train them because we revere life and love doing it. If we can match an accommodating or modification cat with a loving person with or without a disability, it will be a wonderful new experience.