When trainer Jane Cibelli acquired a horse who fit this mold, she did what many trainers before her had done – she called a friend to ask if they had a goat she could borrow.

The tradition of goats as companion animals for racehorses goes back decades if not centuries, and is supposedly the origin of the idiom “get your goat.” It's thought that Thoroughbreds take comfort in the presence of a goat because as fellow grazing herd animals they can substitute for the social interaction they'd normally get from another horse on the farm. No one seems to have made an academic study of whether other livestock species would serve just as well to calm Thoroughbreds, though our anecdotal reporting history of the Barn Buddies series suggests cows and sheep are also suitable, if less practical on the backstretch.

Cibelli and her assistant made a few calls and found someone who had a goat named Jeffrey they promised to put on the horse van from the Miami area to Palm Meadows quickly.

“He got off the van and I said, 'Oh he's huge. You could ride him,'” she said. “What he's taught me is how amazing animals are. We put him outside the horse's stall and it was an immediate 'Oh, thank goodness.' They looked at each other, and the horse had this glassy look in his eyes. Later, the horse was laying down looking at Jeffrey, and Jeffrey was laying down looking at him.”

To Cibelli's delight, Jeffrey has proven an intuitive companion to Thoroughbreds. It's the nature of racing barns to have horses who come and go, entering or leaving through claims or retirements. When one horse leaves, Jeffrey always seems to figure out who needs him next.

“He knows if a horse needs him,” she said. “When we first shipped into Palm Meadows, I had this one filly and she gets a little antsy whenever we move places. She wasn't really walking the stall but she was getting up tight, weaving, washing out. And immediately Jeffrey goes over to her and sat down in front of her stall and all was good. He's amazing.”

Jeffrey has his favorites, and he has his not-so-favorites among the racehorses. At Delaware Park, where the stalls have webbings he can climb underneath, he'll crawl into the stall with his favorite horses, while others may get a defiant head toss or knock of his horns on their doorframe as he goes by.

Jeffrey travels with Cibelli's string between South Florida and Delaware Park. He's not wild about the trip but knows the routine and gets his own box stall in the commercial horse van. Cibelli suspects he doesn't enjoy the colder weather up north, since as far as she knows he's always been a Florida guy.

“I do put a blanket on him, but the problem is finding a blanket that actually fits him,” she said. “You'd think a foal blanket would fit him, but it doesn't. The neck's too big. So I try to jimmy something together for him.

“He doesn't particularly like to be brushed or messed with. I think at some point he had kind of a rough life because he does stand up for himself. If there's something he doesn't like, he will turn around and let you know.”

Jeffrey has developed quite a reputation in the barn area, whether he's in Delaware or at Gulfstream, where he is based this winter. Cibelli often gets calls first thing in the morning from trainers in neighboring barns who report he has taken advantage of the training hour bustle to wander off visiting. He even recruited an assistant – a fellow goat joined Cibelli's string in Delaware last summer, to Jeffrey's apparent delight, but was not able to make the journey south with them.

Jeffrey seems to take seriously the need for collaboration between him and other staff, and often finds his way into Cibelli's office.

“I get here first thing in the morning and the cat I've had forever is like, 'Feed me, feed me,'” said Cibelli. “And I look around and the other cats who have decided to move in are also saying feed me. And then here comes Jeffrey. So before I do anything I've got to feed my menagerie.”

When he's not serving as sports psychologist to Cibelli's string, Jeffrey likes to kick back with a snack. Cibelli and her staff have found his palate trends towards the salty. Potato chips, Cheetos, and spicy, crunchy snacks are big favorites.

“He's got quite a following,” she said. “I was worried he'd be annoying, but everybody knows him. He's just a cool goat.

“I don't know how old he is, but he's got a home for the rest of his life.”

If you want to keep track of Jeffrey's exploits, you can find him on his very own Twitter account @jeffreybarngoat.

The post Barn Buddies Presented By Dapple Up: Jeffrey The Goat Goes Where He Is Needed appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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She doesn't just have one; she has five.

“I've always been an animal person. You always have a barn cat. Five seems a little excessive,” Danner admits. “They're not really useful for anything besides eating a lot of food.”

The full roster is Rosa, Catherine, Fester, Bobby, and Linda, each with their own unique personalities. Danner runs horses up and down the East Coast, from Florida to Kentucky to New York and many points in between, but she has chosen to corral her feline employees at her permanent barn in Palm Meadows to minimize the stress of constant travel.

Rosa, like any truly over-worked assistant trainer, never leaves the barn office and is often found on Danner's desk. Catherine, who is the only member of the group not thrilled by the others, eats three meals a day in the barn and is otherwise roaming the training center.

Rosa has no desire to hunt, but Fester, Bobby and Linda will prowl from time to time. There aren't many mice or rats for them at Palm Meadows, so their focus has recently turned to lizards and pigeons.

All five of them technically came to Danner for free, but Fester was by far the most expensive freebie.

“Fester, we found on the track and we thought he was about to die,” she said. “He had herniated all his organs through his diaphragm so he had major surgery. He was on stall rest for like three months, which, stall rest for a cat is being locked in the bathroom. He must have been attacked by something, because he had some lacerations on his shoulder. He was not my cat then; I acquired him with the vet bill.

“Seven hundred dollars later, he has continued to live.”

Bobby (whose antics sometimes prompt him to be called 'Bad Bobby') and Linda, are named for Bob Baffert and Linda Rice. The siblings came to Danner as kittens when she was stabled at Churchill Downs and someone decided she didn't yet have enough cats. Bobby is the favorite of Danner's stable cats and is fond of snuggling her horses, climbing onto hay nets and stall ledges, or resting in the cat shelf hung for him and Linda in the office window. Danner describes Linda (the cat) as “a little controlling” and “two and a half hands of terror.”

Bobby has an unfortunate desire to see the world.

“Bobby makes the rounds; he's very popular on the backside,” said Danner. “Bobby gets into people's vehicles. He's gone to Gulfstream from Palm Meadows twice. And apparently he had to be evicted from an electrician's van at the stable gate the other day. It's a really bad habit, because I'm afraid he's going to really disappear. Obviously they all have chips and numbers on their collars, but he's very keen to get in any open door on a vehicle.”

He has not yet exceeded Danner's record for accidental cat journeys; she once had a barn cat sneak onto a trailer bound for Oaklawn Park – but Bobby is known for breaking records. It's only a matter of time.

Danner isn't the only one who worries when Bobby or one of his colleagues go on an expedition. She says her employees at Palm Meadows are devoted to the whole group of barn cats. Their favorite bonding activity is laundry time.

“They really love the fresh laundry out of the dryer when it's hot,” she said. “That's their favorite place to sleep in the mornings. The hot walkers get the laundry out, and then the cats lay on top of it. Then the hotwalkers will usually wrap them in towels. It's not like it's exactly frigid in South Florida, so I don't know why they need to be wrapped in hot towels all the time, but they look like little burritos as you walk around. They lay there and take it.

“My employees are all big cat fans.”

Bobby taking out his license soon. pic.twitter.com/0PhmqeLgjM

— KD (@kelseyjdanner) August 8, 2022

Bad Bobby getting another massage. pic.twitter.com/zKc7xYSb1K

— KD (@kelseyjdanner) August 15, 2022

Linda and Bobby working hard at Palm Meadows. pic.twitter.com/8QTASXLN5s

— KD (@kelseyjdanner) October 19, 2022

The post Barn Buddies Presented By Dapple Up: While Danner Travels The Country, Feline Assistants Keep Palm Meadows Base Running appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Racing folk who went downtown for dinner or shopping after the races have probably seen 14-year-old Upset out and about. He appears in parades. He attends museum grand openings. He hosts an April birthday party for himself each year. He goes to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation's fundraiser barbecue. He does an annual fun run with children for charity. Many people see him munching hay on the sidewalk outside Impressions of Saratoga or The Dark Horse Mercantile, both gift shops run by Zanetti and Marianne Barker.

“One of the most popular comments is, 'Wow that's a really big dog' or 'Only in Saratoga,' said Maddy Zanetti. “People love it. He loves the attention, and people love getting their picture taken with him.

“I think it's also educational, because people ask lots of questions about horses. Even people who are racing fans, it's amazing what they don't know about horses. They'll see him and think he's a foal, that he's going to be a racehorse someday. Or they don't know the lifespan of horses or what their teeth look like or anything because they've only ever seen them from afar.”

Zanetti and Barker had the idea to find a brand mascot in 2014 when they launched The Dark Horse Mercantile. The brand focuses on the archetype of the “dark horse” at the races who can surprise with an impressive finish. For Zanetti and Barker, the notion of a “dark horse” ties in with Saratoga's reputation as the graveyard of champions. The name of Upset seemed like a natural choice.

“It started out that we wanted an icon for Saratoga. When you see a crawfish you think of New Orleans; when you see the black dog you think of Nantucket or Maine,” said Zanetti. “When you hear Saratoga, you think of a horse. We talked about Jim Dandy and Onion and things, but we decided Upset was the most infamous.

“Upset ran against Man o' War so many times and came in second place. Harry Payne Whitney kept entering him again and again. He was a great horse probably, if it had been a different year.”

The next task was finding a mini horse who could put up with crowds and indoor environments.

“Upset was actually a show horse out near Cobleskill, N.Y., and she was looking to find a new home for him because even though he'd done well in the show ring halter classes she said he wasn't super into it,” recalled Zanetti, who agreed to take the little horse on trial. “We walked him downtown once, and the first event he was in, he was in the Flag Day parade and was behind one of the bands that has trumpets and drums and they were firing off shotguns with blanks. He was just like, 'Ok, this is what I'm doing now.' So we thought he's perfect.”

Upset lives on a boarding farm in Saratoga Springs alongside Zanetti and Barker's riding horses, and has a friend of his own in Poppy, a white mini horse/Shetland cross. Poppy sometimes accompanies Upset to more relaxed events, but is not as fond of loud noises as Upset and is mostly a homebody.

Upset rides in style to all his events.

“We take him in this Warmblood two-horse trailer which is huge,” said Zanetti. “We've modified it so that he has a stall, and his parade cart can go in it. He has so much space in there and it's just him usually, so we call it his limo.”

For times when you can't find him in downtown Saratoga, Upset can delight fans through his own children's book. The book, written by Zanetti and illustrated by Saratoga's Gretchen Tisch, was published in 2018 and has proven so popular it has sold out. Zanetti is in the process of organizing a reprint. The book tells the story of Upset's defeat of Man o' War in the 1919 Sanford Stakes through the eyes of a mini horse. The story's goal is to encourage readers to believe in themselves, even when the odds are long.

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Trainer Amira Chichakly has a different solution. They require an oversized plastic cage, and often confuse her toddler's toys for theirs.

Their names are Jagger and Slim Jim, and they are ferrets.

“I had a ferret when I was a kid briefly,” said Chichakly. “And I knew they would go after mice, and that even the smell of them would drive away mice. Actually the first time I brought them to Belmont, the rats cleared out. They didn't disappear, but they stopped coming into the barn. Then they got used to it a little bit, they came back, and then I started letting [the ferrets] loose in the shed.”

When Chichakly first acquired them from a pet store near Belmont a few months ago, they were too young and too unfamiliar with a stable setting to roam freely around the barn. About the time they got big enough to do some serious hunting, it was time for Saratoga, where there isn't a rodent problem. While she doesn't have a lot of data to go on, she suspects they're going to earn their keep as rat-catchers when they return to Belmont.

“I'm excited to let them loose at Belmont to let them hunt for a few hours instead of just 30 minutes a day,” she said. “People apparently sell ferret-soaked papers and bedding to get rid of mice, so you don't even really need the ferret. But my guess is the genetically-modified pseudo rats we have at Belmont wouldn't care so much. They'd figure it out.”

Jagger and Jim are both leash-trained and (sometimes) come when called. They're also faster than you may expect of a creature with such short legs, darting around and disappearing into holes they've made under the barn office or storage shed. They spend training hours in their cage in the shade outside Chichakly's barn and hop around the yard after horses are put away for the morning. Chichakly will sometimes leave one in the cage while the other plays to keep them from getting bold and wandering too far, but they mostly seem, like a barn cat or dog, to know their territory and stay nearby on their own. They showed some initial interest in the horses, but have learned decorum at the ripe age of five months.

“They seem to have no understanding of their own mortality,” she said. “When I first got them, Jimmy, day one, goes into the stalls, bites a horse on the foot. Looks at it, sniffs it, bites. Now that they're a little older, they now know the foot is attached to a whole horse and you don't do that.”

At the time, the three-month-old ferret's teeth weren't much to write home about and didn't even leave a mark on the horse's pastern. Rather, the filly snorted at the ferret in surprise, and he evidently rethought his priorities.

Ferrets are odd creatures for those unfamiliar with them. Chichakly says they have the attitude of a puppy with the fluid spine of a snake. If you pick one up, they feel much like a furry Slinky toy, wriggling and wobbling in all directions without a care.

That's assuming you can catch one. Jim and Jagger spent a recent morning darting from one side of Chichakly's storage shed to another, trying to make off with a bath sponge, and ignoring a bag of their own feed while trying to climb into a bag of the horses' grain.

They've gotten used to being carried or slung over the shoulder of Chichakly's daughter Kriya, who enjoys carting them around. Although they're not given to sit still long enough to request pats from humans in the same way a dog or cat would, they are social.

“They're unlike anything and they're both terrifyingly creepy and adorable,” she said. “They want to be a part of our family. They'll search us out.”

Despite their quirks, Chichakly said the mischievous pair have a certain charm to them.

“They're very loyal animals,” she said. “And I'd say they're a lot smarter than your average Labrador. You'll see them figure things out. You have to watch the latches [on the cage] and double latch them because they'll figure that out from the inside. They come in the feed room all the time, and they know where they left things. You'll see them plan things. It probably serves them well when it comes to hunting rats and mice.”

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Did I not mention that Johnny Depp is a cat? Probably should have.

Carol Fisher, assistant to Danny Gargan, said the striking black cat showed up earlier this summer, at which point her phone was filled with daily headlines from the movie star's very public civil lawsuit. Fisher had always been a Depp fan, and the new cat needed a name, which is now engraved on a tag on his collar.

Johnny first appeared near the Chad Brown barn, and Fisher helped to catch him. She'd expected it would be a longer-term project, since everyone assumed he was a feral kitten.

“He came right up to them and was so happy to have a friend,” Fisher said. “That day I made an appointment to take him to the vet. His coat was all matted. I said do whatever you need to do, worm him, shots, neuter him. They said he was already neutered.

“I asked how old they thought he was, and they said he was about 11 months. So I think he was just so malnourished and skinny and it probably stunted his growth a little bit.”

Johnny got his coat clipped to shed the matted hair, which has revealed lighter gray patches of fur brightening up his black coat. His tail, which was not clipped, stands out like a graceful plume behind him. Fisher says he looks “a little funny” with the haircut, which is starting to grow out, but Johnny doesn't seem to be self-conscious about it.

Johnny isn't necessarily a devoted hunter; barn staff reported this week he briefly grabbed a pigeon before it casually flapped away. Otherwise, he's more of a stalker than a carnivore. That isn't really the point of him, though. Instead, he's more of a morale booster inside and outside the barn.

“He'll come out here and kids will pick him up and he just loves it so much. He just loves people,” she said, gesturing toward the snack stand on the backstretch, which is often mobbed by tourists and owners grabbing a bite during morning training.

In recent days, Johnny has been learning to ride on the golf cart, whizzing around the barn area with Fisher and other Gargan staff. He seems more focused on the opportunity to enjoy lap time than anything else. In the way that only cats can, Johnny also seems talented at recognizing a dog person when he sees one. On a recent morning, he climbed into the lap of the one visitor to the barn who characterized himself as 'not really a cat person,' put his head down, and closed his eyes.

Even in his relatively brief interlude at the barn thus far, Johnny is already incredibly popular. Fisher said that the stable maintains a string at Saratoga through the fall and in the spring, but it's not yet clear where Johnny will spend his winter. Gargan is tempted to take him to Florida, but isn't sure he'd take to the condo life. Still, as he carts Johnny around in his arms like a baby, it's hard for Gargan to imagine not seeing him every day.

“He's the best thing I've ever rescued,” said a beaming Gargan.

Fisher has thought about bringing him in for the winter, but she already has two former barn cats living inside with her. One of the grooms is hopelessly devoted to Johnny. Fisher jokes “he has about 30 people fighting over him.

“He's famous now.”

The post Barn Buddies Presented By Dapple Up: I Went To Saratoga And Met Johnny Depp appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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An alligator is seen ambling across the dirt path that goes through the infield at Delta Downs in Vinton, La. A nearby horse is understandably unsure what to make of the reptile, ultimately deciding to spin around as the handler tries to maintain control and get the horse to the paddock for an upcoming race.

The caption for the video, posted on Facebook by Joe Allen, an assistant trainer for Richard Lane, reads, “It's Marty's world. We just live in it.”

Marty is a decades-long tenant in the Delta Downs infield. Unlike many tracks, where horsemen walk their charges to and from the paddock around the turns of the track surface, Delta has a straight-line dirt path that splits down the middle of the infield, and separates a larger pond inside the first turn from a couple smaller ponds as the field turns for home.

Allen said that Marty tends to keep to himself on race day, but on that particular day, the alligator crossed the road during a high-traffic period of the card. He's much more likely to be seen crossing the path during morning training hours, when the walkway isn't in use.

“We were headed up to race, and he just came across the path going across to the paddock,” Allen said. “He got about halfway across, and he just laid down right there. I've been coming here for years and running horses, and to be honest, that's probably the first time I've had an experience like that.

“I didn't really know what to expect next,” he continued. “Is one of the horses gonna jump on top of me, or tear loose? An instance like that is definitely unusual for a horse. What horse can get used to an alligator of that size just crossing the path?”

Even though the horses didn't know what to make of the alligator, Allen described Marty as “the life of Delta Downs,” and the kind of living landmark that's known by practically anyone that visits or trains at the track.

With so much space that tends to go relatively unused in a racetrack's infield, it's not uncommon to see wildlife take up residence, and occasionally insert themselves into the race day. There are myriad instances of birds, rabbits, foxes, possums, and deer popping up in and around the races, but Louisiana's large gator population gives Delta a different kind of infield resident.

“He pretty much takes care of himself,” Allen said. “He lives in that big pond in the middle of the infield, and he's lived there for years and years. He pretty much just feeds off the fish in the pond. He doesn't bother nobody.”

Allen's video of Marty crossing the walking path has garnered attention from outlets both local and global. The video boasts more than 732,000 views on Facebook alone, with over 7,500 shares and over 1,000 comments.

Local news outlets picked up on the video, as did international publications including Yahoo!, The Sun, the U.K's Daily Mail, and numerous outlets in India.

“To be honest, I was leading the horse to go race, and I thought I'd just video this,” Allen said. “Then, it just took off. I wasn't expecting it to take off like that. I've never shared a video on Facebook and gotten that many views and shares. It's rather cool. My phone was just 'ding, ding, ding,' and people were sharing my video.”

A few days after posting the viral video of Marty, Allen checked back in with an update on the social media sensation. He posted a screenshot of the Delta Downs simulcast feed with the gator lying down on the racing surface near the inside rail, with four minutes to post.

If Marty held up the races, it wouldn't be the first time that a gator has created an artificial post drag.

In 2016, the Delta Downs camera crew caught a gator, who may or may not have been Marty, that wandered onto the sloppy racing surface ahead of a race, and was examining the outside fence with three minutes to post. He made his way back toward the infield, but plopped himself down in the mud several feet away from the inside rail. As the horses made their way behind the gate, the gator finally got up and completed the journey.

If Marty doesn't feel like getting off the track himself, Allen said the track has an informal contingency plan.

“He's getting up in age, so most of the time, a couple of the valets will just shoo him away, but he don't move real fast,” he said. “Most alligators are rather fast movers, but he's up at the age where he don't really move fast.”

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(Our Barn Buddies series is a long-running reader favorite. Check out the archives here. If you'd like to bring back this monthly series as a sponsor, please call our director of advertising.)

Everywhere I've gone this week, people have asked whether I have met Firenze, and they don't mean Kelly Breen's multiple graded stakes winner Firenze Fire. They're referring to a four-month-old tabby cat named Firenze, referred to in some circles by Firenze Kitten.

“I asked the guys in the barn what they wanted to call him, and of course the first thing that came out of their mouths is Firenze,” said John Attfield, assistant to Breen.

Attfield, who is the son of Hall of Fame trainer Roger Attfield, said that perhaps surprisingly, he has not been a lifelong cat person. Firenze is his second cat, and he has taught Attfield a lot. Firenze knows his name, but unlike many felines, will actually come trotting when his name is called. He will not, however, come when called away from the Oklahoma Training Track, which is steps away from his barn and where he tried galloping on the outside rail a couple of times. (He had to be more closely monitored after that outburst.)

Firenze climbs trees, chases blades of grass, and will alternately accept admiration and tussle with whichever visitors come by to see him — and there are many.

Firenze pauses from a play session to snap a selfie

Attfield picked Firenze and a littermate up from a fellow horseman on the backstretch, who insisted he had to take two kittens from a feral cat.

“He was literally as big as my hand,” recalled Attfield. “He was too little to be in the barn, so he lived in my office at Belmont.”

To Attfield's relief, another assistant fell in love with Firenze's sibling and relocated him, so Firenze has the Breen shedrow to himself.

John Attfield and Firenze Kitten

It remains unclear if Firenze will be an efficient mouser; he was too little at Belmont to catch much of anything, and Attfield says there are no mice or rats at Saratoga for him to practice on, but he does pursue birds with enthusiasm, much to Attfield's dismay. If he isn't much of a hunter though, it won't matter — Attfield brings him canned food in a wide variety of flavors, so that he can choose whatever suits his fancy on a given day.

Firenze Kitten and Firenze Fire

Breen is mainly based in New Jersey, so his interactions with the famous Firenze have been limited, but Attfield reports the spunky kitten has made quite the impression. Breen was headed out one afternoon and had the kitten draped around his neck.

“I said, 'Where are you going with my cat?'” said Attfield. “They're bloody amazing animals. I didn't realize how cool they were.”

If ever Attfield can't find his little companion, he just peeks into the back of Firenze Fire's stall, the first one next to the barn office. Firenze [Kitten] will nap there when things are quiet, and has a little hole back there that he can use to move between the office and his namesake. Attfield isn't sure what the cat may get up to in the evenings, but during the day Firenze Fire is the only horse who gets a visit from Firenze.

 

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The best ideas are born when someone can patch together two problems with a single solution, and Working Cat Project founder Peyton Skaggs has managed to do exactly that, relatively quickly. Back in the dreamy, pre-pandemic days of January 2020, Skaggs found herself riding a train through Paris at midnight on New Year's Eve. As her friends began making their resolutions for the year ahead, Skaggs resolved to find a way to help feral cats.

Skaggs had volunteered with a number of Central Kentucky shelters before and knew how many feral cats went unplaced and, ultimately, euthanized. An adult feral cat is a tough sell to a family that wants an indoor companion they can pet and play with. Likewise, she had learned there was an interest by horse farms in using cats as a chemical-free solution to rodents in the feed room, but many had negative experiences.

“That's why I named it the Working Cat Project – people in the racing world look at horses as workers,” she said. “They love them, but they have a job, a role, and that's just how farm people are. I wanted to advertise [the cats] as workers and employees.

“We try to make the process as easy as possible for the adopters so they'll want to come back, adopt more, and tell their friends, because we work with cats that have no other option. We work with cats that we are their last chance.”

The missing link, Skaggs believed, was education and networking, and that's when the Working Cat Project was born. The program attained 501c3 status in May 2020 and works by making the process of having a barn cat as easy as possible for the host farm. Cats are spayed or neutered and fully vaccinated before they arrive to their new work assignment. Skaggs communicates with shelters with feral cats in need of placement and brings the cat, along with a 42-inch kennel, food, and water and litter, and sets the cat up in a safe spot in the barn for four weeks. The mistake many people make with acclimating a new barn cat, she said, is letting them roam too soon.

“That's where a lot of people go wrong,” she said. “You can't just take a wild animal, more or less, and let them loose. Even if you brought a friendly cat home and put them on your back porch, they probably wouldn't 'stick.' The kenneling process is to ensure the cats stick.”

Barn staff obviously have to clean the litter box while the cat is kenneled, but after it's released, they only need to refill food and water. Skaggs comes to collect the equipment after the cat is loose in the barn. More often than not, she said the people in the barn bond with the cats, some of whom become more friendly with time and repeated positive experiences during their kennel time.

“One of the most rewarding parts has been seeing how much people adore the cats,” she said. “They'll say, 'I'm not a cat person,' and then I'll get pictures three weeks in and they've bought them toys and cat houses and say they've been convinced. It's been really sweet.”

Skaggs meets a horse during a placement check-in for the Working Cat Project

Skaggs is delighted by the success of the program, which has come almost entirely from social media referrals, since she has been unable to promote or fundraise in person due to COVID-19. She said she looks forward to continuing the program as a stress relief from her busy schedule – she is in a pre-med program at the University of Kentucky and preparing to begin medical school there soon. She thinks of the Working Cat Project as a memorial to her cat Jack, who died unexpectedly of lymphoma at 14 months old.

The program just celebrated its 200^th placement and has satisfied farm managers at Calumet Farm, Denali Stud, Three Chimneys, Fares Farm, and Kessler Show Stables among many others. The majority of placements are in Central Kentucky, but Skaggs has traveled as far as Louisville and Somerset to bring a cat to a new home. The program does not have a set adoption or equipment fee, simply a suggested donation for each placement. If a cat has a medical issue, Skaggs will help trap the animal and get it to a veterinarian for help.

“I'd say I'm basically on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week for questions or concerns,” she said.  “I set my mind to something and I just do it, even if it means working through the night.”

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