Meet 'Radu the cat'

The booklet’s cover art featured a tiny orange cat held by a young woman. It had me at “orange cat” because Harry, our first cat, once was tiny and orange (and now is big and orange!).

It’s the story of Radu, a stray cat the book’s heroine found in her native Romania and took with her in her travels, leading finally to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, where they both live.

Radu needed help beyond being a stray cat. He had a cleft palate, for which he had multiple surgeries, and he was also found to be a Down Syndrome cat.

More important than anything else, though, was that Radu was Dellia Holodenschi’s baby. That meant she would take care of him, just as she has done for countless other feral cats. (www.RaduVI.com)The “cat café” program on St. Thomas is Dellia’s brainchild. She started it with seed money bequeathed to the island’s Humane Society, and since then, pretty much finances it herself, she says.

Every day, she and volunteers who feel as she does drive all over the island to assure food and fresh water for the countless cats there. These basics are left at decorative cat cafes, colorful wooden feeding huts like the two shown in an earlier post.

Next: more about Dellia and TNR – which she says must be the first step – on St. Thomas.
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