by Marjorie Mckinstry-Miller

Created on: January 15, 2007   Last Updated: April 30, 2007

Teresa Bettino's soft blonde curls gracefully curve around her expressive face, a face that can switch from girl-like giggles to intense concentration in a millisecond. Her multilayered personality is evident in her choice of occupations; Teresa, a social worker by trade, is also an accomplished author, and she uses her writing to underline her third (unpaid) career choice animal activist.

Teresa has always had a fondness for animals; her home and farm are filled with a constant flurry of motion a swish of fabric indicates that a cat has taken refuge under a bed, a soft neigh echoes from the barn where her horse, Confetti, chats with the resident barn kitty, and the pounding of porch steps heralds the arrival of the newest member of the family, a Labrador/hound mix that wants to curl in your lap as if it were only a Chihuahua.

It's not surprising, therefore, to find that Teresa was front and center in the battle to protect the feral cat colony living at Hanover Juvenile Correctional Center (HJCC) a few years ago. The colony developed over the years from people dropping off their unwanted (and still fertile) cats onto the property. Over some time, the cats began mating, and soon a thriving colony developed.

That's when Teresa and several other friends and volunteers stepped in to help. Over a period of seven years these folks managed to trap, neuter, and release (TNR) some 40 cats and kittens. Many of the kittens and some of the adoptable cats were placed in permanent homes, and the handful that remained were destined to live out their golden years on the facility.

Sadly, that didn't happen. A new policy was put into effect that would trap the cats and place them in the pound, and the message sent to the public was that the cats would be put up for adoption. But, as anyone who as ever been around feral cats knows, they are not adoptable. The future for these kitties was certain: Death.

Once again, Teresa and her friends tried to intervene and find new outdoor homes for the displaced and disgraced felines. Their rescue adventures tended to be of the cloak and dagger variety, for Teresa soon found herself a member of the persona and feline non grata list. Her naysayers tried to label her as a crazy cat person, a label that really irks Teresa.

She was eventually able to prove to many top officials that TNR is a highly regarded system of animal population control that avoids euthanizing felines whose only felony is being abandoned by their owners. To this day, though,

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