She says these magical lines:
“My best gift of love and respect I give them in life,”
Although Maria Torero cares for 175 sick cats in her large, 8-roomed apartment, her greatest gift, she believes, is giving them her love and respect. Correct. I totally agree and you are a heroine to me.
Maria focuses on “cats that nobody cares about”. This chimes with the self-declared role of Mother Theresa. Members of her order, Missionaries of Charity vowed to adhere to providing a “wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”.
Humans who are the poorest of the poor are equivalent to the street cats of Lima who are terminally ill with feline leukemia and who are malnourished, flea and parasite ridden and wholly forgotten and ignored. Maria says almost all of the cats she rescues have feline leukemia. She tests them all for it. It seems to be endemic in Lima, Peru.
Mother Theresa was not a saint. She was criticised by some; neither is Maria who looks after 175 street cats in her apartment. This is considered cat hoarding by almost everyone.
However, having a vast number of cats in a smallish unsuitable place is not automatically cat hoarding. We have be careful when we brand a person a cat hoarder.
I don’t know Maria but I sense she is organised. If you are coping and organised you’re a cat rescue not a hoarder. She is a nurse. Imagine how hard she works at nursing people all day and cats for the rest of the time.
She spends $1,785 a month to care for the cats. Some of it is her wages and some donations.
She has three children to care for as well. When the cats die there are no ceremonies. All the effort goes on caring for the living and above all respecting and loving the cat that no one else wants to love.
Maria is my hero, my idol.
Can you imagine the dedication that springs from the deepest of love for the unwanted and unloved? She is saint-like to me.