It was five years ago when Penny Moore received the panicked call. A prisoner from the Lorton Correctional Facility in Fairfax County, VA., told her that his cat Midnight had broken his leg. Moore, 35, a veterinary technician at the nearby Clifton-Centreville Animal Clinic, agreed to drop by to take a look. Indeed, Midnight's leg was fractured, and Moore rushed him off to be treated. But as much as she was touched by the cat's plight, Moore was even more moved by the inmate's concern. "I cried all the way back to the clinic," she recalls. "I knew all along I had been helping the cats. But then I realized I was helping these men as well."
In addition to housing 3,600 inmates, Lorton has been home to as many as 500 cats. Many are wild and roam free through the sprawling 3,200-acre property. But with the help during the past few years from volunteers like Moore who have brought food and provided medical treatment, some are tamed and cared for by the Washington, D.C. -area's most hardened criminals. Now that's about to change.
The 90-year-old facility, one of the few in the country to allow pets, is being phased out. And as the remaining inmates are transferred to other institutions in preparation for the final shutdown in 2001, Moore has made it her mission to find new homes for Lorton's furry residents.
"I don't want them down there starving," she says. "Now the cats eat broccoli, mashed potatoes everything. But when the prisoners leave, they won't get anything."
Moore's involvement began in 1993, when Lorton officers confiscated a mother cat and her kittens from a inmate and left them in a nearby field. When another prisoner called the Humane Society, Penny, then a volunteer, was one of those who responded. "I remember very vividly when she first started this, "recalls Bill Tabor, 42, a longtime friend. "My first thought was that she had to be crazy to go into that jail with those men.
With funding from the Feline Foundation of Greater Washington and the Northern Virginia chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Moore has ministered to hundreds of Lorton's cats. Aside from delivering massive sacks to cat food, some of which she pays for herself (People say, "Why don't you buy new clothes?" and I say, "The cats are eating my clothes'"), Moore has trapped wild cats, tested them of such diseases as feline leukemia, then had them neutered.
Of course, the toughest test is finding permanent homes for the animals. She has placed about 400 cats through the Humane Society and local cat shows. Not surprisingly, she has adopted three herself, welcoming Fern, Ramone and Taboo into the WoodBridge home she shares with her sister Sharon, 34, an insurance company employee. Carol Moore 56, Penny's mother, has also taken in Boo-Boo, giving her and her husband, Charles, 63, a home improvement contractor, a total of seven cats. Bringing home animals is nothing new to Penny, who earned a degree in animal science from Northern Virginia Community College in 1985. "She's always been an animal lover," says Carol. "As a child, she didn't even want insects harmed."
No one seems more grateful for Moore's good deeds than the prisoners themselves. "Taking care of the cats is my life," says Mike Crigger, 43, serving life fro second-degree murder. "Animals are very therapeutic; they calm you down." Moore thinks the cats may have served and even greater purpose. " Some of these inmates have done terrible things, but I like to think that people can learn to be compassionate," she says." And some of these animals have helped turn these men around.
Susan Schindehette and Hilary Hurd
People Magazine Article, 11/8/99
