Rosebush ‘Cat Lady’ Gives Home to Abandoned Pets

By: Mariah Richards
Edited by: Erin Hillard, John Morelli, Amber Brown

Anita Doneth has been providing a home for lost and abandoned cats for over ten years.

The Rosebush resident first started to accumulate cats when her daughter moved into an apartment not allowing pets and was forced to give up her cat.

“My daughter couldn’t keep her and couldn’t find anyone else to give her to,” Doneth explained. “We couldn’t stand the idea of a shelter, so I decided to take her. Velvet was pregnant when she came to live with me,” added Doneth. “I just thought she was fat.”

Doneth was able to find homes for three of the four kittens, and ended up keeping the third, a black and white male she named Socks. “He looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo,” she said of his distinctive markings. Socks has a white underbelly but is black everywhere else except for his feet, which are white.

One cat wandered up her driveway with his ear bleeding. Doneth cleaned him up and let him stay in her basement to recuperate, thinking he would eventually wander off. The cat stuck around for the rest of his life.

“I always called him Tom,” Doneth said. “Worn, torn, Tom.”

Another cat, Snowball, was dropped off in Doneth’s yard. “People do that sometimes,” she said. “I either try to find homes for the animals, or I keep them.”

Last fall, Doneth was forced to have one cat, a male whom she called, Willow, euthanized . “Willow was the first cat I got after my kids left home,” Doneth explained. “He was my best friend for a long time.”

Doneth, a former employee of the Rosebush school system, lost her job due to privatization. She has returned to school and is pursuing a degree in the field of healthcare at mid-Michigan Community College.

“I’ve had to write some speeches for one of my classes,” she said. “It makes me pretty nervous. All my speeches have to do with animals. I did one speech on the importance of rabies vaccines, and another one about declawing cats being very cruel. People are probably starting to think I’m a cat lady. I guess they’re right.”