Bridgeport's Cat Problem Has a Solution—Just Don't Call Her 'Cat Lady'
“No one should have to choose between feeding your animal or yourself.”
There are cat ladies like me, who wanted to be Catwoman when she grew up, but got only as close as having a girl-crush on Julie Newmar and buying a USB-charged water fountain for her cat duo.
Then there’s my niece, who named her chonk after herself and makes Rose sing on TikTok.
But then there’s Autumn Ganza. She once halted a demolition of a hoarder house by taking on a private company and Alderman Patrick Daley Thompson. She broke into the building through a boarded-up window and carried out dozens of cats, she said, one by one. In mid-winter Chicago. That was just the live ones.
“When I finally got access to the building, and in the basement, you could see that over the years they had like tunneled in the insulation in the ceiling, like an ant colony,” she said.”They were scared, so they were just like going in deeper.”
After that, Ganza didn’t give up. In fact, she was hooked.
Here’s the thing: Ganza never intended to be a cat lady. In fact, she loves dogs —although she owns several felines of her own.
Then she moved across from the hoarder house on Hillock, and one February night, as she came home from Target, she saw a black kitten sitting on a frozen puddle.
“I was like ‘oh, fuck me,’” Ganza said.
The Cat Lady was born. Although Bridgeporters know her by the moniker — when I reached out to my network to ask about the identity of the Bridgeport Cat Lady, three people jumped to give me her name — Ganza prefers to be referred to as a trap, neuter, release activist.
That’s really what she does. She feeds feral cats across the South Side. She traps the ones she can catch, takes them to a vet, pays for the neuter and spaying, then releases them back to their Bridgeport abodes. If she can find them a home, she will, but many are too “wild” to be tamed, and are fit only to roam their home city block.
Ganza does it on her own dime. Friends sometimes chip in, but most of it — the work, the money — comes from her.
Because demand for her services has grown, she’s formed Kitty Empire, a trap, neuter, release organization whose nonprofit status is pending.
She’s expanded her work, too. After the pandemic hit, Ganza began working with a group that provided necessities for people and pets. She gives pet food to folks who need it. She’s also assisting with affordable pet vaccine clinics.
“No one should have to choose between feeding your animal or yourself,” she said. “You know, you see the shelter number numbers right now and part of it is because people are having a hard time and they can't afford, you know, their vet bills. They can't afford vaccinations.
“They feel bad because they don't feel their animals have the life that they should have. And if you help a person keep their animal, you're not only keeping that family together, you're keeping that shelter spot open for a creature that actually needs it,” Ganza said.
“That's the stuff that's really important to me.”
You go girl.
You can hear Ganza tell her rescue stories between 6:20 and 6:30 p.m., Fri., Jan. 21 on Lumpen Radio or, if you’re local, on 105.5 FM on your radio dial.
You can learn more about Ganza’s work on Instagram at Castle Black Paw.
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