From sick kitten to adorable cat with quite the personality, Sarge has certainly made a home with campus Public Safety.
Sergeant Scott Kunkle has a soft spot for Sarge, as he’s been one of the officers taking care of him since the beginning of his short, adorable journey at Capital.
“He was a little starving kitten, looked real sick, shivering. [We] saw him on a rainy day behind our bush in the front of the Public Safety office. We brought it in to warm [him] up, fed [him],” Kunkle said. “Our dispatcher is a member of some kind of cat organization, so she took [him] and got medical care for it, fixed him up.”
The veterinarian that they took Sarge to said that he was never going to be tamed; he would forever be feral, and there was no domesticating him, but Public Safety proved that wrong. The cat is healthy, sociable, and has even been known to come when called by Kunkle.
“He’s [very] friendly, loves to be pet, loves to play,” Kunkle said. “We actually saw him chase a deer in the front yard a couple weeks ago, and the deer would chase [him] back.”
“Most of us buy him food, and we built him a shelter out back,” he said. “We put straw in it and everything to keep him warm for the winter, even a heating pad that the cat uses to keep warm.” Kunkle also mentioned that he’s thinking about building a new, warmer shelter for the winter months so that Sarge can stay “nice and toasty.”
“He usually comes around different times to get his food and water and to be pet, and then he goes back home, or wherever he goes around campus,” Kunkle said.
But Sarge isn’t the first feline friend that Public Safety has taken in to love. For eight years, they had a cat named Buddy that they cared for in the same way before he eventually passed.
Kunkle said that Sarge is well-behaved and never gets in any trouble when it comes to digging through trash and being mischievous. “He’s so spoiled with people food,” he said. “He’s harmless.”
Public Safety might not be Sarge’s forever home, however.
“He’s on the waiting list actually for an organization called PetPromise,” Kunkle said. “I’d like to find him a good home for winter but I wanna make sure it’s a good home. If not, we’ll build him a shelter. We’re all kind of used to him here [anyway].”
Sarge has certainly come to be a loved member of campus Public Safety.
“He’s our stress relief pet, I guess you could say,” Kunkle said.
