Patrick has known hardships. He’s shy. He doesn’t like meeting new people. Sometimes he’s afraid to show his face. He’s been passed over many times in life.
Much like Patrick, Nichole knows hardships. She’s been in trouble. She’s made bad decisions. And she’s been rejected.
And that’s why Patrick and Nichole have become such good friends. They’re good together.
They met in prison. But they aren’t your typical cellmates, because she’s got two legs and he’s got four. She has soft skin and he — well, he has fur.
Patrick, a 9-pound brown and white tabby, is a cat. Nichole Alexander, 35, is an inmate, a mother and a former drug dealer, who is serving four years at the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women near Belfair.
They became friends through the Pawsitive Prison Program of the Kitsap Humane Society (KHS), which brings kittens to be fostered and cats to be socialized to the corrections center. The program began in September.
“Everyone thinks we are rehabbing the cats,” Alexander said. “But really, the cats are rehabbing us.”
And that’s the key. Participants, both the two-legged kind and the four-legged kind, get something out of it. For the cats, many who are passed over for adoption because they aren’t social, get time to learn to trust human beings. The women get an opportunity to nurture and be comforted as they fulfill their prison terms.
Angela Hosking, correctional unit supervisor of the Gold Creek unit, brought the program to Mission Creek.
“I wanted to give it a try,” she said. “I had heard of it working other places and I thought it could work here.”
Any inmate who wants to participate and is in good standing at the correctional center can apply to take part. A thorough background check is made and as long as the person has no history of crimes against animals or vulnerable people, she can be considered. Currently, 20 women are participating.
Staff at the Kitsap Humane Shelter in Silverdale choose which cats will go to prison. Each cat has a primary handler and a secondary handler assigned to them. With the first group, there was an adult cat and a mother cat with eight kittens. After about six weeks, the cats and kittens were deemed ready for adoption and were returned to the shelter, and KHS officials just announced that all have been adopted.
Currently, there are five cats in the Gold Creek unit.
Among them is Patrick.
“When we first got Patrick, he didn’t come out of his kennel for nine days,” Alexander said. “Once he came out, he began exploring, but he still was very shy.”
So, she began to earn his trust and soon, she was able to hold him. Eventually, after a few weeks, she was able to take him out to the day room, where he met other women and began to warm up to some of them. Now, the women ask Alexander to “bring Patrick out.”
“He likes to be on his leash and go exploring,” she said. “Sometimes, he’ll actually jump down from the bed and want to go out.”
It’s taken some time, but Patrick is becoming more social and less scared. He does, however, prefer being in his room to being in the hallway or the day room.
Recently, he’s discovered the window in his room and likes to sit and watch the world go by.
“He hasn’t really discovered birds yet,” Alexander said. “He just watches the people.”
Alexander has a son, 16, and a daughter, 8, at home. She misses them a lot and has more than three and a half years to go on her sentence.
“Patrick brings all of us so much comfort,” Alexander said. “We get to love him and pet him. We get to nurture something. Many of us are mothers and we miss mothering our children.”
Each handler also learns responsibility. They have to care for their cat, feeding it and cleaning its litter box daily. They set aside time to play with the cat and they keep a journal of the cat’s progress. Prior to taking part in the program, they attend a class taught by KHS where they learn how to pick up and hold a cat, and they observe such things as how a cat is dewormed.
Alexander was chosen to participate because she hopes to become a veterinarian technician when she is released.
“I grew up around animals,” she said. “We lived on a small farm and I had goats, baby cows, chickens and even a wolf. One of my favorite memories is of me and my sister when we had a mother cat and 13 kittens. We’d take them in a basket out to the garden and just let them walk around.”
Having been in the medical field prior to her drug conviction, she thinks caring for animals would be satisfying to her because she’d “still be helping a living thing.”
Down the hall, Lori Johnson and Susan Carriker are the handlers for Ricky, a 3-year-old male all black Bombay cat. Not only is Ricky shy, but he also has had a hard time being adopted because he is black.
“Many people won’t adopt black cats because of the stigma,” Hosking said.
This breed of cat is all black, has gold eyes and a dense mink-like feel to its fur.
“He’s very unique,” Johnson said. “He’s only been with us a couple of weeks and he’s just beginning to come out of his shell.”
He’s warming up to people, Johnson said. She told of a situation earlier in the day when another woman was having a hard time.
“I took Ricky to her and he really calmed her down,” Johnson said.
For Carriker, Ricky is helping her connect with her 9-year-old daughter.
“My daughter is scared to come here because she’s seen all those prison programs on TV,” Carriker said. “When I told her we had cats here, she began to realize that it’s not a bad place here and that I’m here to get better.”
Her daughter has a cat named Tom at home and when they talk by phone, “we share cat stories,” she said.
Other four-legged residents at Gold Creek right now include Sienne, a 4-month-old female; Ruby, a 2-year-old Torbie; and Noel, a 5-year-old buff-colored female.
Noel’s handler, Michelle Thomas, likes to spend quiet time in the afternoon reading to Noel.
“She wasn’t too social at first,” Thomas said of Noel. “But she’s made herself right at home.”
Thomas has been around animals all her life and hopes to work at or even begin her own shelter when she gets out.
“This has been very therapeutic for me,” she said. “I’ve been locked up for two years now and was on blood pressure medications when I came here. But since working with the cats, my blood pressure has gone down.”
Valorie Matz, Sienna’s handler, can relate to the cats.
“Many of them have been abandoned or abused,” Matz said. “Many of the girls in here have also been abandoned or abused. We know what it’s like not to fit in. We relate to each other.”
Like all of the women in the program, Alexander knows the time will come when she’ll have to let Patrick go. There’s no set timetable, Hosking said. When each cat leaves is based on its own individual progress.
“I’d love to keep him here to be our mascot,” she said. “Many of us would. But we’re just his adoptive moms. He needs to have a real home.”
And, as Alexander tells her daughter, helping with the cats is important for the women inmates.
“It shows that even though you’ve made mistakes, you can still do good things,” she said.
Michelle Thomas likes to spend quiet time in the afternoon reading to Noel. Thomas has been around animals all her life and hopes to work at or even begin her own shelter when she gets out of Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women. Photo: Leslie Kelly / Sound Publishing
Nichole Alexander and Patrick at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women. “Patrick brings all of us so much comfort,” Alexander said. “We get to love him and pet him. We get to nurture something.” Photo: Leslie Kelly / Sound Publishing
ABOUT THE PROGRAM
Kitsap Humane Shelter supplies all of the items needed for the Pawsitive Prison Program, and there is no cost to the correctional center to participate.
The Humane Society is looking for help to continue the program. Needed are donations of cat playpen kennels, kitten and cat food (both wet and dry), non-clumping cat litter, cat toys, cat dome beds, cat brushes, kitchen scales used to weigh the kittens, bleach and spray bottles. Donations can be taken to the shelter at 9167 Dickey Road in Silverdale, or ordered from the shelter’s wish list on Amazon.com.
For more information about this program or the shelter, call 360-692-6977.
Kitsap Humane Society is an independent, nonprofit organization that has operated in Kitsap County since 1961. Its goal is to rehome stray and abandoned animals.
— The Pawsitive Prison Program logo was designed by women inmates in a graphic arts program at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women.
