Vet student works to ‘Save A Gato’

Inside the 465-year-old walled city of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, Michelle Kraft AG ’02, recently had an opportunity to practice her trade and do some good for the abandoned and feral cats that gather at The Promenade of the Princess.

Kraft is in her final year at the University of Georgia (UGA) College of Veterinary Medicine. Her close encounter with the felines was part of an externship arranged by Prof. Fernando J. Torres-Vélez.

Kraft had tried to get a grant to conduct research into why sea turtles are developing tumors. She didn’t get the grant, but Torres-Vélez found an externship in Puerto Rico with the “Save A Gato” project that included a week working in an animal clinic on the island and a week working with a group doing sea-turtle tumor research.

The International Activities Program at UGA had partnered with Save A Gato to supply veterinary medicine students to help trap, examine, neuter and release the feral cats. It’s a pilot, service-learning project for senior vet students, intended to give them real-world experience while providing needed services.

Save A Gato was organized by a group of local residents working with the U.S. National Park Service and the Colegio de Médicos Veterinarios de Puerto Rico. It is overseen by Victor Collazo, a local veterinarian. Participants are trying to control the feral cat population in a humane way through this trap, neuter and release program.

Kraft and fellow student Lucy Marlow were the first veterinary students to work with Save A Gato. “The project is ongoing. The people there are trying to keep the cats healthy and safe,” Kraft says.

“We lived a couple of blocks from the cats in a monastery built in the 1700s. We trapped 46 cats, and some had to be sedated before they could be touched.”

The cats were taken to an indoor work area, where they were weighed, examined, treated if necessary, tested for serious diseases, neutered if necessary, microchipped and released.

“A lot of cats had eye lesions, scars on their corneas, but they were surprisingly healthy,” Kraft says. “They were all given rabies shots and released. Only a few had to be spayed or neutered, and that was done by Lucy and me.”

Kraft and Marlow stayed in La Paguera, on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, their first week and worked in a small-animal clinic treating people’s pets. Kraft says they were exposed to pets they hadn’t experienced before such as fighting cocks and sea turtles.

Then, they flew to the island of Lajas, where they boarded a boat to search for green sea turtles to examine. Some of them get tumors all over, she says. “We did eye exams, used ultrasound to locate tumors and took blood. Then we tagged them. If we found one with a tumor, we’d remove it. We caught about 20 turtles,” she says. Some of the turtles weighed more than 100 pounds.

“I had such an awesome experience there, and the people treated us very well,” Kraft says.

She says she has always loved animals, but when she was 6 years old, her mother took her along when one of the family cats, Sammy, went for his annual checkup and shots. Kraft recalls being fascinated as she watched the vet examine Sammy and administer the shots.

“It started as a love of animals, but it grew into a love of the science of animals,” she says.

“My mom, Patricia, was probably the biggest influence on me when it comes to animals. She has been known to rescue mother cats and their kittens and find them all homes.”

Kraft says her mother and Lesa Griffiths, professor of animal nutrition at UD, helped her to realize her goal to become a veterinarian. The first time she applied to vet school as an out-of-state student, she was not accepted.

With the encouragement of her parents, Kraft moved to Georgia and entered a master of science program. When she reapplied to the veterinary school, she was accepted.

“Everything worked out perfectly!” she says. “I keep in touch with Dr. Griffiths to let her know what I’ve been up to because she was such an integral part of where I am now.”

When Kraft graduates in May, she plans to practice in a small-animal clinic or hospital.

—Barbara Garrison