Profile - revised

        "Cats are like people: they think they can do everything on their own, without help or

encouragement, but soon realize they desperately want someone to come along and be there

for them."  Jane Johnson smiles as she strokes her cat's back. "Watch a cat some time. Oh 

sure, he'll act aloof, but when one small problem arises...Boom!  Now he needs you! 'Help!' he

says. 'I'm stuck on your curtains and I can't get down!'" She's laughing now. "Aren't we all like

that?" 

        Jane releases her cat and stretches out on her overstuffed sofa like a cat herself. She's all 

of 5' 2" but her arms and legs are strong and muscular. Her closely-cropped hair looks slightly 

unkempt as if she just woke up. Her eyes dance when she talks, especially when she talks about 

animals. But most of all, Jane can never sit still. Like a terrier let out of a cage, she'll bounce on 

the sofa when she wants to punctuate a point, or hug a throw pillow, laughing and falling back on 

the cushions when she remembers an amusing story. 

        I've always loved animals, but never quite like Jane. She and I have known each other since 

third grade when I used to come over to play with Jane and her dog "Nippers."  Nippers played 

as much with us as we did with each other: it was just understood that he was a part of our group.

But Nippers was just the start. Whenever a stray wandered into our neighborhood, Jane would take

it in and try to find the rightful owners. And when they were not forthcoming, Jane adopted the 

forgotten animal as her own. 

        "Do you remember that skinny little dachshund I had back in high school?" Jane leaned forward

hugging a sofa pillow.

        "The one your mother said was the ugliest dog she'd ever seen? Oh yes, I remember 'Dutch'!"

I said. "He wandered up from the creek behind your house, didn't he?"

        "Yeah, that was Dutch alright. I should've called him 'Kaiser' because he thought he was a German

shepherd or a boxer. Never backed down from a challenge.  He'd bark at anybody who got in his way, and 

would squat down on his front paws to look mean. Oh, he was a determined little guy!" She scrunched up

her face and grit her teeth. Then she giggled at the recollection.

        When Jane considered colleges, she thought about attending a school with a good pre-veterinarian

program. But Jane wasn't a scholar. She loved animals and could care for them with unbounded love and

affection, and even treat wounds or sickness with some innate skill. Still, she would not or could not be a

vet. But that didn't stop her.

        After marrying Frank, who indulged his wife in the luxury of accumulating a small menagerie of

strays-as-pets, she raised a family of two children ("They weren't strays, but I loved them still!" she said

with a wink). She taught her children the love and care of animals, from her pet dogs, cats, and rabbits, to

the care and feeding of the deer and birds that populated the meadow behind her house. I looked out the

window onto that acreage and saw her birdfeeder even now brimming with purple finches and 

chickadees pecking and scattering sunflower seeds from their perch.

        And now, she is about to embark on the biggest challenge of her life: to spend her days in an

elementary school classroom sharing her love of animals with a room full of eight and nine-year-olds who

may never have thought to tend to the other creatures around them. She's excited and she's nervous, and

I can tell. She lets the pillow go and hitches her feet up under her on the sofa as she turns to me.

        "It all starts in September," she said. "I finish the program next month, and already I've lined up a

position at Brown Deer County Middle School, teaching science."

        "Amazing, isn't it?" I said.  "From Nippers to the little nippers in elementary school. Did you think

 this is what you'd be doing with your life?"

        "Not a chance!" she said. Fresca, her cat, was back in her lap. "But I see that's where I need to go.

I think I appreciate more what I'm about to do because I never cared what I was doing before.  Now I care. 

Does that make sense?"

        Of course it did. And I know she'll be a great teacher. After a bit more conversation, I got up to go.

As I looked out the front window, I saw Frank loading an empty rabbit hutch onto the pickup and

 slamming the tailgate shut.

        "Frank's taking the hutch to the dump. We let the rabbits go last week when the ice went out on the

 pond." She smiled again. "Seems they were ready for a change of pace, don't you think?"

        Yes, I thought. Yes I do.