MASON COUNTY, WASHINGTON. - The Kitsap Humane Society now has a new approach for stray cats: send them to prison.
Inmates at the Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women, near Belfair in Mason County, are urrently rehabilitating 10 stray cats until they are ready to be adopted by the public.
“It’s a win-win for everybody involved,” said Cydney Berthel, who is serving time for a theft conviction.
“We’re rehabilitating the lives of these little kittens and rehabilitating our lives too,” said Berthel.
She said working with the cats has been tremendously therapeutic.
It has taught the offenders how to nurture a living, breathing creature, something they didn’t always do in the past.
“We definitely made mistakes,” said Shauna Teagle, “I feel this is my little bit of payback I can do.”
Teagle, who was sentenced to three years in prison for dealing drugs, said caring for the cats is helping her be a better mother when she’s released.
To participate in what the inmates call the “Pawsitive Prison Program,” offenders must be infraction-free for the past six months, which basically means “good behavior.”
Applicants cannot and must not have any convictions for violent crimes towards children, vulnerable adults or animals.
The past is the past. We must all live in the purr-esent.
