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Kitty Brunjes
& The town cats
When former Wrightsville Beach Alderman and New Hanover
High School Spanish teacher Catherine “Kitty” Brunjes was
a little girl, her dad nicknamed her Kitty. She didn’t like
the name very much but it stuck, and as it turned out, Kitty
would suit Catherine better than her father could have ever predicted because
Kitty cares for Wrightsville Beach’s feral cat community.
Kitty Brunjes has three indoor cats: Fluffy, Smudge and Maddie; five out-door
cats, Squid, Tiger, Blacky and B.W., and then there is Yellow Boy. First
discovered by Susan Hur behind the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History,
all appeared to have been owned and abandoned.
Hur and Brunjes took turns feeding the cats, which could later be trapped.
With the help of Dr. Paul Gigliotti of Forest Hills Veterinary Hospital, they
were fixed and adopted.
But every year, as college students migrate off the beach, Brunjes finds more
cats, resulting in more feedings and more scouting for suitable owners to adopt.
“I’ve been doing it a long time and I don’t know exactly why. It just
seemed natural,” Brunjes says as her name implies, “seemed like something I
was supposed to do.”
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
Catherine “Kitty”
Brunjes with Maddie