By Terry Karkos,Staff Writer

DIXFIELD – Vawn Daley and Brenda Jarvis said Monday they are upset about a sharp increase cats and kittens being dumped in town.

Both Dixfield women blamed the dilemma on a story that ran in the Rumford Falls Times on Sept. 21 about possible money in Barbara Thorpe estate for stray cats.

“Apparently, people are reading into it that Dixfield’s got the money,” Daley said Monday morning. “Well, they haven’t, they haven’t got the money.”

The article gave an update on an Oxford County Probate Court case involving the estate of the late Dixfield philanthropist Barbara Thorpe. She reportedly left nearly $250,000 in her will to help Dixfield’s stray cats. The 76-year-old died in 2002.

Retirees Jarvis and her sister, Caddy Smith, of Dixfield have been using their own fixed-incomes to care for abandoned cats in town for the past 20 years. Thorpe had reportedly helped them by buying cat food.

Additionally, Jarvis works twice a week at Holmes’ Market on Main Street in Dixfield for money to buy food for 31 abandoned cats that are being kept and cared for daily in three Dixfield locations.

Neither Jarvis nor Daley nor Smith would say where these places are out of fear that people would dump off more cats and kittens, Jarvis said Monday afternoon.

At one location Monday afternoon, there were 14 adult cats being fed and cared for in a 12-by-56-foot trailer. Most, Jarvis said, had been found dumped in the woods.

There was a white affectionate cat named “Baby;” a large white and black named “Bobo;” a black cat named “Furball;” Bobo’s sister, a skittish gray tawny named “Judy;” a gray longhair named “Hissy;” a 12-year-old black kitty named “Lucky;” a 10-year-old large gray and white named “Sponge;” and “Gram,” “Mama Cat,” “Whitey” and “Squeaky.”

Three other wilder cats were living under the trailer.

“As far as taking anymore, we can’t. Mentally, it would be a lot easier for us if we knew we had some funding. But, in the meantime, I’ll go to work two days a week for you kitties,” Jarvis said to Hissy, Bobo, Baby and Judy.

Jarvis said cats and kittens have been dropped off early in the morning all summer and fall in Dixfield from Route 142 on one end of town, all the way out to the Common Road on the other end.

“Ever since it came out in the papers a couple of years ago, there seems to be more being dumped off,” Jarvis said.

“It’s like people are thinking, Oh, boy! They got a place for the cats!’ Well, Dixfield doesn’t have a place. I swear that if it wasn’t for my sister and I, the cats would die of starvation,” she added.

Daley agreed.

“It’s not fair to Brenda, and it’s not fair to the Dixfield people to have to take on everybody’s strays. We’ve got cats all over the place, but there is no money here,” she said.

Daley said she found a home for one gray and white cat left at a Route 142 home, and kept a black and white cat abandoned there, also. She named it “Miss Lettie,” deciding to keep it after their Maine coon cat died.

Among the finds this past week were two bedraggled little kittens that Jarvis found.

“I thought it was a lump of tar and a rock, but they had got splashed and were half frozen. It’s heartless what people do to cats,” Jarvis said.