Give 5: Patch Volunteers at the Pound

I don't like cats. Won't say I hate them. I hate Route 80 traffic and Brett Favre's decision-making process and when silverware scrapes together. I just don't like cats.

So, naturally, I volunteered at Hopatcong's pound Tuesday as part of Patch's Give 5 initiative, in which employees spend at least five days a year helping our communities.

You might think this was like sending Glenn Beck to Barack Obama's birthday party or Taylor Swift to a Jay-Z concert. And you'd be right. Sort of.

Something smacked me on the hip a minute after walking through the pound's dimly lit corridor. It was a cat. Later, pound worker Mary Koegler told me Peter might jump on my back. Peter is a cat.

That in mind, I spent a few hours outside yanking weeds from beneath the pound's fence and between the cracks in its concrete surface. Figured out there I'd be away from the felines and maybe even work on my tan a little. [Editor's note: I'm still whiter than a gallon of 2 percent.]

Then a white sedan with New York license plates turned off Flora Avenue and up the road and pulled into the pound's gravel driveway. It was Kris Finn and her daughter, Megan. The two had done the impossible: gotten lost somewhere in Hopatcong's oh-so-navigable hills, extending an already tiresome drive from Howells, N.Y., to an almost two-hour odyssey.

Still, the two were—excuse my cliché—all smiles when they met Koeger and Animal Control Officer Dale Sloat, and Megan was 5-and-change-feet of elation when she held what she'd come for: a stray rabbit. Megan said she'd never heard of Hopatcong before searching an online pet-adoption database and spotting the still-unnamed fur ball.

It was something I didn't expect to see. Seems like cars travel up the animal pound's road as often as Lady Gaga wears sweaters. And with the amount of animals living at the pound—more than 20 cats—it seemed like adoptions were rare.

And it was refreshing sight, showed me that the pound wasn't only a place for Hopatcong's homeless animals, but where hope that someone will be kind enough to take them in still floats in the air.

The adoption kind of energized the place. Koelger kept singing and talking to the cats, but a little louder, with a little more oomph. You couldn't smack the grin from Sloat's face.

About an hour later it was the pound's turn to help Hopatcong.

A woman and her son pulled into the driveway. Figuring we'd get our day's second adoption, I set aside my yellow work gloves and gardening tools and whipped out my notebook and pen.

But the two hadn't come to bring anything home but food to their own dog, which, presumably, they were having difficulty feeding on their own. Koelger told me a week before it's a more common occurrence then you'd think—residents who've fallen on hard times asking for help. Fortunately, the pound hadn't hosted a dog in weeks and provided the mother and son with plenty of food.

That was about when I finished weeding the premises. Koegler still had work to do before leaving at 2:30 p.m., so I walked in to say goodbye. She was holding a small black cat she thought was feral, but warmed to her fast. Then the phone rang and she put the cat back in container.

Thinking maybe this cat was different, I slowly approached it and even stuck my finger into its cage.

It backed away and hissed.

Cats must not like me, either.