Tag: Cats

Categories
News News Blog

Four Locals Look to Make Pawsitive Impact at Puppy Bowl XVII

CREDIT: Charlie's Crusaders Pet Rescue

On Sunday, February 7th, four local competitors will line up on one of the grandest stages to compete for one of the biggest prizes of them all.

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue

(l to r) Puppy Bowl competitors Pluto, Vinnie, Tank, and Jiffy

That’s right; Memphis will be represented by some talented and furry friends aiming to emerge victorious in this year’s Puppy Bowl XVII. Jiffy, Vinnie, Pluto, and Tank of Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue will go paw-to-paw with other dogs from animal shelters around the nation for a chance to lift the CHEWY “Lombarky” trophy.

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue squad will see its representatives lining up for two separate Puppy Bowl teams. Jiffy will suit up for Team Fluff, while Vinnie, Pluto, and Tank will compete for Team Ruff. Tank will also be repping Memphis in the PUP-ularity contest, and is counting on some Bluff City support to do his hometown proud.

Every year, the Puppy Bowl brings together canine competitors to celebrate adoptable pups and showcase rescues, shelters, and the staffers who dedicate their lives to helping animals find homes. So far, the Bowl has a winning record in its previous 16 iterations, with 100 percent of featured puppies (and halftime show kittens) having been adopted.

This year’s three-hour event will air on the Discovery+ streaming service, and Animal Planet, at 1 p.m. Central. Puppy Bowl XVII will see some changes to the format with the inclusion of special “Adoptable Pup” segments (hosted by rufferee Dan Schachner, overseeing his 10th consecutive Bowl), spotlighting available pups from 11 shelters around the country.

More information about participating shelters, rescues, and organizations can be found on the Puppy Bowl website.

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue has been operating out of Germantown and North Mississippi for a little over four years, and so far has placed more than 1,000 dogs into forever homes.

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue

Tank

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue

Vinnie

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue

Jiffy

Charlie’s Crusaders Pet Rescue

Pluto

Categories
Intermission Impossible Theater

Opera, Opera Everywhere…

Opera Memphis General Director Ned Canty hates to say no to anybody. But September’s now-annual 30 Days of Opera event has grown to near capacity since it launched four years ago. And every year there are more fall festivals and events to choose from. He can’t take live opera to all of them, can he?

“What we really need to figure out before next year is a way to get more access to more singers,” Canty says of an event that was originally conceived as a profile-raising campaign involving one location-specific opera event per day for an entire month. Now, most days in September, the company does at least two, and often three, off-site performances.

Opera, Opera Everywhere…

A different kind of Meow Mix.

This week’s 30 Days performance schedule includes a Friday-night concert at the Levitt Shell. “That’s a show where we know the audience is proportionately least likely to have attended an opera,” says Canty, who’s always eager to get his singers in front of fresh eyes and ears. “So what we have is an open-minded audience that enjoys a lot of different types of musical experiences but are not necessarily coming to our events.” He sees it as an opportunity to preview Opera Memphis’ upcoming season, share some of opera’s greatest hits, sing some show tunes (maybe), and engage in some derring-do. This year, Canty is pairing individual singers with Memphis street-style dancers from New Ballet Ensemble. The duos will then square off against one another in an opera-enhanced version of a jookin’ dance battle.

Opera, Opera Everywhere… (4)

Opera + Jookin= It’s On 

“The concert at the Shell really kicks off our season in a way that’s ecstatic and kind of, ‘hell yeah,'” Canty says. “We will end with ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ which is just a lot of fun for all of us.”

Opera, Opera Everywhere… (2)

Kid stuff

The concert is free, but those interested in adding dinner and drinks to the evening may want to consider paying $25 to attend ArtsMemphis’ Shell Out for the Arts pre-concert event, which includes a meal by the Brushmark and chef Abby Jestis and beverages courtesy of Buster’s Liquors.

Opera, Opera Everywhere… (3)

Singing for sweet potatoes

Categories
News

Memphis Animal Coalition Meeting Sunday

An animal advocacy coalition formed to address concerns about the Memphis Animal Shelter’s high rate of euthanasia will meet at 3 p.m. on Sunday, December 30th at the Benjamin L. Hooks Library.

The group, which previously called itself Change Our Shelter, has decided on a new name — the Memphis Animal Coalition (MAC). It was named for Mac, a dog that was put to sleep by shelter employees despite the fact that rescuer Lisa Trenthem was at the shelter and ready to adopt it. Employees said the dog was sick with allergies and could not be adopted out although Trenthem said she’d take the dog to vet immediately.

Since its formation in October, the group has had several talks with Director of Public Services and Neighborhoods Keenon McCloy about the shelter’s policy on not adopting sick animals, as well the shelter’s sparse hours (it’s only open for adoption 26 hours a week).

As a result, McCloy has announced that the shelter will look into expanding the shelter’s hours and begin implementing a disclaimer/waiver that would allow adoption of dogs and cats with certain medical issues.

For more on the Memphis Animal Coalition, read Bianca Phillips’ story here.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Herding Cats

“Shhhh! These ferals will be hard to catch if we make too much noise,” whispers House of Mews founder Elaine Harvey. She’s inside a room-sized cage with five white and grey-striped full-grown cats.

Harvey quietly reaches for one kitty, but he hisses and bats at her with an outstretched paw, claws at the ready. She waits a moment for the cat to calm down and then tries again. But the cat latches onto the cage, shimmying quickly under a shelf and out of Harvey’s reach. The other cats react the same way, creating a fluffy cat tornado as they dart in circles.

Harvey’s trying to catch the ferals and the more domesticated kitties inside the House of Mews’ old building at 944 South Cooper, so they can be moved across the street to their new home inside the former Dylan Blue store.

After Harvey’s previous landlords, Laurence Bloch and James Raspberry, told her they had other plans for her space, she was forced to find a new home for her 11-year-old cat-rescue business. The former House of Mews building at the corner of Cooper and Young, along with the vacated junk/antique shop next door, will be transformed into new retail space: Burke’s Book Store.

“Revid Management said they had the perfect spot across the street. It was only about 1,000 square feet, and the back room was so small,” says Harvey. “But everything else was either too expensive or it was in a place where we wouldn’t be seen.”

The original space was about 2,800 square feet, so Harvey was forced to adopt out as many cats as possible. In mid-January, the House of Mews had about 175 cats. At the time of the move last week, there were 68 left. “I won’t deal with any more than that,” says Harvey. “I don’t want people to be inundated with cats.”

On February 24th, about 25 volunteers showed up to help Harvey move cages and other furnishings out of the old store. Then, on March 1st, volunteers Kelly Chumley and Amanda Smith assisted Harvey in loading cats into carriers and taking them, three at a time, across the street.

Catching some of them wasn’t easy. Harvey took to tossing towels over some of the cats, then scooping them up gently and loading them into crates. Chumley seemed to have a special talent for coaxing ferals. “She’s like the Cat Whisperer,” says Smith, as she watches Chumley easily catching the feral that gave Harvey such a hard time.

Categories
Theater Theater Feature

Better Than Cats

It’s easy to laugh at Cats because the second you de-suspend your disbelief, the show quickly devolves into two hours of watching grown men and women prancing and leaping about the stage in furry kitty tights. Silly? Undoubtedly. But even the harshest Andrew Lloyd Webber detractor (and I happen to qualify) has to allow that Cats was “le Cirque” when the word “cirque” wasn’t even in the American vocabulary and is an impressive showcase for acrobatic performers. Theatre Memphis’ spirited mounting of the feline sensation capitalizes on its athletic cast to deliver a production with fresher tabbies than you’ll find in the road-weary tatters of an average tour.

Throughout the 1980s it was common to review any lame-leaning event with the deadpan comment “I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats.” The nearly plotless musical went into production in 1982, and by 1985, no serious (or seriously ironic) T-shirt collection was complete without this crew-necked trophy, proving you’d seen the show. It’s only fitting (in a creepy, deeply ’80s, Bret Easton Ellis kind of way) that shirts nearly identical to the iconic originals are sold in the lobby and that the dominant image on the skyline of Theatre Memphis’ set is the illuminated logo of Sun Trust Bank, the show’s presenting sponsor.

But all crassness aside, the show is a triumph of community theater and a throwback to the days when Theatre Memphis had a reputation for bringing Broadway to Perkins Extended. From the elaborate costumes produced in-house to the dancers’ synchronized tap breakdowns, TM has achieved a sustained level of professionalism it has seldom seen since the late 1980s. Mitzi Hamilton’s energetic choreography drives the winning performances of Robert Hanford (Rum Tum Tugger), Christi Gray Hall (Jennyanydots), Jason M. Spitzer (Bustopher Jones), Meg Greer (Grizabella), and Keith Anton (Old Deuteronomy).

This latest musical take on T.S. Eliot’s most frivolous verses isn’t likely to change the minds of the show’s critics. But Cats is the definitive theatrical success story of the late 20th century. Critics’ opinions hardly matter.

When Frozen closes at Circuit Playhouse on July 9th, Memphis’ theater scene will be a poorer place. Jonathon Lamer, who delivers a chilling performance as Frozen‘s pedophiliac serial killer, is leaving for the West Coast. For nearly a decade, Lamer has been a solid everyman, turning in one fine performance after another in shows like Sideman, Take Me Out, and this, his farewell performance.

Under the no-frills direction of Dave Landis, Frozen does everything a good thriller is supposed to do. It ties the audience in knots pitting emotions against intellect, forcing us to sympathize with a character we’re inclined to revile.

Leigh Nichols flits between certainty and crippling doubt as a criminal psychologist determined to map the frozen wastes of the killer’s mind, and Irene Crist is characteristically thorough as the victim’s mother.

Crist’s monologues can fall into a slow, droning cadence, giving the slow-moving but no less engaging show a sleepier, dreamier tone than it deserves, but it’s a minor complaint. The show’s shakier moments are more than overcome by Lamer’s unflinching essay of a man who sincerely wishes that killing little girls was legal and steadily awakes to the physically painful concept of remorse.