When Pet Owners Are Away, Cats Can Play at Anaheim Kennel for Felines

For much of her life, Lucille Sackett has taken care of cats, most of them not her own.

“Oh, I’ve always had two or three that belonged to me,” she said. One was instrumental in Sackett’s decision to open her own cathouse, so to speak.

“I once put my Siamese cat in a kennel, and when I got the bill I told my husband we were on the wrong side of this business,” said Sackett, 70, who opened what she believed to be the first kennel in Orange County exclusively for cats, naming it Cat Nap Hotel.

During the early days of her Anaheim cat kennel--tucked away in her back yard--Sackett had some lean times. But now the kennel sometimes fills to its 59-cat capacity, usually with repeat customers.

Despite having a clientele of about 400 temporary tenants, Sackett said she can remember the regulars by name. But because of the numbers, “it can be hectic,” she said. Most of the cats are on special diets “so we have to open a lot of different cans at feeding times.”

The future for the 22-year-old kennel looks promising, she said.

“A lot more people are living in apartments, and landlords not only aren’t allowing children, they’re not letting people keep dogs either,” said Sackett, who noted that dogs make noise and need a place to exercise while cats are quiet and can stay indoors.

Although husband Ed Sackett, 73, is a retired sheet metal worker, there’s no retirement at the kennel for either of them. “I’m just a lackey around here, “ he said. He built the wire cages for the cats and is also a lay preacher at the New Apostolic Church in Anaheim.

Although they run the kennel themselves, “we’d like to find someone to help us,” Lucille Sackett said. But it’s hard to get the kind of help they want, a person who doesn’t mind hard work, loves cats and understands their needs, “not someone who just says ‘nice kitty.’ ”

And that person better be ready to shelter cats from experimental medical research and from people who pose as cat lovers and end up selling the animals for medical research instead of finding them a home.

“Those people are not cat lovers,” she said. “The best way to protect your cat is to keep it indoors and love it.”

Besides the serious side of their business, “we have fun working with each other, and I wish I had written down what he’s said during the 50 years we’ve been married,” she said.

She remembers one thing: “He likes to say he’s probably the first preacher to have a wife who runs a cathouse.”

Sometimes the road to a goal gets traveled early in life, and that appears so for 12-year-old Jorge Olamendi III, 12, a sixth-grader at Mission San Juan Capistrano Elementary School.

In July, he will leave for Europe with an American all-star team of boys 15 and younger to play a series of exhibition soccer games. He was the youngest player selected in an open tryout.

They will play games in Holland, West Germany, Sweden and Denmark.

“I think it’s going to be a terrific experience for him,” said his father, Jorge Olamendi II, a San Clemente restaurateur and soccer coach at Dana Hills High School. “It will give him some terrific experience to reach his goal.”

That goal, the youngster said, is to play for the U.S. National Soccer Team in World Cup competition.

Terry Brown, 37, of El Toro believes that he saw the quintessence of yuppiedom the other day in Newport Beach. He drove past a fender-bender between two BMWs on Coast Highway--and the drivers were each on their car phones, no doubt talking to their insurance agents.

A customer walked into Wall’s Quality Meats in Anaheim and asked owner Alan Wall where Tommy Tender had gone. Tender is a 250-pound, brown-and-white, 8-foot-long fiberglass Hereford steer that usually stands atop the store.

This is the third time in 12 years the steer has been rustled off the roof, and Wall said he’s getting tired of the whole thing.

Last year it ended up atop a school bus, the work of college pranksters.

Now he’s offering a reward of 100 pounds of prime meat for information leading to the recovery of Tommy Tender.

“When I get him back I’m going to put him inside the store,” Wall said.