Profile: Pet Lover Cathy Bissell
Cathy Bissell is forceful a story. It is one of the kind she hates to hear and hates even more to relate; a heartbreaking tale about dogs who were mistreated in the aftermath of Blow Katrina.
But she thinks she can get through it, and she wants to make a point. She takes a deep breath and forces it out. By the interval she is done, her voice is quaking, and her eyes are brimming with tears.
Which would be no surprise at all to anyone who knows anything about Bissell.
“Very few people live their spark of life every day doing exactly what they believe,” said Wendy Swift, veterinary medical president at the Humane Society of West Michigan. “But Cathy does. She lives her life for animals.”
And for her blood, Bissell would hurry to add.
Sometimes, people joke, “You have a husband and three kids, too?” since she seems to live, breathe and bleed the circumstances of the four-legged.
Luckily, her husband and kids — Alissandra, 25; Max, 23; and Meric, 16 — also are pet lovers, so the tenderness she has for animals touches all aspects of her life.
