Dawn White, author of Lola: Diary of a Rescued Cat

Kristen Petrie [00:00:02]

You've tuned in to the community cats podcast ready? Let's go.

Stacy LeBaron [00:00:12]

Welcome to the Community Cats Podcast. I'm your host, Stacy LeBaron. I've been involved helping homeless cats for over 20 years with the Merrimack River, feline rescue Society. The goal of this podcast is to expose you to amazing people who are improving the lives of cats. I hope these interviews will Help you learn how you can turn your passion or cats into action. And today we're speaking with Dawn White. By day Dawn is a behavioral psychologist and a licensed massage therapist. By night she is the award-winning writer and photographer behind Lola, the rescued cat blog and the author of Lola: Diary of a Rescue Cat. Dawn promotes advocacy for adoption and animal rights, educate her readers on how to give their cats the best lives ever, and entertain with their wit and escapades.  She promotes advocacy for adoption and animal rights and educates her readers on how to give their cats the best lives ever. Dawn also has been a contributing writer for the Jackson Galaxy Projects Cat Pawsitive program, Pet Radio Magazine, blogpaws Chewy.com, the Contemporary pet, and cats of the blogosphere weekly calendar. Dawn, I'd like to welcome you to the show.

Dawn White [00:01:22]

Hi, Stacy. It's great to be here.

Stacy [00:01:24]

So, my first question for all of my guests is how did you become passionate about cats?

Dawn [00:01:29]

I’ve had cats in my life and in our family, my entire life, growing up. We always had a cat either somebody we knew had kittens and we took one of the kittens or they just showed up at our door, but there was always a cat in our house and it's just been a passion of mine forever.

Stacy [00:01:49]

When they did show up at your door? Did you adopt them? Did you get them spayed and neutered? Did you feed them? How did you respond to them?

Dawn [00:01:57]

My parents took them in. We never really had more than three or four cats out of time. So, we weren't wouldn't have tons of cats at once. We had three or four at once, and if they did show up at the door, we just adopted them, and said hey come on in and they became a part of the family.

Stacy [00:02:13]

So, tell me a little bit about Lola and Lola story and the blog. And how did that all get started? 

Dawn [00:02:20]

Everything actually started with Lexi. I was without a cat for many, many years because where I lived, you know, the lease said no pets and I wasn't allowed to have a pet. And then one day in 2010 in April of 2010, I went into Petco with my family, there were buying things for my niece's puppy. And they had an adoption event there. And I was immediately drawn, I said, oh, I have to go see the cats and I went to look at them and there was the most beautiful black and white cat sitting in a cage up for adoption. She had beautiful eyes, and she was just gorgeous, and I immediately fell in love with her. And one week later, I went back to pick her up and I brought her home. And then I had her for about eight months, and I realized she was lonely and, you know, you can never have one cats need friends. So, I was just going through Facebook one night and, you know, one page leads to another leads to another and I came across Lola's photo. And she had been pulled from the local city shelter, and she was very, very sick. I had never seen a cat this sick, a photo of a cat that ill. And there was something that just drew me to her. There was just something about her. And I just read her story and the woman who pulled her from the shelter who was trying to find her a home, wrote about her. So, I contacted her. And I said I was interested in coming to see Lola and she was actually in the hospital. So, I went to the vet and I met her and 15 seconds later I adopted her. And a week later I picked her up and brought her home and that started everything. So, she had already had a following on Facebook. People are already telling her rescue story like people do. And several people said they really wanted to see her story through to the end to see how she recovered and adapted to her new life. So, some of them recommended that I started Facebook page for her. And I've never done that before. I didn't know anything about Facebook or pages for cats. I didn't even know people did those things or wrote in their cat’s voices or anything like that? So, I started a page and I really thought it would only be a few months and people would, you know, see how she recovered and how she adapted to her new home. And it just grew, it just really started to grow so exponentially.  Followers just increased and it just grew into something that I had no idea whatever be. And I used it as a platform to raise awareness to adopt cats and shelter cats, and to pull cats from shelters who are in need.  And I raised tens of thousands of money, rather dollars through auctions for people to help them with their pet bills, to buy food for their pets, shelters and rescues. I just raised so much money and it just grew and just kept growing and it still does. 

Stacy [00:05:13]

So, you have a blog too in addition to the Facebook page?

Dawn [00:05:17]

Yes. So, as my Facebook page started growing, I thought that I really wanted to share Lola’s story with the world beyond Facebook. So, I wrote a book, and I wrote it in her diary, so it's in the form of her diary and it's in her voice. So, people can really get a picture and an idea of what can happen to a cat or any animal for that matter when they're dumped, you know, and they just dumped and end up in a shelter and different things can happen. So, the whole book is really written through Lola’s point of view, and it's her story in her voice. So, after I wrote my book, I figured every book has to have an official author website. So, I started a website and then that just grew into something that I never expected as well. I just started writing articles on different topics and networking with people and with brands became involved with blogpaws. I became involved with the cat writer’s association and it just morphed into something that I never ever dreamed whatever happened and I've brought so much attention to animal rescue that it's just been really so fulfilling.  And when I wrote Lola’s book, I said if I can save one animal's life, then I really fulfilled my mission with this book, and somebody posted on my Facebook page that Lola's story not only encourage them to adopt a cat from a shelter, but they named the cat Lola. 

Stacy [00:06:47]

So that's wonderful. Great.

Dawn [00:06:48]

We filled our mission. 

Stacy [00:06:50]

That's great story. That's fantastic. So, there are a lot of people out there that are interested in writing about animals and getting stories out there. Do you have any tips or recommendations for folks that might be interested in learning more about becoming a writer in the animal space? 

Dawn [00:07:29]

And I wrote a couple of posts on this many years ago about how to start writing in the animal space. And my first bit of advice is just start, just start writing. A lot of people put it off and they say, I don't know how to write. I don't know what to write. I don't know where to write. Just start. And really get it down on paper and put it out on social media. Tia start a Facebook page started writing stories about your cat or stories about your experiences. Just put it out there on social start an Instagram, just start putting it out there. And then once you really have it out there, you can compile it all into your book and people can self-publish, you know, you don't have to have a big contract with like a random house or somebody like that. You can self-publish and put your book out there and self-promote and the word will get out.  Because animal lovers will spread the word about your book and they will spread the word about all the work that you're doing. They definitely will. It's a very tight-knit community and people love helping other people spread the word about their work. 

Stacy LeBaron [00:08:16]

You had talked about your role in advocacy for adoption as well as animal rights.  Are specific organizations that you work with or that you have partnered with in your work over the last several years? 

Stacy LeBaron [00:08:28]

I'm very excited and very proud to be a part of Jackson Galaxy’s Cat Pawsitive program. I volunteer as a contributing writer for the cat pawsitive program. And in that role, I'm assigned a certain amount of shelters per semester for the program. And I network with those shelters and I became very close with the people that I network with and get the information from and I write updates on how the cats change through the program. They tell me stories about cats who are in a corner cowering in their cage, sitting in their litter box and then all of a sudden they're the life of the party and they become the most social cat in the shelter. They find their forever home, just through the program and I really enjoy that. And even through that, I've gone to visit shelters that I've written about. And I've got to see them in person and really get to see the work that they do in person and write about them on my blog which has been really uplifting as well. I've partnered with the catnip Nation film Tina Traster and her team Tina has written a fantastic guest post for my blog on issues involving TNR and just animal rights in general. And I've been so happy for her to spread the word about her film. So I've got really gotten to partner with a lot of people. I've also become a member of the cat writer’s association right now. I am a member of the council and I've also been the treasurer in years past.  And it's just really nice to get the word out there about all the wonderful things that people write about cats.

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Stacy [00:10:08]

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Stacy [00:11:03]

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Stacy [00:12:05]

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Stacy LeBaron [00:12:27]

What are your thoughts about trap, neuter, return? I know you've talked about Tina and her work and that kind of thing. Have you written about it to a certain degree or any general thoughts being in the animal welfare space about trap neuter return and what do you see life being like for community cats at this point in time?

Dawn [00:12:44]

I actually became certified early in 2020 and my goal was to network with people, actually go out and get a lot of experience. Doing TNR learning how to do it from the experts and writing about them on my blog. But fortunately, the pandemic hit so I had to put that on hold, but I've been taking so many seminars online about TNR and return to field, community cats 101. So, I've been taking so many seminars that I have a plethora of information to write about on my blog next year and I'm sincerely hoping to really go out and network with people. I have people in New York City in mind that I do want to contact and go out with, it's such an important thing. People don't realize that doing TNR in your neighborhood not only helps enhance the lives of the community cats and makes their lives better and gives them a healthier longer life. But it also improves the life of the community in general. And I just think it's lack of education, people just don't know, they just don't understand. And I think by spreading the word and really just helping people understand it.  Educating them on how this can help everybody, who lives in that community is such a wonderful thing. It's something I definitely advocate for and I'm really looking forward to really learning how to do it hands-on and to going out in my own community. I see cats in my community that aren't are tipped and finding out who's feeding these cats. And what can I do to help them? And get them TNR and just writing more and more about it. My whole idea of focus for my blog next year is community cats, everything ranging, from the difference between a stray and a feral cat, what cats are referred to as Community cats, TNR, community relations. I have a whole bunch of stuff planned for next year, that I'm really hoping to get out there to be able to do. 

Stacy LeBaron [00:14:48]

That sounds great. Sounds very exciting. And I am amazed that you're able to do all of this with the social media and the writing, and all that stuff. And you are also, you know, a behavioral psychologist and a licensed massage therapist. So, I mean, how do you balance it all? 

Dawn [00:15:04]

It gets to be a little tough.   Right now, I'm working mostly from home for my full-time job mostly remotely. So, it helps a little bit. When I am out there working in the field, my daily commute adds up to like two and a half hours a day commuting. So, I have that time now that I'm home and not commuting. So, it makes writing a little bit easier and I teach, I'm not actively working as massage therapist right now because of everything that's going on in the lock downs, but I am teaching and most of my teaching is done remotely as well. So right now, the balance is a little bit easier, but it's a little tough when life is going at full speed. So, I just I get up early. I just schedule myself and I schedule my time, you know, when I want to write I get up early and I focus social media time for that and I do some writing time and some networking time and then at the end of the day, I'll sit down and write for a few hours. 

Stacy [00:16:01]

So at the social media question, I have to ask, do you use a particular scheduler for social media? And I do have a favorite, favorite one, or favorite tool that you use and social media to help kind of tame the craziness around that?

Dawn [00:16:16]

I have to get better at finding a tool. I just started using Tailwind for Pinterest, which really, really help. So I really do recommend Tailwind for Pinterest. I used to use Hootsuite which I kind of got away from really just time, you know, no particular reason but HootSuite was very good for scheduling ahead of time and I do use tweetdeck to schedule my tweets ahead of time, but I do have to get better at scheduling ahead of time. But I do schedule my pins way in advance. And Facebook, I do write on Facebook. You can write on Facebook the scheduler. So with Instagram, I have to get a little better at scheduling my way little bit ahead of time.

Kristen Petrie [00:17:02]

Well, thanks. Thank you for the tip because it sounds like you've got a great following and so you are engaged with your followers and your fans and that kind of thing. And I have a love-hate relationship with social media, just because it can take up so much time or I feel like if I'm not being strategic about it. I feel like it can take up a lot of time but I also feel like it can be incredibly powerful too so. 

Dawn [00:17:25]

Yeah, it can be if you focus on one platform a day rather than every single platform every day. You can still get things scheduled and still maintain an active voice on social media and have it not be so overwhelming. 

Stacy [00:17:41]

Dawn if folks are interested in finding out more about the work that you do. And also, how would they get Lola: Diary of Rescued Cat? How would they reach out to you or purchase a book? 

Dawn [00:17:53]

We're available on Amazon and all online booksellers as well. So they can go to Amazon, Barnes & Nobel or whatever online bookseller they choose and just search for the title of the book. Lola: Diary of a Rescued Cat. They can reach me on Facebook, our Facebook page is Lola the rescued cat or via my blog. Lolatherescue cat.com.

Stacy [00:18:13]

Fantastic Dawn. Is there anything else you'd like to share with our listeners today? 

Dawn [00:18:19]

Yes. I do want to mention that Lola and I are featured in a recent book by Anne Beall called Heroic, Helpful and Caring Cats.   It's all about cats who have change people's lives and how they touch people's lives and where I'm very excited to be involved in that book as well. 

Stacy [00:18:35]

That's great. Well, thank you so much for agreeing to be a guest on the show. And I hope we'll have you on again in the future. 

Dawn [00:18:41]

I look forward to it. Thank you, Stacy. 

Stacy [00:18:43]

That's it for this week. Please head over to Apple podcasts and leave a review. We love to hear what you think at a five-star review really helps others find the show. You can also join the conversation with listeners, cat caretakers, and me on Facebook, and Instagram. And don't forget to hit follow or subscribe on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google podcast, YouTube, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts, so you don't miss a single show. Thanks for listening. And thank you for everything that you do to help create a safe and healthy world for cats.

Kristen [00:19:14]

The community cats podcast would like to shout out a few of our online event sponsors. Did you attend the United Spay Alliance conference in March? The incredible content and educational opportunity were brought to you in part by Marian’s Dream and Humane network if you or your organization I would like to sponsor content that you care about, and that saves feline lives. Go to community cats, podcast.com/sponsor and learn more about how you can turn your passion for cats into action.