Smokey

Princess

Mike and Ginny Spevak, the well-known Friendship Heights couple murdered in their home last November, left behind a daughter and son, their spouses, a grandson, siblings---a loving family. They also left behind three cats they adored. Two of them now need homes.

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Some time ago, a member of the Burleith Listserv posted a scathing item about her neighbor, Georgetown University. The venerable college, she claimed, was slaying cats left behind by irresponsible coed renters. At the least, she wrote, officials were trapping them and delivering them to kill shelters.

"Renee202" also worried the college was sealing kitties in cement: "If you look around their campus you see areas that used to have a gutter like openings are now completely filled in. I would often see homeless cats often go into them when you approached....The cats who were in those gutters must have died a gruesome death."

Linda Greenan, assistant vice president of external relations, says that just isn't so.

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Prior to my landlord coming over this morning, an occasion that has happened approximately three times since my husband started renting from her 13 years ago, we decided to pretend we do not have a cat.

My husband got up first and reported to me he put the litter container "in the closet that you can't open without everything falling out." The bag of food he put under the bathroom sink. I then got up and emptied the water bowl and placed it and the full bowl of food in the bathroom cupboard. The litter box conveniently fit under the couch. I then got out the vacuum, attached the hose, and sucked up any evidence of stray litter and known accumulation of cat hair.

My landlord arrived on time, at 9 a.m. Approximately two minutes later she was making a kissy noise in the direction of the cat, whom I had forgotten to hide.