{"id":24875,"date":"2024-01-24T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T17:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=24875"},"modified":"2024-01-30T14:04:52","modified_gmt":"2024-01-30T22:04:52","slug":"neighbourhood-cat-brings-joy-and-concern-to-lansdowne-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2024\/01\/24\/neighbourhood-cat-brings-joy-and-concern-to-lansdowne-campus\/","title":{"rendered":"Neighbourhood cat brings joy and concern to Lansdowne campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a Camosun College student taking classes at the Lansdowne campus, you might have noticed a cat hanging around the school. That cat\u2019s name is Alaska; she\u2019s a four-year-old brown-striped tabby who loves to spend her days at the college hanging out with students and getting into trouble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Alaska\u2019s owner Jocelyn Preston says that petting Alaska is encouraged, but feeding and letting her into the buildings is not. Preston says she\u2019s attempted to put Alaska on \u201chouse arrest,\u201d but Alaska\u2019s proved to be a formidable escape artist, slicing through screens, breaking plants, and squeezing through windows to escape. Preston has accepted Alaska as an outdoor cat and is doing everything she can to spread awareness of her nomadic tabby.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Preston only learned about Alaska\u2019s extracurricular activities at the college when she decided to buy her cats collars with name tags.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe actually got tags for her and her brother, Murphy,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to say this was early October. And then I started getting probably like 10 calls and 10 texts every day being like, \u2018Your cat\u2019s at Camosun.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Neighbourhood cat Alaska gets some love on the Lansdowne campus of Camosun College (photo by Jen Bespalko).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The flurry of calls and texts inspired Preston to create the Instagram account @sassylasky<\/a> to inform Camosun students that Alaska knows her way home, as long as she isn\u2019t let into buildings or fed. This, coupled with posters put up around campus by the Camosun College Student Society, has helped ensure that Alaska returns home at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like when she doesn\u2019t come home at all,\u201d says Preston. \u201cAnd there have been quite a few times where she\u2019s just stayed over at Camosun; I think there were people feeding her. And then once I got Instagram going and people started hearing about her, and there\u2019s posters up, I think people have been feeding her less, which is really good because she comes home. But I think, honestly, she\u2019d be happy to just live at Camosun full-time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alaska once vanished through a hole in the wall inside the Young building\u2019s gym and couldn\u2019t find her way back out. Someone witnessed the event and promptly called Preston, alerting her to Alaska\u2019s disappearing act.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe didn\u2019t come home that night,\u201d she says. \u201cSo, the next day, we went back, and I was calling her from the hole and nothing. And then we\u2019re walking up some stairs from the gym, and I could hear meowing from the wall… And I was like, \u2018Oh my God, she\u2019s literally in the wall.\u2019 We opened an elevator and saw her paw trying to get out of the side. So my partner opened the elevator doors a bit more, and she could squeeze out. So she had been in the walls of the school for like 24 hours. And then the next day, apparently, she tried to go right back into that hole again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another bonus of the Instagram account is allowing Preston a unique look into Alaska\u2019s adventures from the students tagging Alaska in photos around campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really funny getting tagged in the photos,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m so glad I have her Instagram because I don\u2019t know what she\u2019s up to. I got tagged in an Instagram story, and she was in the Fisher building, and I guess there\u2019s a pond with fish, and she was going after the fish. I would never have known that if I hadn\u2019t been tagged in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, not everyone at Camosun has been as receptive to Alaska as the students are.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think some employees aren\u2019t stoked about it,\u201d says Preston. \u201cWe\u2019ve been threatened with animal control a few times, but I don\u2019t know what to do about that. And what\u2019s animal control going to do? She\u2019s just a local neighbourhood cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camosun College executive director of communications and marketing Rodney Porter can\u2019t help but laugh while discussing Alaska\u2019s fondness for the college and its students (\u201cAlaska does seem to be obsessed about our Lansdowne campus; who can blame her?\u201d says Porter, who adds that he\u2019s a cat lover).<\/p>\n

On a serious note, Porter commends Preston and her partner on being responsible pet owners, and notes that it\u2019s important to keep Alaska out of the buildings for health and safety reasons. He says the college appreciates the role that animals play in our lives, but it also needs to ensure it has a respectful workplace.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have medical accommodations, multiple needs,\u201d says Porter. \u201cIt\u2019s important to have a safe and healthy work and education environment and that\u2019s why the policy is not to have pets going into any of our buildings. We have therapy dogs, but they\u2019re all registered… We don\u2019t have any official policy on Sassy Lasky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Preston believes that there are benefits to having Alaska visit with the students in between their classes as a way to reduce stress.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s good,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I was a student and I was stressed out, I\u2019d love to have an animal around. So, I like to think it\u2019s helpful for the students to have a little animal that they can pet in between classes to kind of help their mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alaska can find her way home, but if you notice her acting tired or confused, contact Preston using the number on Alaska\u2019s collar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re a Camosun College student taking classes at the Lansdowne campus, you might have noticed a cat hanging around the school. That cat\u2019s name is Alaska; she\u2019s a four-year-old brown-striped tabby who loves to spend her days at the college hanging out with students and getting into trouble.\u00a0 Alaska\u2019s owner Jocelyn Preston says that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,303],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-january-24-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24953,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24875\/revisions\/24953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}