Community

In a sad ending to what was a hopeful story, a litter of rescued kittens adopted by a young male cat have died.

The six kittens were found in May in a cardboard box on the side of a road on Prince of Wales Island. They were a little more than a week old at the time.

A volunteer arranged for the litter to come to Ketchikan, and Heather Muench of the Ketchikan Humane Society took over round-the-clock care and feeding, with help from Henry, a young cat who also had been rescued by the animal welfare group.

Henry cleaned the kittens, and cuddled with them in their box, which kept them warm; Muench made sure they were fed properly, and took them to her job everyday at Island to Island Veterinary Clinic. There, she could keep an eye on them and have access to quick medical care.

Unfortunately, Muench said, all that effort just didn’t equal what a mother cat can do.

“They started failing one by one,” she said. “They all developed severe diarrhea. They just became weaker and weaker, and because they were so small, it carried them off.”

Veterinarian Marna Hall also works with the Humane Society, and said kitten and puppy fading syndrome is common within the first 12 to 20 weeks, especially when they are removed from their mother’s care. She said it could happen overnight, with a seemingly healthy kitten succumbing and dying within hours.

“And it can happen for many different reasons: infection, disease, lack of proper nutrition, lack of having proper immunity,” she said.

That immunity is passed on through natural nursing. A mother cat produces colostrum in her milk, which is distributed the first few days after giving birth. That is one component to fighting disease.

“But, the mother also produces antibodies that those babies are going to get while they’re nursing,” Hall said. “Antibodies that help them fight disease, help them fight any kind of infectious agents that they may come across. So, it basically helps them be healthy.”

Hall said there’s really no artificial substitute that compares, which is why she and Muench strongly encourage people faced with an unwanted litter to leave them with the mother, at least until they’re six to eight weeks old.

Hall added that Muench and clinic staff did everything they could to save the six kittens.

“You feel like you failed them, but in reality, you have to remember that all the cards were stacked against them,” Muench said.

Muench said Henry handled the litter’s disappearance well. He now has a few new rescued kittens in the house, and they’re older so he can play tag with them while they wait to be adopted.

Between the Humane Society, the local animal shelter and other rescue groups, there are plenty of kittens in Ketchikan that need homes.

“Kittens all over; it’s that time of year,” Hall said. “Which brings us to: please spay and neuter.”

When the Supreme Court legalized same sex marriage nationwide last week, President Obama called the ruling “a consequence of the countless small acts of courage of millions of people across decades who stood up.”

Mildred Boesser stood 5 feet tall, and she was one of those people. On the day of the ruling, Boesser was on her deathbed at home in Juneau, surrounded by family.

“Friday she was still up and in the chair and talking and holding court and doing well,” says Sara Boesser, Mildred’s daughter. “But she was ready to go and she said, ‘Why am I still here? Why am I still here? I am ready.’ And then the Supreme Court ruling came through and she said, ‘That’s why I’m still here,’ and she was so happy.”

The wife of an Episcopalian minister, Mildred spent decades fighting for gay rights and marriage equality. Just last year, she testified to the legislature in support of a bill that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“For the record, I’m 88 years old. I’ve lived in Alaska since 1959. I’ve been married for 65 years to the same man and together we’ve raised four children. I’m also a Christian and my faith informs what I do,” Mildred said. “I can’t begin to tell you how saddened I am by the fact that in this great state I love so dearly, a person can be fired legally from a job, evicted from housing, denied credit or financing simply because of whom they happen to love.”

Mildred’s advocacy work stemmed from her daughter Sara.

Sara recounts her mother visiting her while she was a senior at the University of Washington in Seattle. It was the early 1970s.

“I was working at a bookstore called Madwomen Bookstore downtown and it had a lot of feminist and progressive and some lesbian books,” Sara says.

As they were leaving the store, Sara decided at that moment to tell her mother:

“At the crosswalk, light hit green and we started across the crosswalk. I said, ‘Mom, did you know that I’m a lesbian?’ She kind of kept going and she looked at me and said, ‘No, but I’m glad you told me, but that doesn’t change anything about what I feel for you.’ And we got across the crosswalk.”

Throughout the years, Mildred spoke up in the State Capitol Building, in city halls across Alaska and knocked on doors in support of gay rights. Sara says her mother never missed an opportunity to testify in the Capitol, even when Sara herself was discouraged.

“At some point it became too difficult for me to go back to those same legislators and tell them again that we are no threat. I couldn’t do it anymore,” Sara says. “And my mother still would. She wouldn’t even sometimes tell me she’d done it and then I read about it in the paper and think, ‘Wow, way to go Mildred.’”

Liz Dodd is a close family friend. She worked alongside Mildred in 1998 against the state constitutional amendment that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Dodd says the hearings were antagonistic and she recalls times when lawmakers were rude.

“You would have this bank of legislators sitting around their little dais there and little Mildred at the table in front of them, soft spoken, just preaching love basically,” Dodd says.

Sara Boesser was honored to be Mildred’s daughter.

“People would stop me on the street always and say, ‘I love your mother. She’s my surrogate mother. She’s my grandmother. She’s a mother to us all.’ I was always very proud of her,” Sara says.

The respect was mutual, says Dodd. Dodd recounts her last conversation with Mildred.

“She started to talk about Sara and how Sara was her hero and how Sara inspired her and made her stronger,” Dodd says. “And she said, ‘I had brought this person into the world and then all through the years, I’ve watched her in absolute amazement at who she is.'”

After the Supreme Court ruling, Sara announced to her mother and father that she and her partner of four years are getting married.

“The last day that she was alive, she said, ‘I’m sorry I’m going to miss your wedding.’ I said, ‘Oh, don’t worry mom. You’re my first invitee and you’re going to be there with us, don’t you worry,'” Sara says.

Mildred Boesser passed away at age 90 on June 29, 2015. She is survived by her husband Mark, her four daughters and countless others who considered Mildred their mother.

A Juneau neighborhood association has taken its fight against a transitional home for just-released female inmates to court.

The Tall Timbers Neighborhood Association filed an appeal against the Juneau Planning Commission and Haven House in Superior Court June 19.

In the appeal notice, the neighborhood association contends the planning commission made a mistake in granting Haven House a permit to be located on Malissa Drive in the Mendenhall Valley. Before taking the matter to the court, Tall Timbers had appealed to the Juneau Assembly in May and lost.

June Degnan is board chair of Haven House, a faith-based nonprofit.

“They’re exercising their legal right so if that’s the game they’re willing to play, then I’m willing to continue to defend women and do the right thing as is my board,” Degnan says.

Haven House provides a structured living situation for women transitioning out of prison. It opened in April and has two residents.

Court appeal aside, city officials are in the process of changing city code to clarify what transitional housing is and where it can go.

City Attorney Amy Mead says the ordinance amendment could make the Tall Timbers’ argument moot, even if it won the appeal.

“It would not require Haven House to leave because if this ordinance passes then Haven House is properly in a D5 with a conditional use permit, per this ordinance,” Mead says.

Tall Timbers’ lawyer could not be reached for comment by deadline.

The ordinance change was introduced during Monday night’s Juneau Assembly meeting and is scheduled for a public hearing July 20.

Central Council Tlingit Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska is boycotting FedEx.

The Juneau-based tribal organization announced Thursday that it has sent notice to all employees to stop using FedEx services, citing the national delivery company’s sponsorship of the Washington Redskins football team.

In a news release, Central Council says FedEx is a top sponsor of the football team, and economic pressure might encourage the delivery service to reconsider financial support of the Washington, D.C.-based team.

The issue is the team’s name. The word “redskins” dates back to colonial times, and refers to Native Americans. It is considered offensive by many with Native heritage.

Tlingit Haida Central Council President Richard Peterson says he understands that the team name has a long history.

“There’s debate even among Native Americans on whether it’s derogatory,” he said. “But I think most people feel like the name Redskins is derivative of racial slurs against Native Americans.”

According to the Central Council, other tribes and tribal groups also are boycotting FedEx, including the Native American Rights Fund and National Congress of American Indians.

Central Council Tlingit Haida is a federally recognized tribe with a membership of about 30,000, and Peterson says he hopes the membership will join tribal employees in the boycott.

“Who better to take a stand and to exercise our concerns and voice that through our spending?” he said. “Just saying, we’re not going to spend our dollars with folks that are going to be supportive of what we consider racism.”

Peterson stressed that this move isn’t an attack on FedEx or the Washington Redskins.

“We would just ask that they really take a look at what they’re doing,” he said. “If I’m doing anything that has a negative impact on people, I would certainly take a look at that and do some self-examination. I’d hope that the ownership of the Redskins would do that, and the corporate sponsors that endorse them would realize it’s time to take down our Confederate flag, so to speak.”

A message sent to FedEx public relations resulted in a written email statement. It says “FedEx has closely followed the dialogue and difference of opinion regarding the Washington Redskins team name, but we continue to direct questions about the name to the franchise owner.”

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Friday declared same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. That means the status quo will remain in Alaska, where same-sex marriage was legalized in October.

But for Juneau raised performing artist Seneca Harper, the decision changes how he will feel while traveling in the Lower 48. He married his partner last year in Washington.

“It’s going to be nice to be able to visit more conservative areas of the country and say , ‘Oh I’m sorry, oh actually, I’m not sorry at all,’ and to unapologetically exist as who I am with my husband and hold his hand that has a ring on it and be proud of that,” Harper says.

Joshua Decker is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska. The ACLU led the first marriage equality case back in 1970 and they were plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case. He says the decision affirms that same-sex relationships need to be respected everywhere in the nation.

“We think when you look back on today in the future, today’s U.S. Supreme Court decision is going to be right up there with Brown v. the Board of Ed when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down segregation in the schools,” Decker says.

Former Lt. Gov. and state lawmaker Loren Leman says including Friday’s decision as a win for the civil rights movement is demeaning to minority groups, like black people and Alaska Natives, who he says, really needed civil rights protections.

As a senator, Leman led the 1998 effort to amend the Alaska Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

“I believe it was so important for Alaska to protect its definition of marriage, which was in statute, but to protect it in constitution,” Leman says. “Marriage has always throughout history been a union of a man and a woman and to change the definition to something else is a diminishment of the institution of marriage.”

In 1998, almost 70 percent of Alaska voters agreed with Leman. Pollsters found public opinion swinging for the first time in favor of same-sex marriage in 2014.

Juneau Republican Rep. Cathy Muñoz sponsored a bill last session that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. She sees marriage equality as a step forward.

“It recognizes a basic right and I think that’s important. It’s progress,” Muñoz says. “I know that a number of people in our community will benefit and as a matter of fact, I look forward to attending a wedding in August and now that this decision has happened, I think they can have much more to celebrate.”

But there’s more work to do. Muñoz’s anti-discrimination bill wasn’t heard this year, but she hopes it’ll get a fair chance in the 2016 legislative session.