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Susan Olsen

A Very Brady Bunch of Cats and Kittens

By Elayne Boosler

Fame ebbs and flows in one’s career, depending on how recent and how memorable one’scontribution is. For fans of Susan Olsen, who played youngest daughter Cindy Brady onthe iconic “The Brady Bunch” TV show from 1969-1974, Susan may just as well still becoming into their living rooms weekly. They are still ardent and still smitten. Despitemany other roles, she is still Cindy to them. The skeleton in the “Brady’s” closet is thenine bygone episodes of “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour”. Susan is proud that it holdsthe title of 4

Worst Show in Television History. This September, her new coffee table book (written with two other friends), “Love To Love You Bradys”, will answer thequestion: How does America’s favorite family end up in the fourth worst show intelevision history? The warm, smart and funny actress, who has appeared in all but one of “The Brady Bunch” reunion movies, still draws crowds and admirers everywhere shegoes. Maybe it’s because she’s beautiful inside and out, or because she is easilyaccessible on her Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/Fluffco). Or maybe it’s because her fans and friends know she is knee deep, hands on, an animal rescuer. ThisLeo has been fostering kittens for years, ever since taking a foster parent training coursefrom Los Angeles Animal Services.. She already had a son, Michael, so getting up for nighttime feedings wasn’t that new to her, and she wanted her son to grow up withanimals, just as she had.“I learned to walk by holding on to our dog, a Samoyed named Tanuck. It seemed perfectly natural to me. People made noise, dogs made noise. Eventually people startedmaking sense, but dogs didn’t. That was confusing for a while. But of course, now Iunderstand everything animals are saying”.Susan became a foster wet nurse, and spent a year and a half going to the shelter to pick up kittens in need. “My first bottle baby was many years ago and actually a dog. My boyfriend and I were in San Felipe, Mexico, and rescued a mutt off the street. We namedhim Cortez and brought him home. I ended up with him. He grew into a huge BurmeseMountain type dog. When I had Michael, I wanted to be sure this big dog would like myson. So I did all the recommended things: wrapped the baby in a blanket, then brought the blanket home for Cortez to get acquainted with, so the baby would be familiar. I madeCortez part of Michael’s world”. The biggest mistake people make with dogs when bringing a new baby home is cutting the dog out. That is what breeds jealousy. If youmake it one big happy family, your child can grow up with the best companion he/shewill ever love. “Cortez turned out to be the smartest, most intuitive, most spiritual andmischievous dog ever. He would cry if someone was sick. And he loved my son.”When Cortez died, Susan couldn’t stand being without a dog. Enter Trevor, a GoldenRetriever. “I just didn’t feel safe without a dog, and of course Michael wanted a dog too.Trevor is so funny, he’s afraid of the kittens! I keep them in a little “nursery” for the first

two weeks. Then Trevor always starts playing “paddy cake” with them under the door.When they finally come out, he steps so carefully around them. They love his tail, theythink it’s a toy. He lets them eat his food. He really is a gentle giant. My own pets areTrevor and four cats; Sacha Baron Kitten (I haven’t seen “Bruno” yet but I hear he’s notfixed), Smokey, Ryan and Tabitha.”Susan continued fostering for the West Valley Animal Shelter and found she had atelepathic connection to the cats. “I had an orange cat, and he told me he didn’t like other orange cats because his brother was orange and his cat family had favored his brother.Maybe you shouldn’t write that. But his owners have confirmed that it’s true.” Susanlearned what all fosters come to deal with: It’s hard to give the animals back.Compounding that, LA Animal Services placed the kittens (yay!) but Susan never knewhow they were doing, or where they went. “I was hoping to continue fostering, butwanted to hook up with a rescue that had follow-up, so I could keep track of the kittens.”Enter Georgyne La Lone and Precious Paws rescue (http://preciouspaws.org/

). “I waslooking for “a venue for adoptions”, and I found it with Precious Paws. We take the catsto adoption days at the Petco in Glendale (231 N. Glendale Ave) every Saturday from 2 – 5:30pm. I get them smelling really good. I put little bows or scarves on their necks. I cantell their new families about my personal experience with their new family member, andwhat any special needs or likes might be. And we get letters and pictures often throughoutthe cats’ lives. It makes it so much easier to let them go after fostering”.Susan says her main goal in fostering is to make the kittens independent. “The main thing people and animals need to have happy lives and good relationships is confidence. If people, and animals, feel warm and safe and loved, then they develop independence andconfidence, and form strong and healthy bonds. I show them respect. It’s lovely to havethem pass through my life.” What’s the hardest part of fostering? “It’s almost impossibleto live with that much cuteness!”Susan keeps a great sense of humor about it all, which all rescuers need in order to keepgoing. Last summer she was on a Fox reality show called “Gimme My Reality Show”.Contestants vied for their own Fox reality show by winning it on this show, a fun andsilly premise. Each week they were given a new task, and each week one contestant waseliminated. The assignment: Do something out of the ordinary in a public place. So therewas Susan Olsen, lovely and reserved, eating a power lunch at L.A.’s famous Ivyrestaurant on Robertson. She had several people at her table, and the staff was respectfulyet doting. After lunch, Susan took a kitten out of her purse and began to bottle feed her at the table. The staff was appalled - No kittens at the Ivy! No animals in the restaurant!The kitty probably weighed less than their tiramisu. Nonetheless, Ms. Olsen and friendswere shown the door, all caught on film of course. The good part? They were ejected before the check arrived for that twenty dollar bowl of corn chowder. On a differentweek, the contestants had to interview someone. Susan interviewed me about rescueoutside at my pool, where we had pitbulls and labs swimming endlessly back and forth behind us, barking non- stop as we pretended not to notice. The interview had hilarious punctuation provided by the dogs, and of course we ended up in the water with them.

Susan agreed to be on that show for one purpose; to provide a higher profile for rescue.She was eventually eliminated when the Fox people told her she belonged on AnimalPlanet, but she dedicated every week she had on that show to shining the light onAmerica’s homeless animals.If I may inject a personal note here, the joy of knowing Susan is having a friend that willdo anything for the fun of it. Her spirit is as wild and free as you would hope when youwant to get stupid and just laugh. Susan appears regularly at events to raise funds for Precious Paws. She recently did a comedy night at The Ice House in Pasadena, as well as“The Hollywood Show” in July, with the Brady cast, and Adrianne Curry. They spent theweekend smiling, signing, and selling memorabilia to raise money for rescue.Of the many excellent rescues in California, what made her sign on to Precious Paws?“Georgyne La Lone has been doing this for a very long time. She really knows how to doit right, and stretches every dollar. She worked at Paramount for years so knows how toget things done, organize, and has the support of so many people who want to help.Unfortunately, these are terrible economic times, and good will alone does not feed thelarge number of cats we now have in our care.” How many? “Too many. People aredumping them everywhere, plus it’s kitten season, and we are overrun with cats andkittens needing food, fosters, and medical care. They need to be spayed and neutered, andtaken to adoptions. We do a home check as well for every animal we adopt out. The timespent in rescue is endless, but now without enough money to do it right, we are reallyscrambling.”To that end, Susan has come up with a great idea called “Just One Dollar”. “Oneunspayed cat, her mate and all of their offspring, producing 2.8 litters per year, with 2.8surviving kittens per litter, can grow to 12 cats in one year, 67 cats in two years, 376 inthree, 2107 in four, and exponentially like that to 11,606,077 in nine years. If you do thesame math using a dollar instead of a cat, then if everyone reading this donates just onedollar, and gets a friend to donate a dollar, and that friend gets a friend… well, you cansee we would have the money we need to save the sick and hungry little guys all over the place in these hard times. I hope my Facebook friends, and my Myspace friends, and ThePet Press readers will all donate Just One Dollar to us by going here:

http://preciouspaws.org/DonatePromote.php.

I mean, how can you not give a dollar?”How can you not indeed. “I want people to know how much a pet can enrich your lifeand the life of your child, and bond you as a family. I want them to know that rescuingand not buying is the way to go, for so many reasons, which I’ll tell them after theydonate their dollar. I hope everyone will support his/her local animal shelter. I also hope people understand the difference between supporting animal welfare vs. animal rights.It’s really important when you donate to a group that you understand what your moneywill be used for. I support animal welfare, which works for humane, compassionate andethical concerns regarding companion and other animals. Animal rights groups are awhole different thing, and I believe work for the elimination of even the concept of animals as pets. Pets are wonderful. They’re like potato chips, you can’t have just one.”