Remembering A True Cat Lady: Volunteer Helped 1,000s Of Felines

NATICK, MA—Marie Antobenedetto dedicated many years to helping families find and keep their pets. She was a beloved volunteer with the Wellesley-based Stray Pets in Need, a nonprofit based in Natick that provides foster care, direct care at its transitional shelters, adoption counseling and a lot more.

Antobenedetto was working at Pet World when Sue Webb, director of Stray Pets In Need (SPIN), started bringing cats in on the weekends that were up for adoption. The store owners made a space for the Kitty Adoption Center so cats could stay all week, and Antobenedetto jumped in around 1992 to help with those adoptions. A truly cat lady, she could remember the thousands of cats adopted out and their families.

"She really spent time getting to know the cats personalities which helped with matching them up to the right family," Webb told Patch. "She would recall someone looking for a certain personality cat and when that right cat came in she would call the family and the adoption was often completed before the cat made it into the adoption center."

Even during her short illness, even up to the last day, in the hospital she was asking how certain cats were doing in their new home and checking on cats and kittens in foster care.

Antobenedetto, A Natick resident and Framingham native, died at 59 after battling cancer.

At this celebration of life, taking place on Sunday, May 6, from 5-7 p.m. at the Natick Community Organic Farm, in the memory of Antobenedetto, attendees are urged to bring pictures or stories of how she helped you find your beloved cat.

From her obituary: She was dedicated to the care and placement of these animals even fostering many throughout the years. Her passion for animals followed her all of those years. She always had a home full of dogs and cats. She even saved an injured pigeon "Walter" and took him home. Marie found her spirituality in nature and was passionate about protecting the environment.

"Her favorite artist was John Denver and she had a dream to move to Colorado," said Webb. "She also was concerned with clean air and water. We will be planting a sugar maple tree at the Natick Organic farm in her memory... a piece of nature, a home for birds and other critters, its leaves helping us breathe and its sap giving us maple sugar for years to come."

Photo submitted, used with permission