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Cathryn Rakich

Editor and Home Design and Pets Columnist

About This Author

Cathryn Rakich has been a writer and editor in the Sacramento area for 35 years, with articles in local, state and national publications. She is also active in the animal-welfare community, volunteering for local animal rescue groups. Her latest endeavor is as a ceramics artist.

Articles by this author

It’s The Law

There are many ways to work around the law. Let’s start with the nearly 600 dogs and cats in “foster to adopt” at the city’s Front Street Animal Shelter, headed by Manager Phillip Zimmerman.

The concept is simple. California law requires shelters to spay or neuter animals prior to adoption. Under “foster to adopt,” animals are released to “adopters” as “foster pets.”

As foster pets, they don’t need to be altered before leaving the shelter.

Fight Or Flight

Sunset along the lower American River. Hundreds of double-crested cormorants perch high among cottonwood and black locust trees. The birds fly in nightly during winter to roost in a grove between Howe and Watt avenues.

The roost supports as many as 225 cormorants, likely the entire population on the lower American River, says Dan Airola, conservation chair with Central Valley Bird Club.

When Airola began observing the cormorants in 2019, there were 25 to 30 birds.

Next Level

Without hesitation, Jennifer Brent says spay and neuter is the most important service the Sacramento SPCA offers the community.

“I think it’s the most powerful tool we have to limit pet overpopulation,” says Brent, who was recruited last year to head the SSPCA after CEO Kenn Altine retired.

Brent says the SSPCA is a national leader in spay/neuter, calling its 10,000-square-foot Zoe K. McCrea Animal Health Center “phenomenal.” The center performed more than 18,000 low- and no-cost spay/neuter surgeries in 2024.

Protection, Not Devastation

Living in a city with two major rivers has risks. Half a million Sacramentans don’t want their homes flooded or lives put in danger.

Here’s the catch. We also cherish the river parkway. The lower American River is designated “wild and scenic” for a reason. The forested waterway is a year-round playground for hikers, bikers, boaters and birdwatchers.

Day Tripping

Cinnabon is a cinnamon-colored pit bull, all muscle with a tongue that dangles from a smile stretching the limits of her wide jawbones.

Okapi, a solid black German shepherd, has gigantic puppy paws that, at 4 years old, she has yet to grow into.
Tom is a senior—an 8-year-old mix of rottweiler, shepherd, perhaps a little pit bull.

All three dogs are gentle, calm and curious. They are ideal candidates to get out of the county animal shelter and walk a park trail, lounge on shaded grass, sneak favors on a restaurant patio—even for just one day.