A homeless cat that ran onto the baseball pitch and interrupted an Oakland Athletics game back in May 7, 1990 inspired one man to save thousands of animals.
The cat was frightened by the loud crowd in the Oakland Coliseum during the game and “dashed around the field, desperately leaping at any means of escape and eluding the players and umpires who tried to capture her.” Exhausted by the chase, the cat headed to the infield where Tony La Russa, then-manager for the Oakland Athletics, managed to lure her into the A’s dugout “where she would spend the rest of the game in safe confines.”
La Russa quickly discovered that East Bay didn’t have a no-kill shelter, so he took the cat in and named her Evie. He and his wife Elaine searched for a home for Evie and luckily found her one. Soon after, he and Elaine founded their own rescue – Tony La Russa’s Animal Rescue Foundation – and since then 38,000 animal lives have been saved, all thanks to Evie.
Watch more about how Evie inspired such a wonderful change for homeless animals in her community in the video below.
And here’s the TV footage of Evie running around the field
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