20 Who Count: Rich and Tami Claycomb
By Kendra Simpson
For nearly a decade, Rich and Tami Claycomb have worked tirelessly to not only build temporary shelters for stray cats during the winter months, but go the extra mile to find families for as many as possible.
“It started with a house down on South Ninth Street that somebody told us about and it was abandoned and it had, I don’t know, probably 11 to 12 cats in it,” Tami said. “And so we started going down to feed and we’d take turns going down feeding them and then Rich made some shelters.”
The shelters started as totes with hay inside, but graduated to “Omaha Steaks” styrofoam tubs. Rich simply cuts a hole in a 11×14 inch tub and adds hay to create a shelter for stray cats to warm up inside of.
This year, he has already crafted and placed over 200 of these shelters, hopefully matching the same number of animals exposed to the cold.
But the work doesn’t stop there. Seeing the immense need, the Claycombs started a pet food bank to feed the stray animals they shelter. On top of this, Tami will tame these cats and help find families for them to reduce the stray animal population in St. Joseph. The pair believes their work would be reduced significantly if St. Joseph residents took the time to neuter and spay their pets, especially cats.
“That’s the problem, people will say ‘Oh, well let’s have a litter of kittens.’ No, because one cat creates 10,000 cats and it’s an epidemic in this town,” Tami said. “If one person would get just one cat fixed, think of how many cats it would eliminate. But they don’t take that time to just get one cat fixed.”
In addition to their labor for stray animals, the Claycombs conduct a gun raffle every year with all proceeds going toward no kill shelters. This seems like a lot of work for anyone, but Rich has been doing the work this year while also undergoing cancer treatments.
“But I enjoyed it. It has to be done, it does,” Rich said. “Somebody’s gotta do it … I don’t know why I’m singled out either because the people that should be praised for this is the people that donate (supplies) because if it wasn’t donated to me, I couldn’t do it.”
The pair stressed that this work can be accomplished by anyone with the supplies, time and enthusiasm to protect animals.
“There is no love like the love from an animal,” Tami said. “They do everything for you but don’t ask for anything in return … I just think you have to protect them.”
