Profile: Dr. Jennifer Doll, a friend to felines and beyond

Given her line of work, Dr. Jennifer Doll is surprisingly upbeat.

She's been a veterinarian since 1991, but she left private practice in 2000 to start her own venture, Animals All About, as a mobile vet.

In a cramped van filled with surgical equipment, she traveled across the state to various shelters, rescue centers and other areas lacking veterinary resources. Often, she'd run into kittens that were in particularly poor condition and take it upon herself to nurse them back to health.

Cats began to accumulate, and eventually she turned her home into a permanent shelter, now known as Witty Kitties - a not-for-profit shelter for 'special needs” cats with significant medical conditions such as feline leukemia, feline immunodeficiency virus and other physical issues that may deter adoption.

'We take in animals that nobody else can take in,” said Kathleen Schoon, a Witty Kitties board member. 'Typically a cat that shows up at a shelter or rescue (center) testing positive for feline leukemia or FIV are just put down right away because they don't have the capacity to keep them isolated ...

. The cats at Witty Kitties are getting a second chance.”

John McLaughlin, another board member, estimated they've saved at least 300 cats over the past 15 years.

While the mobile practice has diminished - especially due to an electrical fire that destroyed the van and, nearly, Witty Kitties with it - the shelter has flourished, expanding beyond just cats. At this point, Doll said she's lost count of how many animals they have.

The rural Solon property owned by Doll and her husband, Torben Platt, also is home to a declawed black bear, a coyote, llamas, emus, a donkey, a horse, a gaggle of geese, ducks, a chicken, an alligator, a giant tortoise, iguanas and a basement filled with snakes. In the past, they've had goats, potbellied pigs, and more.

They used to have rattlesnakes, too, until one sunk its fangs into Doll's arm while she and Platt were trying to identify its gender. The venom from the timber rattlesnake rapidly made its way into her bloodstream, sending her to the hospital and nearly killing her.

'I was in the ambulance and heard some of the words they were using ...

. I heard them say, ‘We're losing her,'” she said. 'I told myself I cannot die like this because my son would be so, so mad. That's what kept me alive.”

That, and 44 bottles of antivenin.

'I woke up the next day with a tube down my trachea and my son by my side. I was so happy.”

Many of the animals came from neglect or abuse cases, as Doll is one of only a few vets on the local police's speed dial for animal hoarding, neglect or abuse situations.

She was once called to a home where a boy had died from a methamphetamine overdose, leaving behind his pet bear and a pair of mountain lions. At the time, it was legal for Iowans to own exotic animals. The bear was kept in a small, unkept cage, declawed and domesticated. Doll determined it could not stay there or be released back into the wild, so she offered to take him in. With little time to work with, she sacrificed her garage as a new home for the 400-pound bear. She 'gutted it,” lined it with cattle paneling and gave the bear the first bath in his life.

They eventually found a better home for the bear at a sanctuary in Florida, but since have taken on another declawed, geriatric bear who lives in a tree house behind their old home. The garage - heated at a constant 85 degrees in the winter - now houses a nine-foot alligator, a giant tortoise and several other reptiles.

In addition to Witty Kitties and her work as an on-call vet, she's also the medical director at the Iowa Humane Alliance, where she spends three days a week performing low-cost spay and neuter surgeries. Every other Friday she volunteers at Muscatine Animal Shelter, leaving Tuesdays as her only 'free” day.” Even then she never knows when she might get an emergency call.

'We're just really fortunate to have Jenni (Doll). She's just a goddess as far as I'm concerned,” said Trish Wasek, another Witty Kitties board member. 'She's an amazingly talented vet who can multitask beyond anything I've ever seen. The only reason this place works is because the person who started it is a vet who is willing to donate hundreds of hours of her time.”

Not just time, but also money. It wasn't until this year that Witty Kitties became fully sustainable through donations and its impressive volunteer base - seven board members and approximately 25 regular volunteers. Additional expenses come directly from Doll's pocket.

Doll said not many vets are willing to leave private practice because 'financially it's not a smart move,” but, she said, 'it's a lot more rewarding.”

Still, Doll and Witty Kitties have their limits. She said although she has a hard time saying no, she can't take in all the animals they've been asked to or they'd be 'arrested for hoarding.”

Witty Kitties keeps its population limited to about 50 cats and only accepts new cats when another dies or is adopted. Adoptions occur every now and then, but many of the cats spend the rest of their lives there - which isn't so bad considering it's pretty much cat heaven.

Instead of rows of metal, confining cages, there are six rooms filled with scratching posts, climbing trees, toys and couches. The rooms separate cats by illness to avoid further infection.

Sometimes, infected cats survive a number of years before symptoms show, seemingly healthy until they suddenly fall ill. Doll's policy is to keep a cat alive as long as it's enjoying its life. But, having grown up on a farm, she's learned how to 'not be selfish” and euthanize an animal when it should be.

'It's not a crime to put an animal down too soon, it's a blessing,” she said. 'We're selfish by wanting to have animals as pets. We're selfless when we're putting them down. I'd rather put them down before they're miserable.”

But that doesn't mean she likes it.

'I'm really getting tired of euthanasia. It's starting to bug me,” she said. 'You feel like a failure. But I also feel like I'm the cat's friend, too. When I know the cat is starting to take a turn for the worst, I feel like I'm their friend.”

l Comments: (319) 398-8364; elizabeth.zabel@thegazette.com