Leah Mockler

Sisters Juke and Fran’s gaze and head tilt are the same.

Immediately ensuing the chime of the doorbell, the red front door opens, illuminating the brightness of the light bulbs into the evening night. Paws appear behind the door frame. Then, that small figure scurries out through the half-open front door.

“Juke, you have to go back inside,” junior Leah Mockler says as she strokes the figure’s tiny, fluffy head to it’s squirrel-like tail. She carefully lifts the figure up by its tummy to set it back inside the house.

The figure is Juke, Mockler’s three-year-old cat.

Ever since her childhood years living in Oregon, Mocker has been surrounded by animals. Her family took care of around eight pet chickens and eight pet ducks, and now they currently have two Ragamuffin Tortoiseshell cats: Juke and Fran. While being friendly and playful, Juke and Fran both love turkey and Juke especially loves her Temptation cat treats.

“Juke and Fran love coming up to the front door to talk and greet people,” Mockler said. “For Halloween, we aren’t a hundred percent sure, but we do know that Juke is dressing up as a sunflower and Fran will definitely dress up, but we don’t have a costume decided yet.”
Mockler has always wanted to get involved with animal shelters, so last year, she joined CARE Club: Animal Allies, which includes other branches like the MICDS branch. Making many scarves and bandanas last year, Mockler became a passionate and active member for the CARE club. Thus, Mockler is now the Vice President of CARE.

“CARE is a club that’s involved with various animal shelters and animal organizations,” Mockler said. “Another main point about the club is talking about animal rights and animal education. We try to incorporate volunteering at animal shelters or fundraisers, so that students can be more engaged with the community and with animals. But, it’s been hard with COVID. So, we hope for this year to be able to go to animal shelters and actually to physically volunteer with the animals.”
Currently having two cats and always loving animals, Mockler hopes people can educate and understand issues regarding animals, like animal abuse and neglect. Therefore, Mockler plans to have CARE visit more animal shelters to care for animals and have informative guest speakers. Experiences can teach CARE’s new seventy-five members, who signed up at the Activities Fair, about why animals are important to the world.
“I think it’s important for people to like to understand things from the animal viewpoint,” Mockler said. “An animal doesn’t have a voice; an animal can’t speak out. So, we should speak out for them instead because if people are abusing animals or doing the wrong thing to animals, the animal can’t speak up. It’s essential to speak out about animal-related problems and to teach people about it.”