BRICK, NJ — Louise Wootton is one of those people you meet once or twice in a lifetime.
She was funny and had a sharp wit. She had a heart larger than Saturn and all its rings and more compassion than a thousand American Red Cross volunteers rolled into one. She was smart and passionate about her beliefs, whether she was talking about her family, her work as a professor, politics or animals, particularly cats. She stood up for those who needed a voice to advocate for them.
If you can think of a positive adjective, there’s an excellent chance someone has used it to describe Louise in the last three days.
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Louise S. Wootton, a professor at Georgian Court University in Lakewood, a cat rescue queen, a beloved and loving wife, daughter and sister, the “fun cool aunt” and the mentor and friend to so many (including me), died on Sunday night. She was 59 years old. Read more: Louise S. Wootton, Georgian Court Professor, Animal Rescuer, Mourned
Since Monday afternoon, there has been post after post on Facebook, tribute after tribute to a woman who touched hundreds of animal lives and the lives of just as many humans.
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Louise was “a cherished member of our University community,” a letter from Georgian Court President Joseph R. Marbach and Provost Janice Warner to the university community said. “She dedicated 27 years to enriching the lives of our students and leaves a profound legacy of dedication, scholarship, and service.”
She joined Georgian Court in 1997 and was an assistant professor in the biology department and became an associate professor, professor, and chair of the department. In 2011 she became the university’s Director of Sustainability, “passionately advocating for environmental stewardship and sustainability initiatives on our campus.”
A 2013 profile of her highlighted additions of a Pepsi Dream Machine near the library that gave users cash for recycling bottles and a water bottle filling station that had kept more than 16,000 plastic bottles out of the waste stream. She also poured hours into the university’s Mercy Garden, which provides produce to local food banks in Ocean County while educating students on sustainability.
Georgian Court will be hosting a celebration of Louise’s life at 3 p.m. on Saturday, March 16. Additional details will be released shortly.
While Louise’s Georgian Court world and her cat rescue world might have seemed to be separate, they were inextricably entwined, because it was at Georgian Court that Louise became involved in cat rescue.
Around 2011, there were dozens of cats on the campus — a number that was becoming problematic. So Louise began a trap-neuter-release program to stop them from reproducing and bring the population under control. Kittens that she’d trap she’d socialize and adopt out to good homes. I took in one of those early babies.
When the campus population was under control, she connected with Calling All Cats Rescue and was working with them in 2018 when she talked to me for an article about The Cat Room – a storage closet off her office where she’d bring kittens to work and students could spend time with them. She was a reluctant interview, because she hated having the attention drawn to her.
It was clear, however, that the Cat Room — and Louise herself — was a sanctuary for her students.
“She was the reason I graduated college, always pushing me and helping me,” Kristy Marie wrote in a post on Facebook. “One day I brought bottle-baby kittens in my purse to college straight from working an overnight shift at the vet. She heard them making noise and then instead of telling me to leave class because I ‘snuck’ kittens in, she told me to make sure I brought them every day to class so she could help me feed them.”
Kristy — the K in K’s Kitten Rescue — started the rescue as part of her senior project, and Louise became its manager, convincing people to foster kittens and connecting adopters with feline friends throughout New Jersey.
“She kept the kitten I brought to class and named him Charlie and it was all over from there,” Kristy said.
When the needs of the rescue outgrew the closet, Louise began operating it fully out of the home she shared with her husband, Dave, devoting hours to work and the rescue seemingly simultaneously.
In the thick of kitten season, it was common for her to have at least two playpens on the floor in the family room with three to four kittens each, kittens in cages in that room, the dining room and even a back bedroom, plus the “floor cats,” who were supposed to be being socialized. And when fosters would stop by, she was often trying to grade her students’ papers or fielding calls from all over from people looking for help to place cats and kittens.
“She spent 90 percent of her time on cats, and the other 90 percent on her job,” Dave said this week, adding he hoped “people in both communities appreciate how amazing she was.”
“My husband didn’t marry a crazy cat lady,” Louise insisted in 2018. And truth be told, Louise was always happy to see cats and kittens go to their forever homes, because every one placed was space open to save another life.
The cats are a constant theme of the memories people have shared of her efforts to save lives, teaching and helping newer rescuers and fosters navigate care from newborns to adults with chronic illnesses.
More than one memory involves Louise bringing a cat or a kitten to an event.
“She was the keynote speaker at this one event, and she arrived with a box with a cat in it,” said
Britta Forsberg, the executive director of Save Barnegat Bay, where Louise served on the board. There was one problem.
“I asked her where the presentation was, and she said, ‘I thought I sent it to you.’ She had forgotten the thumb drive,” Forsberg said with a laugh.
“Louise fought hard for all the animals,” wrote Allison, a former student who is part of the rescue. “She even brought little neonatal babies to my wedding because she didn’t want to miss my wedding but had babies who needed her undivided attention.”
Louise fielded requests day and night to help animals in need, including some dogs and rabbits, and even hamsters.
“She fought tirelessly for those with no voice and tried to save them all,” Allison wrote. “She provided me a supportive ear and guidance. She was also mouthy and stubborn at times which made her even more amazing.”
Louise’s stubborn streak is what got her through the tough days of rescue, which anyone can tell you can be incredibly stressful and at times thankless. For every cat and kitten rescued, there are others turned away — a problem exacerbated in the last three years by the effects of the pandemic, which shut down trap-neuter-release programs all over.
She wasn’t shy about expressing her frustrations with rescue work, her British accent bringing a different tone to them.
“She was the only person I know who would make profanity sound classy,” Pat Hernandez, one of the fosters, said this week.
“She had the most amazing heart,” said Valerie Gray, another foster in the rescue. “She would give you the shirt off her back.’
It was her heart that brought out the best in everyone around her.
“When I was down and doubting myself you were always there to talk some sense into me and get me back on track and level-headed,” wrote Tori Lynn, one of her students. “Nothing compared to our daily ‘meetings’ where we would sit, gossip, and attempt to eat lunch while trying to corral rambunctious unruly kittens. I’ve never met someone who agreed to all my crazy shenanigans.. until I met you! You would just say “oookaayyy’ and cheerfully go along with whatever plan I had come up with.”
“Louise Wootton was the beginning of my whole college experience,” Holly Fennick wrote. “She had a belief in me that I didn’t even see in myself at that time. She saw my passion and eagerness to have all my ducks in a row, and somehow still managed to keep me steady and prepared while I was losing my mind with the college grind.”
“It was like a sense of peace knowing I had someone that I knew could not only listen to what I was saying, but understood through and through my whole idea and intention behind my words,” Holly wrote. “Somehow, in the midst of all that was happening, she was able to guide me to the direction I needed to go.”
“She pushed me so hard during some of the hardest times of my life to become the president of the biology honors society,” wrote Devan Medford. “Without Dr. Wootton, I can truly say, I would not be where I am today.”
“Tonight I have to lecture about photosynthesis and cellular respiration, my least favorite lectures,” wrote Gabrielle Fox. Louise “mentored me through my thesis. She was intelligent, insightful, empathetic, encouraging, and no nonsense. I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing today without her leadership. … We lost an educator extraordinaire and I will mourn for her and the students she never had a chance to teach. I will try to find some excitement about cell processes in her honor, because without her, I wouldn’t be teaching tonight.”
“Dr. Louise Wootton, I owe a lot of where I am to you,” Natalie Slickers wrote. “Your dedication to conservation and sound science, your advocacy for the crazy student athletes with science majors, your ‘office hours’ that truly did last hours. Oh how you walked so that so many women in science could run.”
“I had so many professors that couldn’t get past my exterior no matter how many As I earned but it didn’t matter to Louise,” Brittney Krauss wrote. “She saw my love for nature and biology and helped me nurture it through some really tough times when I wanted to give up.”
The impact Louise had on the rescue community has been clear in the outpouring of support from rescue groups around New Jersey. The love and praise lavished on her might astonish her, because Louise never did the rescue work for recognition. She did it because she loved the animals.
Not to be forgotten, ever, was the love she had for her family. She loved Dave endlessly, and acknowledged the rescue work was not his cup of tea. She loved her mother and siblings, and made the journey from New Jersey to Prince Edward Island a few times a year to be with her mother — and soak in the beauty of the landscape.
She delighted in her nieces and nephews, both on her side of the family and those on Dave’s side, joyously sharing a niece’s success as an author and the plum job placements of another.
“My daughters got to grow up with a fun cool aunt who would play on the floor with them when they were little and talk college and science with them when they grew up,” Scott Williams, Louise’s brother-in-law, wrote. “I will miss her laugh, her warmth, her funny commentary, the way she brought light into a room. She will always be a part of our family and live in our hearts.”
She talked often of her childhood growing up in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands; even recently we talked about it, and she mused how she would have loved to go there to retire.
“It’s beyond unaffordable,” she said. I hear her voice in those words.
Louise never forgot her childhood friends, either, trading messages with them regularly through Facebook.
“Louise and I went to school together until we were in our teens when she changed school from Blanchelande College to Ladies College but we still kept in touch regularly,” Kyona Munson said in a message. She said Louise and her father would go back to Guernsey for visits. “They had seaweed-eating sheep on the island. So many fond memories. She was such a wonderful woman.”
“I’ve been in touch with Louise over the years via messenger and assumed that one day our paths would cross again,” Claudia Sutterby said. “Her dedication, her laughter and drive was contagious.”
A message she posted in a Facebook group on Prince Edward Island during a visit with her Mum captures all of those well: “Hi again islanders. I promise I’ll go home to NJ soon and stop bugging you! While I’m staying with my ex-British mum I’m trying to make her as many things she loves as I can. To do this i need two ingredients I usually can only find at the bulk barn. 1. Crystallized ginger to decorate ginger desserts 2. Cracked oats to make Scottish Oat cakes. The ones she likes are made with cracked oats rather than Oat flakes, porridge oats or oatmeal. While the bulk barn is closed is there anywhere else I might find these? Thanks as ever!”
Her love was endless for everyone in her life. She always took care of those around her — making favorite foods, sending flowers, lending an ear.
People often speak of rescue work like raising children, in that it takes a village. One of my fellow K’s Kitten fosters put it best: Louise was a village unto herself.
We are all better for having known her. The world is a better place because of her. And we all are missing her terribly.
Dave has requested donations to K’s Kitten Rescue in lieu of flowers. Donations to the rescue, a 501c3, can be mailed to K’s Kitten Rescue, P.O. Box 4251, Brick NJ 08723, or sent to the rescue’s PayPal or Venmo (@Ks-KittenRescue) accounts.
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