Up Close and Purr-sonal

Just about everyone who knows CFA knows Kathy Calhoun, CFA treasurer and Allbreed judge. She’s also a breeder of national winning Maine Coon cats, national winning American Wirehairs, Tonkinese and American Shorthairs, a former Regional Director, and one of the founders of the Basic Black Cat Club. But as busy as Kathy Calhoun’s CFA life has been and is, cats are just one part of her story.

- By Ann Strople

KATHY CALHOUN

A Groundbreaker From Early On

Kathy Calhoun spent the early part of her life in Phoenix, Illinois, a village in Cook County, Illinois, about 19 miles south of the Chicago Loop in the Chicagoland area, where she attended school through the eighth grade. When it came time for high school, Kathy was in the first group of black students to be bused to Thornridge High School in a nearby suburb for the purpose of integrating the school. Despite a very different school situation and culture from what she knew, Kathy, being Kathy, rose to the occasion and was quick to find a place in this previously all-white school.

As Kathy tells it, “Many Thornridge High School extra-curricular activities had Scottish names and themes. The school had a performing team called the ‘Lassies.” I tried out and was accepted as a member of the Lassies, but I was not one of the Scottish dancers, I was a bagpiper! I can play the bagpipes, I have a kilt, the hat—the whole regalia.”

After graduating from Thornridge High School, Kathy went on to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she majored in biology, with a split minor in chemistry and physics, with the full intent of going on to veterinary school.

According to Kathy, “Back in the day, if you wanted to go to vet school it would be in your state, and it was a good idea to go to undergrad at the same school. In that time period, and they made no bones about it and I have no idea how they came up with these numbers, the University of Illinois veterinary school took 81 students in a class and zero to 12 women.”