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Obituary

'Force of nature' found calling in cats

Jasmin Kung helped found a nonprofit organization to assist cats and was doing just that on the day she died at age 46.

By MARTY CLEAR
Published December 30, 2005

PATRICIA "JASMIN' KUNG, 1959-2005

BRANDON - Jasmin Kung spent her childhood in Germany and her teen years in Texas. She had a career in the Air Force, during which she worked in military intelligence in Hawaii.

But she found her life's passion in the parking lot of a Brandon area PetSmart.

Ms. Kung, who died Dec. 14 from cardiac arrest at age 46, was one of Hillsborough County's most active and effective advocates for homeless or neglected cats. Three years ago, Ms. Kung and three friends founded Cat Call Inc., a nonprofit organization that spays and neuters feral cats, and finds homes for abandoned pet cats.

"Jasmin was a force of nature," said Michaele Collaud, one of the other co-founders of the organization. "Without Jasmin, there would be no Cat Call Inc."

Ms. Kung was born and raised in Crailsheim, Germany, the daughter of a German mother and a Chinese father. Her father's clothing business catered largely to American servicemen, and after he died, her mother married a soldier she met through the business. When Jasmin was 15, the family moved to Texas.

As soon as she graduated from high school, she joined the Air Force, where she would spend the next 17 years. She was working as a computer operator at an intelligence center in Hawaii when she met and fell in love with Derek Hyps, a civilian who worked on the center's mainframe computers.

"It was pretty much love at first sight," Hyps said.

They soon married and, after she left the service in 1993, the couple moved to Brandon, where Hyps owned a home.

She soon took a job as a dog groomer at PetSmart. She didn't have that job long, but it led her into the world of cat rescue. She noticed a growing number of stray cats living behind the store. They had probably been attracted initially by cat food in the trash bin, but their numbers were growing through uncontrolled breeding, her husband said.

She soon became involved with the Animal Coalition of Tampa and spearheaded its efforts to bring the first full-time, low-cost spay and neuter clinic to Tampa. The clinic is scheduled to open next year at Lemon Street and Rome Avenue. The organization plans to name one room in the clinic after Ms. Kung.

Ms. Kung and some friends decided they wanted to do even more, so they started Cat Call Inc. The organization provides an array of services for cats, but one focus especially dear to Ms. Kung was its spay-neuter-release program.

That program would identify feral cat colonies, trap the cats, neuter them and release them back into their colonies. Once their breeding was controlled, the colonies would stop growing and would eventually die out.

Ms. Kung herself took special interest in a colony that lives behind a Brandon strip mall. There were more than 20 cats in the colony when she discovered it.

"She knew every cat, and every cat had a name," her husband said. "Every single day at 7 p.m. she would go out there and feed her cats."

She would also trap them and have them neutered so they wouldn't multiply. Through her efforts, the colony dwindled to just 10 cats.

On Dec. 13, she managed to trap the last cat in the colony. She had it neutered, and the next day, brought it back and released it.

Later that day, Ms. Kung, who had been suffering undiagnosed chest pains for about six months, suffered a heart attack and died.

She is survived by her husband; her mother, Anneliese Miller; her sister, Yvonne Heakins; and her own nine cats.

[Last modified December 29, 2005, 08:40:09]