Cat Lady of Baghdad

The AP has a good story about a British security consultant who is doing what she can to help a few stray cats in Baghdad.

"Some people buy flash cars, others flash clothes. But it's my animals that float my boat," said Louise, a security consultant in Baghdad who moonlights as a one-woman animal rescue unit that may be the only such organized effort under way in Iraq.

Since Simba's journey three years ago, she has managed to send four more cats and two dogs back to her native England. The costs — which can run up to $3,500 per animal — are covered by donations and her "old stuff" sold on eBay.

"Collectibles, Cabbage Patch Kids, toys, the lot," said Louise, who asked that only her first name be published because of security worries.

Louise — a tall, blond and blunt-speaking former soldier with an accent as thick as Yorkshire pudding — also has private battles to wage with Iraqi bureaucracy. Completing mountains of paperwork, calls to countless officials and, on one occasion, bursting into tears at the airport have all been required to get animals out of the war zone.