It’s kitten season and my friend Julie isn’t here to help rescue the homeless cats on Capitol Hill. She is needed but she’s gone.
Julie Walker lived for over twenty years in a row house on Ninth Street SE, close to Eastern Market. There were always lots of cats living there, from kittens to very old ones.
Julie was born in August 1936 and died May 22, 2024. She was born in Pennsylvania but spent most of her life on Capitol Hill. She lived in her parents’ house that was a block from Stanton Park until she moved into her own home following their deaths, with the intention of rescuing and providing shelter to unwanted cats, and finding them permanent homes — a hobby and a new purpose for living she took on after retirement.
Julie was interviewed by Phyllis Thorburn for the Ruth Ann Overbeck Capitol Hill History Project on March 8, 2003. She attended public schools on the Hill and had keen memories of her life growing up. She ed when it wasn’t the law to spay or neuter cats and there were lots of stray cats on the streets and no veterinarians on the Hill.
Julie graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Goucher College in Baltimore and worked for thirty years as the head of editorial services for the US Bureau of Mines. She told me she only took three sick days.
Julie established a small non-profit organization called Capital Cats with another Capitol Hill resident, and together they worked hard to trap and rescue stray cats at all times of the day and night and searched all over for people willing to adopt them. Many ended up in permanent homes on the Hill. One was placed with an ambassador.
She once had me get on a plane at National Airport to take a cat with a disability to Indianapolis to meet his forever family. She often had a pregnant cat living under her bed. She financed expensive surgeries on cats and fed feril cats living on the streets.
There have been many Capitol Hill residents who have Julie to thank for providing them with loving feline companions.
