THIBODAUX -- Little Bo Peep or Ariela -- depending on who you ask -- found her life hanging by a thread.

(Abby Tabor/Staff)

Clyde Foust holds a kitten named Ariela, or Little Bo Peep, that was rescued after being injured.

Someone had hanged her with a wire noose and tied a weight to her tail, but she mustered all the effort a 5-week-old kitten can and clawed her way her out.

She dragged her fragile frame along the grass in the Country Club subdivision off La. 1, she found herself back in the hands of the same species that tried to kill her.

But the person who gathered up the kitten and knew where to take it for a second chance at life.

Karen and Clyde Foust, of Thibodaux, have rescued roughly 300 cats since 1998. After making a name for themselves as reliable cat and kitten rescuers when the parish was without an animal shelter, abandoned cats arrived at every entrance to their home, often without notice.

This kitten was brought to their daughter by one of the rescuers’ friends, with a puffy pink wound on its neck that allowed it to barely rotate its head.

The Fousts had seen similar cruelty in the past, when a young man came to their doorstep with a box emitting a quacking sound. To Fousts’ surprise, the animal in the box was a kitten that had its vocal cords crushed when it was hanged.

She eventually adopted out the kitten, named Daisy Duck, to a 5-year-old girl. She later learned that Daisy Duck was in fact Donald Duck.

"We were concentrating on injuries," she said. "We didn’t pay much attention to gender."

The Fousts take in animals in need regardless of their scars and illnesses, and it’s their dedication that has left only one of their roughly rescued 300 cats unadopted that earned them the community’s trust.

The Fousts once left for three days on vacation with a bevy of empty cat carriers in their carport, and when they returned from vacation a cat was in every transporter.

Another three cats arrived after a construction worker building a house on Creole Lane walked to his truck and noticed three kittens in a carrier with a note attached to its side asking that they be taken to the Fousts’ home at 207 Belle Meade Blvd.

Even police officers have brought abandoned cats to their doorstep.

The Fousts have no definitive answer for how people know to bring animals to them, but they suggest that word of mouth carried fast through Thibodaux’s small-town atmosphere.

Karen Foust, treasurer of the Lafourche Animal Society, was introduced to animal sheltering in 1998 when someone dropped off kittens while her daughter was raising show pigs.

Distemper, a typically fatal viral disease, spread throughout the cat population in her home and, she was also faced with a ringworm epidemic.

By grouping with other concerned citizens she started an unofficial grassroots effort to bring an animal shelter to Lafourche Parish, a dream that was realized in March of this year.

"We do it because we can help. There’s too many of them and not enough homes to go around," she said.