Have you ever wished you had a pet on campus? Have you ever wanted a companion in your dorm to play with when you’re bored? A few people on campus have accommodations which allow them to do so, including senior information systems major Kelsey Knappenberger.

Knappenberger’s assistance animal is a cat named Kyra. Knappenberger is a senior here at Elizabethtown College, although this is only her second year. She transferred here from Lehigh Carbon Community College with an associate degree in communications. Knappenberger now lives in a single room in Schlosser Residence hall with plenty of space for Kyra to run around, play and hide wherever she pleases.

Kyra is a black long-haired cat with only one eye. “I found her in my grandmother’s barn on Christmas day. She was sick and just laying in the middle of the barn…so I picked her up and she just like, clung to my chest and…my clothing and I took her inside and I cleaned her face up and…brought her back to health. And then I had to get her eye removed because it was too badly infected that it couldn’t be saved,” Knappenberger said.

“She’s considered an assistance animal,” Knappenberger explained when asked what purpose Kyra serves, other than cuddles and entertainment of course. “So, she can’t do anything for me, physically. She’s only assisting me in my mental health.”

When asked about Kyra’s personality, Knappenberger said, “She’s really sassy. The first night when I found her, I gave her a bath and I tried to dry her off with a hairdryer and she bit me. And that’s the first time I knew she was kind of sassy. I mean I guess I’d bite her if she tried to wash me and dry me with a hairdryer…But she also loves to play. When I made a Sims for her, [be]cause I played Sims 4 over the summer…there were like these traits and I was always like, ‘What kind of cat is she?’ [be]cause I never had a cat before. And they had all these traits to pick from and I was like, ‘oh my gosh, she IS playful’ [be]cause I didn’t know some cats weren’t that playful, but she’s really playful, especially at night. She likes chasing things, like this feather wand or tin foil balls. But she does sleep a lot during the day. She’s a sleepy girl.”

Knappenberger has several funny stories about Kyra. One that some fellow Jays might be familiar with is last year, right before winter break, Kyra went missing in Founders Residence Hall C Tower. They could not find her for almost two hours. Then, they finally double checked Knappenberger’s room and realized she had crawled to the bottom of her full laundry basket, underneath all the clothes. Ever since then, that has become a common hiding spot for Kyra. She was even hiding there during the interview.

Knappenberger told us other stories about Kyra, “Right when I got her, I made this like barrier for her because I wanted to keep her in a small area but something bigger than a crate, so I tried making this barrier that I didn’t think she could get out of. And then I played video games for like 30 minutes and then I was like, ‘oh shoot, my cat,’ and then I looked around and I was like, ‘she’s gone-gone.’ So I looked around the house and I found her in a glue mousetrap. [Be]cause she went all the way across the room, into another room, under a shelf unit where we keep our like, cans of food, so we keep mousetraps there just in case, and she got stuck in one. So, I had to pick her and the mousetrap up and my mom cut through the glue, and then we had to use Goo-Gone to get the rest of the glue off of her fur and then I had to wash her.”

It’s obvious from Knappenberger’s stories that on-campus pets can be a handful, but they can also be a great addition to the Etown campus.