Michelle Cheramie and her staff and volunteers for Zeus’ Place and Zeus’ Rescue have rescued and placed more than 14,000 cats and dogs — about 800 a year — since 2006.
Well-known in New Orleans and surrounding parishes, their efforts got national attention in the past year for the one rescue that proves as elusive as a Loup-garou sighting: Scrim.
If you are among the few who don’t know the saga, here’s a short recap: Back in November 2023, Scrim was pulled from the Terrebonne Parish Animal Shelter and transferred to Cheramie. Scrim went into foster care on Feb. 22, 2024, then went to a potential home on April 29, 2024, and escaped.
From there on out, Scrim — most likely a West Highland White Terrier (Westie)/wired-hair terrier — roamed the streets of New Orleans with Cheramie tracking him for almost six months. Scrim sightings and social media updates were almost daily, and they finally caught him on Oct. 23, 2024. He was in a new home two days later, only for him to then escape from a second-floor window on Nov. 15, 2024, when Cheramie was taking care of him while his new owners were out of town. As of press time he is still on the run — with Cheramie and her crew, including many volunteers, in dogged pursuit.
How did Cheramie, a native of Cut Off, Louisiana, become a mix of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals, and St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of finding lost objects (and in this case, animals)?
Animal rescue had been her passion since she was six years old, says Cheramie. Her first major rescue was in 1999, when she found a starving Rottweiler who she and others nursed back to health.
It was Hurricane Katrina that was “the defining moment and trajectory change in my career,” she says, as well as her life.
Cheramie was working as a network administrator for an international company when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005. She was already doing animal rescue on the side.
She lost her house, Jeep and most everything she owned in the storm. The company Cheramie worked for moved her to Houston to set up the network there, but on Sept. 8, was sent back to the city to move the company’s servers from the Lakeway Towers to the backup site in New York City.
But the lure of saving animals was too great and, “I started rescuing animals left behind for the storm,” she says.
Cheramie collaborated with a national agency that needed someone who knew how to get around the city without street signs, could drive a boat and knew how to rescue.
“I ticked all those boxes and started going out daily to rescue while doing computer work via cell phone — when I had a signal — to bring up the server farm [for work],” said Cheramie.
It was during that time that she realized “what really made me happy and it was animal rescue.”
She quit her “well-paying job, tore down my house, started building a new one on the same lot, bought the old Eve’s Market on Freret Street, opened Zeus’ Place and started the Freret Market with the hopes of getting at least one restaurant on the street that I could walk to with my daughter,” Cheramie says.
Freret Street between Napoleon and Jefferson avenues, once a well-trod shopping and dining street, had been long past its prime when she moved to the area in 1999: “I always saw such potential for a thriving neighborhood, instead of a run-down thoroughfare between Uptown and Downtown,” she says.
“It took us as neighbors and new business owners coming together to come up with a plan — an Arts and Cultural Overlay to attract restaurants, available property boards at the Freret Market, new lighting, streetscapes — to make it what it is today,” Cheramie notes about the now vibrant street full of restaurants, bars, shops and businesses including Zeus’ Place, which opened in March 2006, providing dog and cat boarding and grooming.
“I started the business to support my rescue habit,” says Cheramie, who notes she focuses on cats and dogs. Other animals she will intake, but then move to the appropriate rescue or rehab center.
Zeus’ Rescue became a nonprofit in 2014. “After the 2016 Baton Rouge floods — I took in over 200 pets in less than three weeks — I realized I needed to expand,” she says about the Zeus’ Rescue building on Napoleon Avenue. At around same time, she opened another Zeus’ Place in the Beacon in the South Market District.
In addition to boarding/grooming and rescues, Cheramie would often provide food and other supplies to pet owners who needed it, but couldn’t afford it. This took on a more formal dynamic during the COVID-19 pandemic when she started writing grants to get free pet food, which evolved into vaccine and spay/neuter clinics. The shelter diversion program now has its own building on the Napoleon Avenue property.
She credits the late Dr. Eugene Zeller of Freret Veterinary Hospital, then Maple Street Small Animal Clinic, as her mentor in rescue and in life.
“He gave so much of his time to help the animals of NOLA, even for free if the client couldn’t pay,” says Cheramie. “He coached me through opening a pet business and at the same time providing care for those that need it but couldn’t afford it. That is no easy feat in rescue!”
Why help so much? “If you are able, why would you not want to help your neighbors,” she says.
“We all go through rough patches in life. I am fortunate enough to be able give back daily. A rising tide raises all ships.”
Cheramie has her own pets: one dog named Scoobie, and four cats: Lucy Bustamante, Sally, Olive and one whose name is to be determined. And, while of course, there is Scrim, who has captured Cheramie’s and the nation’s attention (and hearts), it’s good to remember that 365 days a year, there is someone who is on the side of the city’s stray cats and dogs.
