25 in '25: Rivka Swenson is looking out for Richmond's cats

If you see a feral cat with a clipped ear in Richmond, there’s a chance Rivka Swenson had something to do with it.

The clipped ear is a signifier that the cat has been trapped, neutered and returned — or “TNR”-ed — and therefore doesn’t need to be captured again for sterilization. Swenson’s City Kitty Project is responsible for thousands of TNR-ed cats in the Richmond region.

The project got its start after a historic rainfall caused flash flooding in parts of Richmond in 2018. Weeks later, after the water had receded, Swenson met neighbor Lisa Edwards as they worked to rescue cats from a Southside mobile home park that had flooded. Edwards, co-owner of Millie’s and founder of the nonprofit Lost Dog Foundation, joined forces with Swenson to create the City Kitty Project under the umbrella of Lost Dog.

Last year, the City Kitty Project fixed 688 stray cats, trapping nearly 400 themselves. The project also rescues about 200 cats a year, rehabilitating them and finding people to adopt them. Most of those cats are kittens, with some nursing mothers and old tomcats sprinkled into the mix. The effort is supported by grants from the Community Foundation.

Lisa Cumby, a graphic designer who came to know Swenson through the local cat community, visited Swenson at her home to adopt two kittens that she had rescued.

“She was dealing with a whole gaggle of sick, sick, sick kittens at the time and doing everything like a vet would,” Cumby said. “It was such an impressive operation.”

Swenson’s other initiative, Lettuce Reduce Food Waste, sprung out of one of her cat rescue operations. While visiting a cat colony at a residential rehabilitation program in Southside, Swenson noticed that food delivered from refrigerated trucks was being thrown out; it was Wednesday, a day that the program doesn’t organize food giveaways.

Lettuce Reduce Food Waste now distributes that food for people in need at McDonough Community Garden on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Swenson also recently joined the board of the William A. Harrison Jr. Foundation that oversees the animal welfare-focused Furbish Thrift in Stratford Hills; City Kitty Project uses a pet adoption room at Furbish.

When she’s not working on these initiatives, Swenson is an associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University, specializing in 18th-century British literature. Swenson says many things we point to as hallmarks of modernity — the two-party political system, human rights, political dissent, animal rights, the beginnings of capitalism and movements against it — were established during this period.

“It’s not that the literature is enjoyable to read,” said Swenson, who has published scholarly articles about Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe.” “It’s a food for thought kind of literature.”

In Spring 2026, Swenson hopes to offer a writing and service learning course at VCU based on her work with Lettuce.

Born in Philadelphia, Swenson was raised in the Pacific Northwest and Upstate New York before moving to Virginia halfway through high school. It was then that Swenson became close with the late poet Nikki Giovanni, who Swenson refers to as a “bonus mom.” Swenson’s mother worked with Giovanni and her partner Virginia “Ginney” C. Fowler at Virginia Tech; the couple stayed with a teenaged Swenson and her mother one summer while they were having new floors put into their house.

“I was going through a hard time and not getting along at all with my own mother,” Swenson recalled. “They really helped me a lot — taught me how to drive, stuff like that. Gave me my first dog.”

After high school, Swenson’s visits home usually involved a gathering of the foursome to drink Champagne and play the card game bid whist.

“It’s kind of like bridge, it’s kind of like spades too,” Swenson explained. “They were really sharp card players.”

A fan of Richmond’s food scene, Swenson is especially smitten with Mediterranean restaurant Pinky’s in Scott’s Addition. She’s also a big fan of nachos, especially the Hawaiian Nachos at Little Nickel and the Greek Nachos at Sidewalk Café.

Though Swenson helps hundreds of local cats each year, she knows her work will never be done.

“If you are looking for stray cats, they are everywhere,” Swenson said. “No matter how many we fix, there are, sadly, always more.”