Barbara Thorpe wasn’t just another cat lady.
She was someone who helped strays in her town even beyond the grave. When Thorpe died, she left most of her money — nearly $200,000 — to provide food, shelter and care for stray cats in Dixfield, according to a recent episode of NPR’s Planet Money.
But you can’t really choose exactly where your money goes when you’re dead.
Though a group of Dixfield women had been helping strays already and Thorpe had been giving them a little money here and there, that’s not where the money went, according to the podcast. Instead, the overseers of a trust wanted to do more — opening a real animal shelter. But that didn’t happen either.
In “How the cats of Dixfield, Maine came into a fortune — and almost lost it” on NPR’s Planet Money, host Jeff Guo digs into where Thorpe’s money went and how it ended up tied in a legal battle for years that dwindled what was left.
But there’s good news: The money did eventually go to cats — and ones from Dixfield. It just didn’t do it in the way originally intended. Where did it go? Well, we’ll leave that to the podcast to share.