Belknap County dispatch cat more than all ears

LACONIA — When someone calls 9-1-1, they’re likely having one of the worst days of their life. For the person on the other end of that call, it’s another day at work. It takes a special kind of person to sign up for a career of taking those calls every day, yet, even for them, the job can take its toll.

That’s why Belknap County Sheriff Michael Moyer agreed last year to bring in a new member to his department’s dispatch center, and the new recruit came directly from the New Hampshire Humane Society.

For a little less than a year now, the Sheriff Department has had its own cat, a small, young female American Shorthair mix. “Signal 1000” is her given name, after a code that dispatchers will use during a larger-scale emergency to instruct officers to keep radio communication to only significant information. But Signal has picked up a few other names: “Siggy,” “Sargeant Sig,” and one more, unsuitable for print, when she knocks over someone’s coffee cup.

“She is definitely full of personality,” said Cheryl Keenan, dispatch director for Belknap County Sheriff Department.

“Signal” is truly the department’s pet. She lives at the department and doesn’t go home with any of the dispatchers or officers. Department members chip in for her food, snacks, toys and veterinary care – no tax dollars are used for the furriest member of the department. She has the run of the place, said Moyer, and will usually greet members when they show up for their shift. But her home is in the communications room, where her water and food are kept, and where she has a soft bed on the desk between the two dispatch stations.

“We’re taking emergency calls as well as routine calls,” Keenan said. Belknap County is also multi-jurisdictional, handling communications for 10 nearby towns as well as for its own department. At any time, a dispatcher could answer a call from someone who was just in a bad car accident, who saw smoke and flames when they opened the basement door, or who discovered the body of a family member. And when they finish handling that call, they don’t know what will cause the phone to ring the next time.

“There’s a misconception that we’re like secretaries, or an answering service,” Keenan said. But they’ve been through specialized training to do their job, which entails dealing with panicked people to get pertinent information quickly, pass that information along to the appropriate responders, all while taking care to appropriately handle sensitive information.

“They’re the true first responders, they are the ones who get the call first,” Moyer said.

Yet, unlike the officers who respond to the scene, dispatchers don’t get to see the whole story. They don’t get to see the people in crisis return to a state of calm when they get the help they need.

“We can’t see what’s going on,” Keenan said. “We don’t always get the resolution that the officers get.”

That’s where “Signal” earns her keep. After such a traumatic call, having a cat to play with can provide some much-needed stress relief.

“Having Signal here is kind of nice," Moyer said. "Siggy has brought some levity to the room.”

The cat has been good for morale and team-building, as members work out the shared responsibility of her care. And she’s been good for public relations, as posts on social media that feature her antics are a hit with the department’s followers.

But her greatest trick is also the most basic – jumping up in a dispatcher’s lap after a tough call at 3 in the morning, when there might not be another soul in the building.

“Petting her, looking at her, it brings you back to understanding that the world is not about just the murders and the suicides,” Keenan said. “She helps us remember that we’re all just humans.”

Moyer added, “She couldn’t have fit in more perfect.”