By Horace Assar Courier Staff Writer
Toola was a sea other who raised a dozen pups in Monterey bay, and died there in March of 2012. She was suffering from a neurological illness in which a 
pathogen was affecting her brain, giving her countless seizures. Staff were able to control her behavior but decided not to ever release her back into the wild. She changed the way scientists were handling otter pups and never hesitated to take care of them.
She was found pregnant on Pismo beach and was brought right after to the aquarium in 2001. Veterinarians discovered she had toxoplasmosis, a parasite spread by cat feces. A month or two after arriving at the aquarium, she gave birth to a stillborn pup. At the same time the aquarium received a two week old pup and decided to give him to Toola. She did not hesitate and instead nursed the orphan pup like it was her own and taught him how to open clamshells with rocks and eat crabs without getting pinched. The pup that Toola raised was able to return to the Pacific, where he is now king of a pack of Elkhorn Slough and has fathered countless pups himself. Toola fostered twelve more pups each for five months. Two of them are still at the aquarium, five are around the coastline making babies of their own, and six are either dead or alive having shaken off their tracking tags. A few years ago this story attracted the son of then Assemblyman Dave Jones and persuaded his father to write a legislation to protect sea otters. It is now required that cat litter bags have a toxoplasmosis warning.