Herding Cats (an article many in rescue can relate with)
http://democratandchronicle.com/apps...VING/411070301
Herding cats
These animal lovers are passionate about saving feral felines from pain and suffering
ANNETTE LEIN staff photographer
Caged, temporarily, is a feral cat caught by the group Habitat for Cats. He was scheduled to be neutered at the County Line Animal Hospital in Ontario.
[Day in Photos]
Habitat for Cats
To volunteer with Habitat for Cats or report a problem with feral cats, call (585) 234-2894.
To learn more about trap-neuter-return programs, check out:
www.alleycat.org
www.wild-about-cats.com
ANNETTE LEIN staff photographer
Diane DiGravio, a member of Habitat for Cats, feeds one of the many homeless cats living in colonies in both rural and urban communities.
[Day in Photos]
Robin L. Flanigan
Staff writer
(November 7, 2004) — The split-level colonial is visually unremarkable, a regular house in a regular neighborhood along a well-traveled road in Ontario, Wayne County.
But earlier this summer, sniffing out a rumor that an outdoor colony of wild cats there had multiplied out of control, Rhonda Morehouse showed up to find 26 kittens — five of them dead — in the back yard. Frantic, Morehouse ran to her car and called friend Diane DiGravio to plan a rescue. Both women are members of Habitat for Cats, an organization that spays and neuters wild cats in hopes of reducing the number that end up being put to sleep.
With gratitude from the homeowner, who hadn't known how to handle the gaggle, Morehouse retrieved pet carriers from her house two miles away and delivered more than half the kittens to DiGravio's shed. The others went home with her.
The next day she picked up seven more, five of them alive, all 4 to 6 weeks old.
The sick received medical treatment nearby at County Line Animal Hospital. The healthy found refuge in an employee lounge there or with other Habitat for Cats volunteers. The dead were buried.
It would take seven weeks to capture the 18 adult felines responsible for the litters.
Most of those nights Morehouse and DiGravio sat on the front porch — out of sight — listening for the metal traps they'd set to slam shut. If the man who lived there was home, he'd bring them folding chairs. They had the concrete steps otherwise.
"I would sit there four hours at a time, in a deep depression," recalls Morehouse. "That's when you analyze yourself, which I've done a million times. Is this worth it? The stress, being so compassionate. But these cats are my destiny. I just love every single one of them. I'm not a big people person, so this is my place in heaven. This is my golden ticket."
'A dismal life'
Two unaltered cats and their offspring can produce as many as 420,000 cats in seven years, according to widespread figures. Cats that are feral — defined literally as "gone wild" — have little or no contact with people. They are born outdoors and, once adults, usually cannot be tamed or treated as normal pets. They live in groups called colonies and, aside from reproducing, spend their livesfending off starvation, disease, inclement weather (in our winter climate, their ears sometimes freeze off), traffic and predatory animals.
More than half of feral kittens die within six months, many of them from upper respiratory infections. The average lifespan in this region for one that reaches adulthood is two or three years, according to the Humane Society at Lollypop Farm in Perinton.
"It's a very dismal life," DiGravio says.
No one knows how many roam the United States, but the number is estimated in the tens of millions, according to Alley Cat Allies, a national organization in Washington, D.C., that works exclusively with feral cats.
The cats, mostly nocturnal, gather behind shopping centers and houses and skulk around farm yards, parks and abandoned buildings. Found equally in urban and rural areas, they typically are malnourished and loaded with worms and fleas.
That they spread diseases to humans is mainly a myth. Because they view people as dangerous, contact is rare. They also rarely spread diseases such as rabies to other animals, even while brawling with domesticated cats, which they tend to do in fights over food.
Habitat for Cats volunteers sometimes crawl under porches at drug houses, don face masks during sweeps through condemned houses and dig under mounds of rubbish to find them. The nonprofit organization's trap-neuter-return program is a method of population control and an alternative to euthanasia. Feral cats are trapped in metal cages, taken to a veterinary clinic for treatment and surgery, then placed back outdoors to be fed by volunteers. The group tries to find homes for kittens young enough to be socialized.
Board member John Atwater builds waterproof, insulated sleeping huts for feral cats made from clapboard and other donated materials. People can buy a two-cat hut for $65 or a four-cat hut for $100.
After reading online about similar programs in larger cities, Gina Wilson of Pittsford founded Habitat for Cats in May 1999. As a college student in Geneseo, Livingston County, she noticed large numbers of homeless cats scavenging for food in Dumpsters behind both the school's cafeteria and a nearby restaurant. In addition, students who had taken in kittens when classes started in the fall often were surprised with litters by spring. Unsure what to do, and with the semester ending, many left the broods outside to grow up feral.
Wilson called around but found no existing programs that would help without euthanasia. Her Habitat for Cats joined some 1,500 other efforts nationwide.
"It's usually just a group of people who see the need and do something about it because nobody else is," says Wilson, who now plays a minimal role in the organization serving Livingston, Monroe, Ontario and Wayne counties.
County Line Animal Hospital on Route 104 does the most work for Habitat for Cats. It has sterilized approximately 115 cats and treated 60 more for injuries and illness so far this year. Veterinarians Mary Dyroff and Tim Vleuten also check for leukemia, vaccinate against rabies and distemper, and treat for worms, ear mites and fleas. After surgery, performed with dissolvable sutures, they clip off about a centimeter of the left ear — a procedure called eartipping — so that if the same cat gets stuck in another trap, it won't be hauled back to the clinic.
Fairport Animal Hospital in Fairport, Cats Exclusively in Pittsford and The Cat Doctors in Penfield pitch in — for free or at cost — when needed.
At least one other trap-neuter-return program operates in the region, but the two people involved in that effort are so overwhelmed with calls, they didn't want any publicity.
Controversial methods
Proponents say that trap-neuter-return programs — known as TNRs, and sometimes called trap-neuter-release programs — cost nearly half as much as euthanasia and keep colonies in check until the cats die from natural causes.
"They've been trapping and killing for years in this country and it doesn't have an effect," says Donna Wilcox, executive director of Alley Cat Allies. "Not only is this method the most humane, it's the only one that works."
She says trapping cats without returning them causes a "vacuum effect," the term used when other feral cats take over the territory and start breeding prolifically.
The Humane Society at Lollypop Farm euthanizes feral cats dropped at its door — 542 of them between September 2003 and September 2004. It refers only a limited number of calls about feral colonies to Habitat for Cats, mainly because the small group struggles to keep up with demand. Executive Vice President Alice Calabrese labels TNR programs as a good short-term solution: "Short-term, it's the only way. But long-term, cats have to have a home."
"The solutions aren't entirely clear at this point on what the best approach is," says Chris Fitzgerald, director of Rochester Animal Services on Verona Street. "Our position is that something needs to be done, probably from a multidimensional approach."
That could mean a combination of TNRs and feral cat sanctuaries, he suggests. Several privately owned sanctuaries exist in the region, most of which are filled to capacity. Rochester Animal Services doesn't keep euthanasia statistics on feral cats.
There are critics of TNRs. The American Bird Conservancy in Virginia argues that they don't work because new cats are always joining existing colonies.
But organizations that use TNRs contend that the number of feral cats drops in communities that embrace the program, brought to the United States from Europe in the 1980s. And the practice has grown rapidly since Alley Cat Allies started offering assistance in the 1990s to animal activists fighting for sterilization over euthanasia.
The Feral Cat Coalition in San Diego has spayed and neutered nearly 20,000 cats since organizing in 1992. In Seattle, the Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project has sterilized 9,200 since 1997.
Balancing act
Every Sunday after church, Morehouse, a 33-year-old vegetarian, heads to the grocery store meat aisle for family-size packages of chicken. At home, she boils the meat, cooks noodles in the same water (for more flavor), combines the two, adds gravy and divides the food into plastic bags. Each morning before work as a nanny, she delivers her homemade meals to three feral cat colonies. She cooked them a 21-pound stuffed turkey last year for Thanksgiving.
"Why do we do it?" she asks, sincerely marveling at her drive. "There's no explanation for it. None."
DiGravio, 37, president of Habitat for Cats and an eighth-grade biology teacher, is penning a book about the challenges that come from such devotion. A passage from the first chapter: "Of course not everyone agrees with what you do. Your family thinks you spend too much time helping animals. Your husband thinks you are cheating him out of quality time. Your co-workers make derogatory cracks about animals, and finally your closest friends over time stop calling you.
"As a result, you find that the only people you really have close contact with are other rescue workers who understand your compassion for animals. It's not easy, but we continue to keep our focus. To challenge our integrity means to challenge who we are."
Meanwhile, calls for help keep mounting — up to 30 pleas some weeks from individuals, veterinary offices and the humane society.
Two weeks ago, Habitat for Cats was tapped to deal with about 35 feral cats in Springwater, Livingston County. A couple had moved away from their farm about a year ago, leaving behind a dozen or so unaltered cats who had been breeding regularly.
At the same time, a colony in downtown Rochester — one that the organization spayed and neutered two years ago — needed to be relocated. (Every colony is logged into a database and tracked.) The caretaker of 11 cats had fallen ill and was hospitalized. A volunteer had agreed to leave them food and water, but only temporarily.
With only seven volunteers, the organization, which ultimately hopes to open a free or low-cost sterilization clinic for feral cats, is stretched thin.
DiGravio sometimes lies awake at night worrying about the ones she is unable to help.
Last month, an Ontario man walking his dog along an isolated road witnessed the driver of a white car flee after throwing two white kittens out his window. The dog owner memorized the license plate and called 911. Police soon tracked down the driver, who was arrested.
"But by the time we got there, it was too late," DiGravio laments.
The cats were gone.
Nevertheless, to no avail, she and Morehouse spent three days canvassing the area in hourlong shifts before and after work.
"Ontario is a little dot on the map," DiGravio adds. "These situations are everywhere. It's devastating. I lose a lot of sleep. Why do people have to go dumping these helpless creatures? I guess it just comes down to one word, and that's ignorance."
On a recent Tuesday, DiGravio visits the Ontario split-level to deliver a special treat to the cats returned there — all sterilized — with permission from the homeowner, who declined to be interviewed.
"C'mon, if you don't get it, somebody else will," she softly summons to a plump gray and white cat, dumping 2 pounds of roast beef and ham on a pink plastic dish.
The cat begins to nibble. A calico hides behind a tree. A cat with an orange coat jumps from the balcony and bounds away.
This place is a success story. But temperatures are starting to drop, and that means more feral felines at risk, particularly those dumped on the side of the road.
"We can't control the public," DiGravio says.
After a moment, she adds in a tone of resignation, "We have to realize we've done everything in our own power."
That doesn't mean she'll have an easy time falling asleep tonight.
