This article began as a “Letter to the Editor,” but a phone call from Dennis Box convinced me to rework it as an article about the new ways available to manage feral and free-roaming cats.
Many cat rescuers have made front page news in the past, including me.
We spend a lot of time telling our story because things are not the same for the animals as they were in the past. I became involved in cat rescue 10 years ago by becoming a volunteer for a “no-kill” organization, MEOW Cat Rescue, formerly of Mercer Island, now residing in the Kirkland Houghton neighborhood. Organizations like these began popping up in response to the phenomenal animal kill rates in government shelters all over the United States. Also, there was pressure from the Europeans for us to learn their free-roaming cat management methods, rather than trying to kill our way out of a problem that was caused by humans.
While I was in the MEOW fold, I saw occasional “wild cats” come through. There were a couple of MEOW volunteers who would take them to veterinarians they talked into helping the wild ones to get them spayed or neutered. They would work hard to advertise to the hobby farmers in King County to give space to these poor animals in a barn to live out their lives. Once I saw what those few people were doing, my passion was ignited.
There are dozens of agencies who focus on placing abandoned tame felines, but only a tiny few individuals who worked with the ones that had gone wild (feral) to survive the disgrace of being dumped. I joined the feral cat supporters in the Puget Sound Region, while always keeping ties with MEOW at my root (the Nordstrom of cat shelters). MEOW began working with the infant Feral Cat Spay/Neuter Project www.feralcatproject.org to spay and neuter the kitties they adopted out instead of handing out certificates to veterinarians. The whole thing came full circle and the kill-rates in the county began to drop. But the population grew and skewed the data. Such a complex issue!
I began working with several feral cat rescuers to learn how to trap, neuter and return cats to their neighborhoods and teach people how to manage their “neighborhood cats” instead of hauling them out and putting them in barns. These terms few people have heard because volunteer non-profit organizations don’t have advertising dollars. Word of mouth and a few opportunities in the local newspapers have made us enormously popular. Because of it we are inching forward to improved euthanasia rates for healthy cats.
www.kingcounty.gov/safety/AnimalServices/PreviousStatistics.aspx
My adopters largely come from Craigslist (very productive), the Boeing classifieds, the county and word of mouth. I place about 300 feral cats a year in garage and close-in barn homes in King County (those with careful predator control since coyotes are rampant throughout the County.)
I’ve learned most of the “wild” cats in King County are not “wild” enough to survive in barns, so I now search for garage homes for these kitties. My program is all in the name of environmentally friendly rodent control. I’ve borne witness to a red-tailed hawk lying dead on a steel table in a wild-life veterinary office because it ingested a mouse that was disoriented by poison. Yeah, a hawk is like a human and will go for low-hanging fruit. Think about it the next time you pop open a box of Decon. Maybe you need a kitty in your garage instead. We’re all learning.
One of the hardest to convince (teach) was King County Animal Care and Control. I’ll spare details here, but there were years of “no’s” before there was a “yes.” I put some of my Boeing background to work to design a method and test it. Since the county wouldn’t release our feral cats to me, I worked with Kitittas County to bring their wild cats here for placement in barn homes. I kept data and testimony from the adopters and reported it to then county acting Manager, Al Dams. It was Al who gave me authorization to begin to place King County feral cats. Long time officers Diel and Cleveland did the heavy lifting and 2007 was a fast and furious first year of barn-kitty placement. There was lots of trial and error and getting smarter.
Even though the county finally embraced me, the most unlikely of volunteers, there were still issues the community identified in the June 2008 King County town hall A result of this input, the county brought in Nathan Winograd, author of “No Kill Nation” in to assess the county shelters. I was down there several times a week and I watched. There were many improvements to the King County Animal Care and Control shelter as a result of that activity. Still room for improvement, but WAY better than the languish of yester-years.
My KCACC feral program got a few dings from the Winograd assessment also. Since I thought a lot of what I do on my own and learned some from other creative people who were thinking things up on the fly, I was happy for the input and we instantly put their suggestions into place to take better care of the feral cats in our short-term care.
I’ve learned through my several years of experience placing King County feral cats that our county cats are nothing like their wilder Kitittas County cousins. King County cats are wimps because they’re too close to humans and they don’t survive well against predators in east King County. Losing a few cats to coyote food shifted my feral cat focus from “relocation” to barns to “neighborhood management.”
I now specialize in providing assistance to the county and its citizens to manage feral and free-roaming cats. I can be contacted through King County at 206-296-PETS and over-the-counter at both King County Animal Care and Control locations (Kent and Bellevue). The only cats we relocate these days are those whose habitat is directly doomed or those who have been dumped at King County. We now focus on placing our KCAC kitties in inner-city garage homes as mousers. All cats come spay/neutered, shots, health check and on-going help-line support from the rescue community. Donations gratefully accepted.
There are also two well-known volunteers in this community who provide more direct support to people with large colonies of cats:
• South County Cats
www.southcountycats.petfinder.org
• Feral Cat Assistance & Trapping (F.C.A.T)
Pamela Brumell
206-427-6454
Bottom line: many years ago, I was a detractor. I decided to knuckle down to help solve the problem, instead of LOBBING PAINT-BALLS (Erick). (I can’t believe you gave me such an easy segue!) So, now I’d like to issue an “ERICK Challenge.”
Let’s teach Erick to TRAP cats! I propose we have a contest to see how well Erick can do now that he has the “Crazy Cat Ladies” on his side. Donations keep our wheels turning, so I think we need to make some bets on how many neighbors Erick can contact with the news I’ve written and help get us access to their yards to trap and neuter all these yowling cats. Would you give $5 a yard to keep our wheels turning if Erick gets out there and lines up the work to solve his problem?
Barb Horton
Puget Sound Working Cats
206-819-4261
