Feral Factor

The care of Philly's wild cat population has been left to a small
group of dedicated volunteers. But the problem's getting too big for
even these tireless animal advocates to handle without help from the
city.

by Kate Kilpatrick
PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEFF FUSCO

A spiral of shiny barbed wire is strewn like Christmas lights atop a
chain-link fence. Just behind it a set of bright green eyes--partly
camouflaged by thick neck-high shrubs--stares out distrustfully.

Up ahead a white-and-gray cat peeks out from behind a concrete
barricade before dashing across the sidewalk and slipping under the
fence. Behind the barricade sit seven plastic bowls, most of them
empty.

In a nearby grassy area littered with potato chip bags, Styrofoam
Dunkin' Donuts cups and an abandoned shopping cart, a spot of sun
beams down on a multicolored patch of fur. A closer look reveals a
large black cat and two smaller gray cats huddled together nearly on
top of each other. When they notice the interloper, the two smaller
cats run and freeze at a safe distance behind the fence. But the
black cat remains, fearless.

It's Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. Shoppers
dart to and from cars parked outside Wal-Mart on Pier 70 in South
Philadelphia. The crisp air is refreshing, but it holds the promise
of a frigid night.

Seagulls circling overhead, an old couple walks through the parking
lot toward the superstore. They linger a minute, entranced by the
gang of hungry cats that have crept out of hiding to feed from a big
purple mixing bowl beneath a "DANGER NO TRESPASSING" sign.

While most Philadelphians come to this depressing section of the city
to find bargains on housewares or power tools, there are those
special few who come with another purpose: to help feed and protect
the 60 or so wild cats that live in several distinct colonies on this
polluted strip of land along the Delaware.

Cats became domestic animals sometime around 2000 B.C., thanks to
the Egyptians who worshipped the mysterious and aristocratic four-
legged creatures that kept their food supplies safe from snakes and
rodents.

Cats may no longer be considered deities, but they are nonetheless
the nation's No. 1 pet. Even so, there's a caste system in the cat
world. Although feral cats come from the same felis catus species as
domestic cats, they're often treated as nuisances that require
eradication, animals unworthy of our care or affection.

That may be because they don't have much time for us. Unlike
housecats, feral cats avoid human contact and are nearly impossible
to tame. They're nocturnal, so they remain relatively invisible to
the public.

Most feral cats are born outside in the wild, to either a stray or
another feral cat, though some were domesticated before they got lost
or were abandoned and had to return to their wild state to survive.

Feral cats have recently become a hot topic among animal advocacy
organizations across the nation. The first National Feral Cat Summit--
a one-day conference for caretakers that focused on humane population
control--was held in New York City in October. And similar workshops
are popping up all over.

One such workshop--where caretakers can borrow humane traps, learn
about low-cost clinics that treat feral cats and meet other rescuers--
was held at the Whole Foods Market on South Street earlier this
month.

Those new to the world of feral cats can also learn some basic but
critical information at these events. They might, for example, learn
that a "rescued" feral kitten can often be resocialized and adopted
if it's less than 10 weeks old. But if it doesn't tame within three
weeks, it must be neutered and returned to its colony before it loses
its ability to survive in the wild.

Despite their scrappy existence, feral cats, as it turns out, have
about the same life span (if spayed or neutered) as housecats, and
contract diseases at the same rate. (They actually offer humans some
protection by killing disease-carrying rodents.) They form strong
bonds with both their territory and the other cats in their colony.
They're also typically adept at finding food and content to live
outdoors.

Colonies can range in size from three to 25, and typically form
around sources of food, water and shelter--which is why in big cities
like Philadelphia, dumpsters and the backs of restaurants and
supermarkets attract so many cats.

Amy Angelilli, president and founder of the People Pet Partnership of
Philadelphia, says there's no way to estimate the feral cat
population citywide since many of them live in "noncommunities."
"There are colonies in Fairmount Park, for example," she says, "so
they don't even have a caretaker to track them."

Feral cat overpopulation, a problem virtually everywhere, is
especially acute in cities like Philly where there are so many vacant
buildings, old row homes and basements for the cats to hide in and
escape bad weather. Apartment complexes and housing projects are
popular breeding grounds because abandoned pets can quickly form
colonies.

But feral cats are anywhere and everywhere--Pennypack Park in the
Northeast, Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park, narrow alleyways in Queen
Village, big industrial spaces in Northern Liberties, abandoned
railroad trestles, underneath the Whole Foods parking lot at 20th and
Callowhill and in the backyards of numerous sympathetic feeders.

But feral cat advocates warn that the proliferation of colonies
doesn't mean you can kick your cat to the curb and rest easy that it
will live a long and healthy life in the wild. Millions of homeless
cats die on the streets and in animal shelters every year.

Because of the territorial nature of cats--particularly female cats,
which tend to stick very close to the colony--new strays aren't
easily accepted. Large colonies tend to be more welcoming than
smaller ones, but a stray will typically have to spend several days
or weeks around the periphery of a colony before being accepted.

"A lot of stray cats don't ever make it," says Donna Wilcox of Alley
Cat Allies, a national feral cat advocacy organization based in
Washington, D.C. "They freeze or starve to death. If they're lucky
enough to find a colony and are allowed to join, then they can
survive."

Kathy Jordan, a gregarious 47-year-old certified financial planner by
day, cat rescuer by night, calls out as she scans the trees and
shrubs for emerging cats.

"I don't think they've been fed today," her accomplice Eddie McGinley
answers, noting a row of empty plastic bowls and a few depleting
reserves of dry food.

Every night, without fail, McGinley, an easygoing 49-year-old
caregiver to both cats and his disabled siblings, drives from his
Fitler Square home to Wal-Mart to feed the feral cat colony. He tries
not to take vacations, but when he had to make a weeklong trip to
Florida to deliver a difficult adult cat to its new home, he paid his
brother $25 a day to make sure the outdoor cats got fed.

It all started a few years ago when he was at Wal-Mart stocking up on
food for his own seven housecats. On the way back to his car he
spotted a cat and figured it was a stray, so he offered it some of
the food he was carrying. When he glanced over at the fence, he saw
four more cats studiously eyeing him.

McGinley has spent nearly $6,000 this year just on food for the Wal-
Mart cats.

"After two and a half years of doing this, I'm not in love with
spending a lot of money with this chore. But I'd feel terribly guilty
if I stopped doing this."

Though most feral cats refuse to be touched, they're practically pets
to their caretakers. It's the ultimate case of unrequited love, and
the caretakers often get excited by even a suggestion of returned
affection from the cats. Success in taming a feral cat, or even
getting the chance to pet or hold one, is an exciting and remarkably
gratifying achievement.

"I'll take the old dishes and wash them," Jordan says as she gathers
up the encrusted plastic bowls on this night.

"How many cans here?" she asks McGinley, leaning into the trunk of
his car, which is fully stocked with cases of canned wet food, big
bags of dry food and several plastic bottles of fresh water.

"I usually do six or seven cans," McGinley says as the two of them
peel the lids off cat food cans and plop small towers of food onto
the plastic lids, pulling up the bottom edge of the fence to slide
the trays closer to the hungry cats.

Here, behind Old Navy (which is across the parking lot, facing Wal-
Mart), is the first feeding station and the largest colony. Most of
the cats that live here are pure black or snow white.

Caretakers provide food daily, and just more than a third provide
veterinary care as well. Though they profess to be proud of what they
do, they often do it in secrecy and hesitate to reveal too much about
the specific colonies they look after for fear cat haters will harm
the cats or pet owners will be tempted to dump their own unwanted
cats there.

McGinley and Jordan usually come after dark, when their feeding will
receive less attention. "There are certain people in that mall that
don't appreciate me feeding the cats," McGinley says.

Those people are store managers. McGinley says he changed his feeding
time from morning to evening after an altercation with a Wal-Mart
employee who demanded he stop feeding the cats.

"He told me, 'If you don't stop feeding these cats, I'm gonna start
poisoning them.' He was trying to goad me into a fight," McGinley
says, describing how the man walked over to the cups and trays of cat
food and, red-faced, began kicking them all over the place.

Wal-Mart store manager Larry Bertsler says Wal-Mart isn't responsible
for the cats, and neither supports nor opposes the cats or the
feeders.

"People keep dropping them off all the time," Bertsler says. "But the
fenceline property there belongs to the Port Authority, not us."

But McGinley and other feeders say they get blamed for the
proliferation of trash (a mess of circulars, plastic bags and soda
bottles) that cover the weedy riverfront grounds. And McGinley
worries that the manager might harm the cats.

"They think if I stop feeding them, they'll go away. But it's just
not true," he says. "They might start wandering around the parking
lot looking for food and get run over."

McGinley is also concerned because the day after the massive oil
spill in the Delaware River last month, he noticed two of the white
cats had black stains on the bottom half of their bodies. He suspects
the tide rose along the banks and then fell, leaving a layer of oily
water on the grass, which the cats then laid down upon, discoloring
their bellies, legs and chins.

"I don't know what happens if they start cleaning themselves. Oil is
very toxic," he says. "In fact, I think there's a chance they're
already dead." As of two weeks after the spill, he hadn't seen either
of the cats in several days.

The biggest problem with feral cats isn't the harsh realities of
outdoor life or the miserable lives many compassionate pet owners
assume they live. It's the sheer numbers.

According to the Alliance for Philadelphia's Animals, an umbrella
group of humane organizations formed in September with the goal of
making Philly a "no-kill" city within 10 years, some 70,000 cats and
dogs (compared to 10,000 children) are born every day in the U.S. But
only one in 10 makes it into a permanent home.

Feral cats are the largest source of feline overpopulation. There are
anywhere from 65 to 100 million feral cats across the country.

The fault lies not with the cats but with the irresponsible pet
owners who don't get their cats fixed and either let them wander
outside or abandon them. "A pet might be dumped," Angelilli says. "If
it has the opportunity to breed with another cat, you have the
beginning of a colony."

A feral cat can breed at just four months old, and the gestation
period is eight to nine weeks. Feral cats average just more than two
pregnancies a year, with four to five kittens in each litter.

While natural causes (like cold weather or a tomcat that kills a
mother's young to put her back in heat) claim many of the kittens,
the survivors end up either on the street, where they continue to
breed, or in a shelter, where they're euthanized. Only a small
percentage are adopted into homes.

The average female outdoor cat has approximately five litters and 22
kittens in her lifetime. While feral cats in managed colonies
frequently live 10 or more years, the constant mating and birth cycle
of unfixed females shortens their life span to about three years.

New litters mean more paw prints on nearby cars, more nighttime howls
from females in heat, more gardens fouled by the stink of sprayed
urine from intact males, and thus, more calls to animal control to
handle the complaints.

Since feral cats aren't adoptable and the local shelters are already
overflowing with spayed, vaccinated and readily adoptable pets,
animal control (forced to become population control) has
traditionally been left with one option: trap-and-kill.

The TNR movement is changing that. Trap-neuter-return (TNR) is still
relatively new to the U.S., although it's the preferred method of
feral cat population control in Denmark, the U.K. and elsewhere. It
was introduced nationally by Alley Cat Allies as a humane alternative
to trap-and-kill. (Relocating feral cats to sanctuaries is a third
option, humane but unrealistic, given the spatial and financial
limits.)

The goal of TNR is to stop reproduction without hurting the cat.
Critics call it subsidized abandonment.

The box traps used to capture the cats are frightening to wild
animals terrorized by confinement, but painless. Once trapped, the
cats are taken to a vet where they are spayed or neutered and their
ears are "tipped" (clipped blunt) to indicate that they've been
altered. The cats are then released back into their colony.
Caretakers continue to bring food and water to the colony, monitor
any health risks and note any new members that need treatment.

There are now thousands of TNR programs around the country, at least
three dozen in Pennsylvania alone, but most are informal and just a
few years old.

TNR supporters consider trap-and-kill not just inhumane, but
incapable of stabilizing or minimizing the feral cat population
permanently. (And it's more expensive for taxpayers than TNR.) TNR
advocates, meanwhile, point to numerous studies that show euthanizing
feral cats only creates a vacuum for more cats (most likely
unneutered) to recolonize the area (where the food source remains)
and continue breeding.

Katharine Livingston, a longtime trapper from Oregon, pioneered the
Wal-Mart trapping project.

Livingston started trapping in her Northern Liberties neighborhood,
where cats often congregated in big empty warehouses that have since
been turned into condos. She says her neighborhood was, and still is,
teeming with cats, and that she personally cared for some 75 cats
living in a four-block radius of her home. "It was like a hobby," she
says. "For a couple years it was a pretty big hobby."

Livingston works project to project. Her last was a feral colony at
JT Riley lumber yard at Third and Girard, where over the course of a
year she had a colony of about 30 cats fixed and several kittens
adopted before the owner decided he wanted all the cats off the
property. Livingston then retrapped all the cats and relocated them
to barn homes (places where they can live outside and continue to be
fed).

Livingston started the Wal-Mart project over the summer, but the
demands of caring for her 4-year-old son have slowed her trapping to
about one cat a week. But she's met other people who are similarly
interested in addressing the problem, and she's been able to spread
the TNR gospel.

Eddie McGinley had never seriously considered TNR until he met
Katharine Livingston.

"The trap, the appointments--it's a lot more trouble than just
feeding them," he says. But when he was just a feeder, he says he
felt like he was part of the Wal-Mart problem. "The surest way to
have a population explosion is to feed them so they can start making
babies as fast as possible."

One evening while he was feeding, he watched Livingston get out of
her car with a trap and catch a cat almost immediately. "In that
split second I decided I'd had enough of taking the lazy easy way
out," he says.

So far Livingston has trapped 15 Wal-Mart cats. Together Kathy Jordan
and McGinley estimate they've gotten another 20 to 25, and found
homes for at least a dozen adoptable kittens. Although some witnesses
have guessed as many as 100 cats live in the scattered colonies,
McGinley thinks it's closer to 60. Either way, there are still plenty
more cats to go.

On this night McGinley and Jordan aren't here just to feed or check
in on the cats. Jordan has two spaying appointments at the vet
tomorrow morning that need to be filled. They have their eyes set on
a large black-and-white female.

With four cats surrounding the trap, another curious one resting on
top and a few standoffish cats further away, a gray tiger finally
enters the cage, lured by a small mound of wet food. The trap door
shuts, but the preoccupied cat keeps eating unknowingly. When Jordan
heads over to retrieve it, the cat turns to run, bangs into the shut
door and begins scrambling back and forth as Jordan slips a cover
over the trap to calm it down.

"It's gonna be a rough day," Jordan tells the trapped cat. "But just
think, you won't be pregnant again."

"You just have to convince them they'll never be a stay-at-home mom
anymore," she explains, loading the heavy trap into the backseat of
her car.

Even with the low-cost certificates provided by Morris Animal Refuge,
Spay & Save, the Spayed Club and other animal organizations,
caretakers like Jordan can easily spend more than $200 a month on
veterinary bills for stray and feral cats. And it's not easy to get
an appointment.

Dr. Cindy Balzer of Girard Vet clinic at 28th and Girard is one of
the few veterinarians in Philadelphia who handles ferals. "I think
they need to be treated," she says. "If you start to spay and neuter
these ferals, the number is going to drop, and hopefully it'll aid in
curtailing the overpopulation problem."

Balzer treats 20 to 30 feral cats a month. Some trappers bring the
cats in simply to be neutered and ear-tipped, while others spring for
a whole range of services, which can include vaccinations, testing
for feline leukemia, de-fleaing, and treatment for parasites like ear
mites and worms or for other medical problems.

Balzer says the only difference between treating ferals and treating
housecats is that ferals arrive in a trap instead of a carrier and
need to be sedated through the trap before being treated. Many vets
don't deal with ferals simply because the cats can be stressful for
the staff. And there are financial considerations as well. Since
feral cats are released back into their colony after the three-day
healing period, they're one-time patients and therefore less
profitable to vets than returning pet cats.

Of course an alternative to both trap-and-kill and TNR is to simply
do nothing. And given that animal control agencies rarely have the
staffing or funding to handle more than specific complaints, this
third option is by far the most popular.

Philadelphia has a lot of catching up to do with cities like New York
and San Francisco when it comes to feral population control. "I think
Philadelphia is on a big learning curve with TNR," Angelilli
says. "TNR is out there. But it's not as progressive or aggressive as
it should be."

But following New York's lead, local volunteers and humane
organizations formed the Alliance for Philadelphia's Animals to
function as a liaison between the government and the animal rescue
community. The Alliance has pushed the Philadelphia Animal Care and
Control Association (PACCA)--which has the animal control contract
with the city--toward promoting TNR in Philadelphia.

"We're very much in the formative stages," says Alliance president
Tara Derby-Perrin, "but animal control and the health department have
at least been willing to sit at the table, and they're open to
discussion. There's a real desire to make this work."

"We intend to run the TNR pilot here and look at its progress and
then assess it," says Philadelphia Department of Public Health
spokesperson Jeff Moran. "The trick is measuring the effectiveness of
the program and at the same time handling complaints from the
neighborhood."

If the feral cat advocates representing the Alliance and the
neighbors who view the cats as a nuisance or a quality-of-life issue
can't come to an agreement on TNR, PACCA has to intervene as animal
control and retrieve the animals.

Back at the Old Navy feeding grounds someone has transformed a
cardboard appliance box into a cozy shelter covered in waterproof
plastic and lined with towels and blankets. A cat plays in a wicker
laundry basket turned on its side not far from the box. More cats can
be heard rustling in the brush as they walk through Fritos bags and
McDonald's hash brown wrappers.

A small weather-beaten plywood shelter looks like it's stood in the
corner of the fenced-in enclave for years. There's a big dish of
fresh dry food on the ground beneath it, just a few inches from a
smooth, bald animal skull.

A feline skeleton decomposes inside the shelter. Long claws jut out
from a bony brown leg where the paw has disintegrated. A few wisps of
fur still stick to what was once a tail.

If you open a fresh can of food, a dozen or more cats are likely to
appear from the shrubs. If you linger a while, another feeder will
likely show up as well.

Ira, a middle-aged woman from Queen Village, already shares her home
with 11 cats she's rescued from her own neighborhood. Most were
strays and have adapted well. She says the few ferals she's brought
inside still hide in the corners of her rooms, crouching underneath
and on top of her furniture.

There's no room in her house to adopt more cats, but she can't ignore
the homeless colony here either. Even the holidays can't take her
mind off the cold and hungry cats. "I couldn't eat my Thanksgiving
dinner until I fed them first," she says. "I just feel terrible."

She's interrupted by loud hisses from two cats a few yards away,
prepping for a fight. "Hey! Stop that!" she yells at them. The
smaller cat runs away.

Ira turns and leaves too, heading back to Wal-Mart to buy more food
for the hungry cats.

Kate Kilpatrick (kkilpatrick@philadelphiaweekly.com) last wrote about
retail plans for Rittenhouse Row.

http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/view.php?id=8635

Posted on SHARE Yahoo group Dec. 20, 2004