Montreal volunteers call for help to contain city’s stray cat population

MONTREAL — Most evenings and weekends, you can find Nancy Leclerc crouched behind an apartment or some abandoned industrial building, trying to catch a cat.

Leclerc and three of her friends make up “Pussy Patrol,’’ a volunteer-run group that aims to help Montreal’s hundreds of thousands of stray and feral cats that often suffer slow and painful deaths on the streets.

But as populations rise and with kitten season around the corner, Leclerc says it will take more than a handful of dedicated volunteers to get a handle on the overpopulation problem.

“We want to help but we get burned out and exhausted when we’re working fulltime jobs, taking care of our own animals, trying to trap at night, running back and forth to the SPCA,’’ she says in an interview.

“It becomes exhausting and we’re never going to put a dent in the problem if the city doesn’t get involved.’’ Using a strategy called “trap, neuter, release, maintain,’’ or TNRM, Leclerc and her group, which relies on public donations, will catch the cats, have them sterilized, vaccinated and dewormed, foster and adopt out the tame ones and release the rest back onto the streets. Montreal Coun. Craig Sauve, who oversees animal issues for the city, says he has heard estimates of between 250,000 and 500,000 cats in Montreal, although some say it’s as high as one million.