Woman’s work with feral and abandoned cats draws complaints
Release of wild cats questioned.
Barb Horton’ s passion SEATTLE— for the past 15 years has been finding homes and jobs for abandoned cats. She’ s to one, a handsome, gray-and-white tom that was dumped several weeks earlier and is adjusting to a new homein a neighborhood with a rat problem.
We are standing on the street, talking about the cat named “Tor” by his new owners, when Horton glimpses a flash out the corner of her eye. I see nothing. The house two doors down has a “For Sale” sign out front, and as we follow her sighting, around the side of the empty house, she nudges her toe into a cat door that has been blocked by a stiff piece of plastic.
She quickly deciphers the clues. A cat left behind when the owners moved out. A cat fending for itself without food or water.
“It happens all the time,” she says, her voice suggesting a low opinion of animals of the two-legged variety.
A family that would desert its cat might also not have had it fixed, meaning the cat could quickly add to the national cat over population problem— an estimated 80 million cats, more than half of them feral or free-roaming.
With the help of Tor’s new owner, Rebecca Shults, Horton devises a plan.
Sh ult swill set out food in the former neighbors’ yard and seewhether she can coax the abandoned cat out of hiding. She’ll also alert other neighbors and ask them to keep their cats indoors. Horton willof the volunteer trappers who works with her organization, Puget Sound Working Cats, to catch the cat, and have it spayed or neutered and vaccinated. Because it apparently had been living with a family, she’ll try to place it in a new home.
Wild life
A decade ago, an abandoned or stray cat picked up by Animal Control would almost certainly have bee neut ha ni zed. That was even more true for the wild or feral cats who roam neighborhood sand vacant lots, get into cat fights and have as many as three litters of kittens a year. These cats aren’ t cuddly or adoptable. They’re wary of humans and aggressivewhen threatened, and often stick to the shadows.
Horton tries to place suitable feral cats in barns, shops or warehouses — anywhere with a rodent problem that will keep the cats active and, most important, alive. Horton says the philosophy behind her work is that all cats have value, not only the ones that curl up and purr in our laps. She argues that they should not be dumped, like garbage, or killed en masse, but allowed to live out their lives as cats.
Horton is part of a national network of people who champion the humane treatment of cats, work with shelters to reduce the numbers of animalskilled, andencouragethe return of spayed and neutered cats to the outdoors if they can’t be adopted or placed in a job. The strategy is known as Trap, Neuter and Release, or TNR.
But not everyone thinks saving feral cats is a humane idea.
The American BirdConservancy opposes the release of feral cats back into the wild, saying they are ruthless predators that kill up to 4 billion birds a year in the United States alone, as well as reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.
These critics say the efforts to sterilize feral cats can’t keep up with the cats’ ability to reproduce, with the result that cats “continue to kill wildlife and spread disease,” says Grant Sizemore, director of invasive species for the ABC. He says feral cats can be carriers of rabies; toxoplasmosis (which can cause miscarriages andbirthdefects); andplague, which is spread through fleas.
The animal-rights organization PETAalso opposes the TNRprograms, saying that the cats released back into the wild face being injured or killed by dogs or coyotes, run over by cars, infected with disease or maimed by frigid weather.
PETA argues that it is more humaneto kill these wild cats, that euthanasia provides a painless and dignified death and protects other wildlife from their predation.
“We agree that animals’ lives are valuable. Instead of dying painlessly in a shelter, these cats are dying under houses, bushes and the side of the road. We’re not saving cats by dumping them on the streets,” says Teresa Chagrin, animal care and control specialist for PETA.
Dr. Gene Mueller, the manager of Regional Animal Services of King County, says the reality is that there are freeroaming cats everywhere. They can be caught, spayed or neutered and released, or not caught and left to reproduce and multiply. He says kittens have less than a 50 percent survival rate in the wild because of their vulnerability to disease.
“We’re trying to do harm reduction,” says Mueller, a veterinarian who was hired in 2012 to reorganize the shelter operations. He has partnered with volunteer groups like Working Cats to help reduce the shelter’s kill rate. “The work of these volunteer animal advocates is as important as the work we do at the shelter ,” he says .“They’ re preventing cruelty and unwanted reproduction. They’remaking a difference for birds.”
Statistics from across the state also suggest the TNR strategy is working. Euthanasia rates at shelters fell from about 60,000 in 2004 to about 12,000 in 2015, while animals being spayedor neuteredrose fromabout 60,000 to almost 90,000, according to the Washington Federation of Animal Care and Control Agencies, which represents about 70 shelters and rescue organizations, including most of the large, publicly funded shelters.
“It’s not just us saying spay and neuter your pets. It really makes a huge impact on the euthanasia rate,” says Cora Wells, program administrator for the state federation.
Volunteers
A week after spotting the abandoned cat in Burien, I meet up with Kate and Kaare (pronounced Cory) Bysheim, volunteers with Puget Sound Working Cats, as they set the trap at the empty home.
Kate estimates she and her husband have trapped several hundred cats in five years and handed them over to Horton or other volunteers to have them spayed or neutered and evaluated for temperament and appropriate placement.
The couple has rescued cats from trailer parks, green belts in cities and seedy motels. Sometimes, landlords call because of cats multiplying on their property or cats dumped by tenants. Sometimes it’s neighbors who hear the cats fighting at night.
Kate says her motivation is simple. “I love every warm, fuzzy, breathing thing on the planet. I don’t love people nearly so much.”
One occupational hazard when she started was trying to take in every rescued cat.
“Iwasupto13. Myhusband said, ‘I will help you do this (rescue work), but you can’t bring any more home.’ ”
In Burien thenext morning, Kate confronts an angry cat in the trap, but it belongs to a neighbor and streaks for home themomentit’s released. The Bysheims consult with Horton and decide to wait until there’s been another sighting of a cat that definitely doesn’t have ahomebefore they’ll set the trap again.
What happens next
Once trapped, the cats are transported to a clinic to be sterilized so they don’t add to the cat-overpopulation problem. In aLynnwoodstrip mall, theFeralCatSpay/NeuterProject fixes up to 50 cats a day, four days a week.
The director, JasonThompson, startedworking with cats about 15 years ago, at a shelter in Oregon that killed as many in a day as his clinic now sterilizes.
Inside the clinic, cat three and four high line all the available counters. Along one wall, sleepy cats recover from surgery. Along another, cats awaiting surgery get an injection to anesthetize them. Volunteers and staff gently shave the sedated cats’ stomachs, carry the cats to their surgeries and monitor their vital signs.
Staff veterinarians perform the operations.
“The boys act like their lives are destroyed,” says Thompson, noting that the neutering takes “about five seconds.” The girls, who have the more invasive surgery, including little cat-sized anesthesia masks, “are fine,” he says.
Thompson says a standalone clinic that can perform a high volume of operations is the only way to make an impact on the huge population of reproducing feral cats. Last spring, the clinic, which opened in 1997, sterilized its 100,000th cat.
What distinguishes the Pu get Sound region from other parts of the state and the country, Thompson says, is the high level of cooperation among shelters, rescue groups and clinics.
“Collaboration isn’t the norm,” he says. “Infighting — over resources, over volunteers, over the mission — is more common.”
Dr. Merriss Waters, themedical director for the clinic, says the goal among all the activists is to ensure there are not more cats in the world than there are families to taket hem home.
“Everyone in sheltermedicine and animal welfare wants to put themselves out of a job ,” she says.