VOLUNTEERS FIND DISPLACED ANIMALS FROM BERRY CREEK
High-tech equipment, and social media, helping ‘fur babies’ reunite with their humans
BERRY CREEK » Hannah Braden said since childhood she has been a die-hard animal lover. Since the Camp Fire, she now spends part of every week seeking out displaced cats.
On a typical morning, she and members of her four-person team head to several key locations in Berry Creek, where lots are strewn with debris from the North Complex fires. She checks the food supply at feeding stations they have set out, looks for signs of cats in hutches left for shelter and scrolls through hours of photographs taken by motion- sensitive cameras at each location.
Braden’s teams are looking to reunite these cats with their owners after the fire. When cats are spied on the cameras, pictures are shared with pet owners seeking out their animals online, often in Facebook groups,
to try to reunite them with their families.
Braden was inspired to begin the organization for rescu
ing animals after surviving the Camp Fire and learning about many animals displaced. It led to her forming the Friends
United for Rescue volunteer organization. FUR is completely donation-based and the volunteers give around 20 hours a week all together to feed, trap and reunite cats.
Things have not been easy to conduct rescue and reunions, as a volunteer organization after a disaster. FUR had difficulties with Paradise’s Animal Control Department as they kept finding large numbers of cats but had trouble securing a permit to temporarily look after all of the displaced cats as a kennel. In April, Braden told the town’s Planning Commission meeting the organization would withdraw their permit request and leave Paradise.
At that meeting, Braden asserted that the Town of Paradise’s Code Enforcement “placed hurdles in front of them, harassed, and misinformed” the group. Meanwhile, Paradise Animal Control asserted the organization was not following the
town’s rules.
While that situation caused difficulty in being able to rescue the many animals displaced, Braden said now that they have opened an adoption center in Chico as of October, the situation in Berry Creek is different. They are the only independent organization that is currently conducting rescue operations in the area, besides Butte County Animal Control, and all rescued cats are fostered while they wait for a new owner rather than kept in a kennel.
Braden and her husband Gabriel Kellems own six cats themselves and foster whatever other animals they can. On Wednesday, the two kittens Braden had been caring for went to new homes. Two other team members host different cats at their homes as well, and there are about 10 or 11 volunteers who also foster by reaching out online and applying to temporarily give cats a home.
The organization now works with Chico Animal Shelter, Chico Cat Coalition and Look Ahead Veterinary Hospital in Oroville, and get a lot of referrals while donating to each other. Volunteers also perform free trapping, spaying and neutering as they often find feral cats.
But it’s reuniting cats with their loved ones after a disaster that makes it worth it, Braden said.
“The reunions are what it’s really about.”
Finding cats can require many hours of trial and error in different firestricken areas in Berry Creek. Braden’s teams currently have several “targets” where they have seen cats returning to the same feed station near a home where a cat was misplaced.
On Wednesday, Braden scoured the camera logs for a cat who matches the description and picture of displaced feline “Mendo” whose family is now living in Kelly Ridge. They hope to trap her in the coming week.
Traps will be set in place of the feeding stations during peak hours in the evening and early morning, when cats typically come out of hiding to eat. If a cat doesn’t take the bait and enter a trap, sometimes a dogsized trap is used.
To capture one particularly smart, skittish cat, Braden said one night they simply removed the feeding station for a day so that
the cat would be hungry enough to enter a trap the next night.
Protecting cameras is critical to finding the cats. The equipment is donated, and often stolen by looters, Braden said. It also has to be periodically checked and replaced.
Keeping food from wildlife is also part of the job. One of Braden’s cameras caught continued visits from raccoons, a fox and even a bear. If this continues, the team moves feeding stations to another location
in hopes that cats will come to the food and safely avoid becoming prey, while keeping wildlife from becoming dependent on pet food.
Recently, cats Winston, Mow Mow, Harry and Katy Cat were found at one location off Bald Rock Road.
There are six or seven other cats the volunteers are currently focused on finding. Braden said they hope to catch “Mendo” within the next week and get her back home with her family.
There is concern that
rains late in the week could displace the cats, as cats lose their scent in rainstorms as their trail is washed away, and can get lost. And sadly, in the destroyed landscape of Berry Creek, “there’s nowhere for cats to hide in the for
est,” Braden said. “You either get eaten or you hide really well.”
But Braden has hope there will be a reunion soon.
Braden, who still lives in Paradise, hopes to sell
her home in the spring and move to a property with more land for fostering more animals — and fewer trees.