Vandals attack animal shelter

Seven cats still missing from no-kill facility.

ST. MARYS — The president of a no-kill shelter for feral and abandoned cats in St. Marys was struggling Monday to understand why someone would vandalize a building where 175 cats are housed, allowing some of them to escape.

Terra Lucent said employees at the Love of Pets shelter discovered the damage Sunday morning when they arrived to feed the animals, change water bowls and perform other chores.

Screens on five windows and a door were slashed, and a window air conditioner was removed, allowing the animals to escape.

Some of the cats were recovered in a neighbor’s yard, which Lucent said could have happened only if they had been thrown over the fence designed to keep the animals on the shelter’s property.

“It was chaos,” she said. “All the animals are extremely disturbed. This is more than vandalism. It’s animal abuse.”

Lucent said cats that had been thrown over the fence were ones that are afraid to be outdoors or have never been outside. She has several dogs on her property that bark at strangers, which makes her believe the vandals were familiar with the facility.

“There are seven cats still missing, that we know of,” she said. “It’s hard to do a head count when they’re moving.”

Eleven traps have been set on and near the shelter property in hopes of recovering the missing animals.

Lucent said she believes more than one person had to be involved with the vandalism because of the extent of damage.

Lucent created the shelter in 2006 after she noticed a large number of feral cats at the St. Marys waterfront and learned that county animal control officers were capturing and euthanizing them because they believed they could not be domesticated.

But Lucent has proven that all it takes to domesticate feral cats is patience. Many of them roam the shelter property during daytime, but always re- turn to the shelter building for meals, water and a clean cage in which to sleep.

She also has cats that were abandoned because of health issues. She has two blind cats, one with a missing leg and one with a neurological disorder that makes it difficult for it to walk a straight line. Every cat at the shelter is spayed or neutered and given all its shots.

Lt. Shannon Brock, a St. Marys police detective, said the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made.