Last of Parliament Hill cats find new homes,
Celebrated parliamentary sanctuary is no more
The cathouse on the Hill is no more.
A veritable institution for decades, the Parliament Hill cat sanctuary has been “disbanded” at the request of the volunteers who’ve been managing it, according to the federal Public Works department.
In its heyday, the sanctuary provided a home for more than two dozen felines. But spaying and neutering over the years has reduced the population to such an extent that as recently as a couple of weeks ago only four cats remained. The decision was made to shut down the sanctuary, and the few remaining — and aging — animals were adopted by volunteers.
“There were kittens born here, the last ones probably 10 to 15 years ago,” Brian Caines, a former public servant who got involved in caring for the cats in the 1990s, said recently. “So now, we’re down to four.”
Public Works announced the closure late last week, saying the decision to shut down operations was made by the volunteers. “The volunteers made the decision to close the sanctuary because of the age of the cats, their deteriorating health, and to prevent exposing them to predators and harsh outdoor conditions during the winter months.”
It is the end of an era. Parliament Hill cats were once prized as mousers, but by the mid-1950s the use of chemicals to control rodent infestations did the cats out of a job. However, employed or not, they were about to abandon their parliamentary sinecure.
But that created problems — too many cats. In the 1970s, volunteers began looking after the near-feral animals, providing food and shelter and, of course, plenty of TLC. A spay-and-neuter program was also introduced.
Some of the volunteers became public figures, of sorts. The original guardian was Irene Desormeaux. When she died in 1987, René Chartrand stepped up and eventually became known as the Catman of Parliament Hill. Chartrand, a pensioner, could be seen summer and winter tending to the animals in the shelter behind the Centre Block building.
“I’m not allowed to get sick. The cats would get angry if I missed a day,” the then 79-year-old Chartrand said in interview in 2000. He retired from his animal-welfare task in 2008.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the sanctuary became a favourite Ottawa tourist site. Busloads of Japanese tourists crowded around the site during the summer. It was posted on the federal government’s website. Even the National Capital Commission gave it a mention in its Discover the Hill brochure.