MORGANTOWN — Though some may have heard the expression, “this neighborhood has gone to the dogs,” it seems residents off Brockway Avenue and Maryland Street in South Park might argue theirs has gone to the cats.
Resident John Casey said he drove one cat to the humane society 10 years ago and it’s been a journey since. He’s lived in South Park for close to 10 years, but at his newest place he said the cats have become a big problem.
“There’s cats everywhere. Go back to 2011. Cats everywhere,” he said.
He said he doesn’t know where the problem lies. Residential chatter yields people placing the blame on college students or just irresponsible pet owners allowing their cats to roam without being fixed, he said.
“It doesn’t take two people on a block if they’re feeding all the cats and being like ‘oh I’m taking care of them’ and that’s all it takes. Before you know it there’s a cat colony going,” he said.
Casey said the main offender of feeding the stray cats was a man everyone knew as Ralph, who died in June. When animal control would try to take the cats away, he would claim the felines were his pets. Animal control can’t take the animals if they’re claimed.
Appalachian Peace Paws Rescue asked Ralph if they could set up traps to secure the cats, spay and neuter them, then release them back into the neighborhood. Casey said he saw Ralph throw the cages over the hill after the rescuers left.
“Cat terrorists have infiltrated the neighborhood and that’s where all the cats are coming from,” Casey said.
He said the cats are getting into trash and peeing on his porch. On his block alone he said he’s seen between 30 or 40 cats. Kittens play on the sidewalks, others lay in the street.
An abandoned building next to his house is filled with cats, he said. His neighbor recently moved his motorcycle in the yard to reveal a dead cat underneath. He said the neighborhood has become “one big litter box.”
“People are going to get mad, but we’ve got to get the cats out of here if they’ve got the money and resources,” he said.
Alyssa Shade and Lauren Martin of Appalachian Peace Paws are trying to alleviate the problem. Shade coordinates Trap Neuter Release efforts (TNR) and Martin is president of the nonprofit.
“80% of kittens born every year are born to outside cats. Strays and ferals — the unowned cats. There’s groups that focus on these cats, but there’s not really a huge drive toward fixing them, which is a huge problem,” said Shade.
In one day alone, the Monongalia County Canine Adoption Center had 16 feral kittens surrendered from one colony, according to Shade. Seeing these numbers, the women said they saw a need to fix these cats.
Martin said when an outside cat is fed and cared for it should be those caregivers responsibility to fix the cat.
“Our big thing with the rescue, one of them is education, and the importance of spay and neuter,” Martin said.
Common problems that come along with community cats are urinating in bushes and on porches, yowling at night, and cats becoming ill, Martin said. Also, cats are an invasive species that can hurt wildlife. Much of this can be eradicated when cat colonies are managed.
“If he would have let me fix the cats when I asked him to three years ago there would not be half as many, even a third as many cats that are there now. A lot of the time, once the colony is TNR’ed people won’t even realize they’re there,” said Shade.
Managed colonies generally remain secret. Caregivers will not disclose the locations for fear of cat haters coming to eradicate them or people dumping more cats into the population. TNR will allow the cats’ population to dwindle until they disappear.
“It just takes one cat that someone has let outside and then she’s had kittens somewhere that no one has accessed and now they’re all feral and it just explodes,” Shade said.
Shade is trying to find the people who are feeding these cats. If everyone is feeding at different times it makes it hard to trap the cats.
“It’s really nice to see the community support but right now the community needs to focus more on getting them fixed rather than just feeding them,” Martin said.
The women ask that if someone is feeding the cats to message them on their Facebook page and then the cats can start being categorized.
“We have binders that have photos of the cats in colonies so we know who’s a resident there. We have their vaccination information so that we can manage it as well as we’re able to,” Martin said.
Though the management may be a bit of a challenge, that challenge has been accepted.
“We manage 18 and of those 18 I’d say half of those are done,” said Shade.
From a humane standpoint Mary Wade Triplett, public information officer at Monongalia County Health Department, said the largest concerns about feral cats are rabies and Toxoplasmosis. Anybody can get toxoplasmosis, but Triplett said, it’s most dangerous to infants and those with compromised immune systems.
“About half of the adult human population are probably immune to toxoplasmosis, so really the people that we’re most worried about would be pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems,” she said.
Avoiding cat feces and hand-washing are key when it comes to toxoplasmosis. Triplett said there is a chance that the parasite [T. gondii] has the potential to be in sandboxes or the ground. This leads to the potential of kids contracting it when playing outside.
Though some cats in the community may be vaccinated for rabies, Triplett said you can’t always tell which are. Cats can fight with raccoons or any other animal with rabies.
“Those are the two biggest issues in public health. The rest are some other diseases,” she said.
Cat scratch disease (CSD), according to the Humane Society of The United States is caused by a bacteria, bartonella henselae. Most people get CSD from cat bites and scratches.
Cats that carry B. henselae do not show signs of illness, making it hard to know if a cat is infected, and kittens are more likely to be infected. Triplett also said stray cat populations have the potential to transfer roundworm and ringworm, which are fungal diseases.
Obviously, if people are putting out food for an animal they are attracting not only cats but possibly raccoons, Triplett said.
“In the past, people have complained to the Environmental Health program of the Health Department about feral cats and cat colonies, but we have not gotten a complaint in a very long time,” she said.
