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Thursday, April 4, 2002
Cat trapping angers some
City-rented traps are in big demand
By Guy H. Lawrence
Caller-Times
   Residents who trap and turn in stray cats have cat owners concerned that a family pet could wind up at the city's animal pound and eventually be exterminated.
   "The feral cat population in the city is out of control," said Jeff Beynon, director of the animal control department.
   The city exterminates about 4,000 cats every year, Beynon said. Animal control officers answer about 40 calls a day to pick up trapped animals, most of those possums. But about 10 to 15 of those calls involve stray or injured cats, most of them wild.
   Cats are fertile animals, he said. A typical cat will have about 2.5 litters a year, with four to eight kittens per litter.
   To help control that population, the city lets citizens rentsmall-animal traps, Beynon said. The department charges $1 a day with a $10 refundable deposit, he said. The department has a waiting list for its 40 traps.
   For Jonna Velazquez, who lives on Rasputin Street, calling animal control to pick up a stray cat was a matter of her small children's safety. Her two sons knocked on neighbors' doors in an unsuccessful effort to find the owner of a stray cat. She finally decided to call animal control Wednesday to pick up the skinny stray.
   "You just never know where it's been," Velazquez said. "This one, nobody seems to know who it belongs to."
   After seeing the cat was docile, animal control officer T.J. Martinez picked the cat out of the carrier and carried it in her arms to the city truck. This was the third cat Martinez picked up Wednesday. She received 20 calls, mostly for possums, which was a light day. On Monday, she had 60 calls.
   "They are usually wild cats," Maritnez said. "We get one or two friendly cats that we can carry by hand, not by pole."
   'Really wild cats'
   The pole is the snare that she used earlier to pull a wild cat out of a trap on Kasper Street.
   "Some cats, when you get them out of the traps, just jump and bounce around and go all over the place," said Martinez, who has several scratches on her arms from this week's work. "They are really wild cats. If we grab them with our arms, we would end up like hamburger."
   Martinez, who owns a Labrador retriever and a border collie, is not happy about the prospects of the animals she picks up. She would prefer that people adopt the animals, but her years of experience at the animal control department tell her that is not likely. She also knows that many stray dogs and cats will likely end up dead in the road.
   She tags the docile cats as friendly, to encourage people to adopt them, she said.
   The situation of neighbors trapping cats has caused friction in one neighborhood, where some cat owners have complained about one resident's traps.
   Beynon said he is not surprised, because some people's affection for their animals is usually strong.
   "Normally people either love cats or hate cats," Beynon said. "There is very little middle ground."
   Bob Bowerman, a resident on Candlewood, was disturbed to see his backyard neighbor trap cats and turn them over to the city's animal control, because those animals could be pets.
   Small wooden crosses
   But when his neighbor posted small wooden crosses near the trap with cat names like Felix, Sylvester and Miss Kitty, Bowerman said that went too far. A fourth cross bears the words "unknown tresspassor," and Bowerman believes it is meant for him to see, since it faces his house.
   "It is mean-spirited and it is ugly what they are doing," Bowerman said.
   On Wednesday, those signs were gone when animal control officer stopped to pick up a trapped possum.
   Larry Taylor said he took the trap to his mother, Lurlene Taylor, who lives on Sprucewood Drive, because possums and cats were digging in her garden. Larry Taylor, who lives on the same street, said the many stray cats in the neighborhood are the result of people who don't take care of their pets. These strays get in their garage and climb over their vehicles, sometimes leaving scratches, he said.
   "We are tired of the cats, dogs and possums and all critters," Larry Taylor said. "This not pointed to cats. This is pointed to all critters that roam the yards."
   Last year he caught 15 possums in one month, he said.
   Taylor said that someone released at least one trapped cat , and more recently, someone poured transmission fluid over the trap to deter cats from getting near it. A trap he had given his mother last year was taken from her yard, he said. The signs, which cannot be seen from the street, are a message to whoever is trespassing, he said.
   'Not a cat hater'
   "I am not a cat hater," Taylor said. "I have one of my own, but I keep it inside of my house and I don't let it roam on other people's property."
   Because of the trap, Bowerman said he keeps his three cats indoors.
   "I don't let my cats out because of this," Bowerman said.
   Bowerman has taken steps to warn neighbors, he said. He tells them to watch out for their cats and encourages them to get city license tags. He will keep up his activity until his neighbor sees how upset people are and stops, Bowerman said.
   Cats that are trapped and are wearing a current city license are released on the spot, Beynon said. The department only picks up cats that are contained in a trap, or in a container such as a pet carrier. The number of calls about cats increases during breeding season, he said.
   "Part of the problem is that people who feed their cats outside. Possums will come and eat that cat food," Beynon said.
   Attracting possums
   People who are after possums and don't want to catch cats should use banana peels and other fruits like apples, he said. This does not attract cats, he said.
   It is legal for people to trap cats and hand them over to animal control. They can't just take them out in the county and dump them, he said.
   This way of addressing the problem will never overcome it, Beynon said. The environment will always support a certain number of animals and the environment will not change, he said.
   A more drastic, and more costly, plan would involve catching cats and then spaying or neutering them before releasing them back into the community. The environment will still have the same number of animals, but these animals would not reproduce, he said.
   But because of the cost of surgical sterilization, the city is unlikely to adopt this plan.

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