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Feeding, Fixing The Wild Cats

KATHY MOORE/STAFF

Feline Folks volunteers take care of free roaming cats in Sun City Center. They round them up to get them spayed and neutered. Vets will clip the top of the left ear to let others know it has been spayed or neutered.

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By SUSAN M. GREEN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 29, 2007

Updated: 09/27/2007 06:55 pm

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SUN CITY CENTER - Dinner was just being served when a woman in a motorized wheelchair pulled up beside Judy Stimson and started asking questions about the cats that were being fed in a Sun City Center parking lot.

Cats just like these ripped up the seats in her golf cart, she told Stimson.

'It was awful,' she said.

Stimson calmly discussed the mission of Feline Folks, a nonprofit organization she helped found. Members feed and care for colonies of free-roaming cats, she explained, but remove kittens and sterilize the adult animals so that their behavior improves and, over time, their numbers dwindle.

After a few minutes, the woman pulled away, unconvinced. She was still wondering if someone could remove the cats.

'As you can see, we've got a big education challenge,' Stimson said.

A longtime volunteer for various animal advocacy organizations, Stimson teamed up with Rita and Mike Bundas of Sun City Center to form Feline Folks in March. The organization has about 10 members who feed and care for cat colonies in Sun City Center, Stimson said.

Goals include educating local residents about the advantages of a program dubbed TNR, for trap, neuter and return. Members also hope to raise money to offset the costs of food, sterilization and basic health care for the stray and feral cats they care for. They also want to prod policy-makers to come up with solutions to the free-roaming cat problem that don't involve widespread euthanasia.

Feline Folks has modeled its TNR program on a concept publicized by Neighborhood Cats of New York and Maryland-based Alley Cat Allies, two nonprofit groups with national recognition in animal advocacy circles.

Under the program, adult cats in a colony are humanely trapped, sterilized and given rabies shots. The tip of their left ear is clipped to identify them as sterilized. Then they are returned to their colony to live out their days under the care of volunteers who feed at least once a day and check for kittens or newcomers.

Volunteers try to remove kittens as soon as they are weaned so they can become accustomed to human contact and have a chance at becoming house cats.

Stimson said colonies are found behind all kinds of businesses and apartment complexes across Hillsborough County, but Sun City Center is a hot spot because of its retiree population.

She said some winter residents leave cats to fend for themselves in the spring when it's time to head up north. Sometimes cats survive their owners, and heirs turn the animals loose rather than find homes for them.

Former house cats become strays, and if they are not sterilized, they produce kittens, Stimson said. If the kittens aren't cuddled by humans at a young age, they will not become candidates for adoption, she said.

'As they go from generation to generation, they get more wild,' she said.

Unsuitable as pets, the cats are forced to live on their own. Because they must forage to survive, they tend to be attracted to restaurants, homes or apartment complexes and businesses that have garbage bins for food disposal.

Some people mistakenly think colony caretakers are attracting cats by feeding them, but usually the cats have collected at certain sites because a food source was there before organized efforts to feed them, Mike Bundas said.

He and his wife, Rita, who is Feline Folks president, started caring for cat colonies about three years ago.

Volunteers with the Sun City Center security patrol, they said they were driving around when they spotted a mother cat with kittens in a parking lot in front of a local grocery store and decided she needed help.

Dubbed 'Mama Cat,' she has been spayed and no longer lives up to her name. But she is still living in a feral cat colony, Mike Bundas said.

He estimated that he and his wife have arranged for more than 30 cats to be spayed or neutered and returned to their colonies. More than 40 kittens have been captured, socialized and put up for adoption.

Feline Folks makes presentations on how to humanely trap cats and offers advice for finding low-cost spay-neuter programs, Stimson said.

Petra Gearhart, a feral cat program coordinator hired for Hillsborough County last month by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said most of the people she has tried to assist are individuals caring for colonies. She was not aware of any other incorporated groups besides Feline Folks in Hillsborough.

She said about 40 of 100 traps purchased through an ASPCA grant targeting feral cats are out on loan. The traps are available at no charge, but a $50 refundable deposit must be made to ensure that the traps are returned, she said.

Support for allowing feral cats to live out their lives in colonies is growing, Feline Folks members say. Neighborhood Cats of New York will convene a National Feral Cat Summit at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando on Nov. 10. For information, visit www.neighborhoodcats .org or e-mail feralcatsummit @yahoo.com.

For information about Feline Folks, call (813) 633-4279 or e-mail info@felinefolks.org. For information about the ASPCA program, call (813) 625-0910 or e-mail cat.spay@hot mail.com.

LEARN MORE

Neighborhood Cats of New York will convene a national feral cat summit at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando on Nov. 10. For information, visit www.neighbor hoodcats.org or e-mail feralcatsummit@yahoo.com.

Reporter Susan M. Green can be reached at (813) 865-1566 or sgreen@tampatrib.com.

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