Though the two-hour sheriff’s search sprang from a case of mistaken identity, resident Bryan Harrison said the mix-up brought to light a very real Mountain House problem — a population boom of feral cats.
“Two thousand (feral cats) might be conservative,” said Harrison, the vice president of Mountain House Feral Cat Rescue, a resident-based group started in late May to try to get the feral cat population under control.
“It’s hard to know (how many),” he said. “It’s blown into a big problem. You do see a cat here and there, almost everywhere you go.”
Helping Harry
Mountain House Feral Cat Rescue started with founders Anne-Marie Swainpoel, who is the group’s trapper, and Jacqueline Lacaze-Dekker, the group’s president. The two women were united in a goal to help a feral cat commonly known around the Mountain House Market as “Harry.”
Harry had developed an eye infection, and when they had rescued him and had his problem resolved by a local veterinarian, the two women turned their attention to the thousands of other feral cats roaming the community.
“It stared with Harry, and it kind of escalated,” Lacaze-Dekker said.
A short time later, Harrison and his wife, Patricia, offered their help, he said. The rescue now consists of the Harrisons, Lacaze-Dekker, Swainpoel, Kristie Harada, Jennifer Serena, Amy Young, Rachel Mullen, Danielle Koehn and Scott Dekker.
The goal of the group now is to catch feral cats, have them sprayed or neutered and turn the adults loose again in the community, while the kittens are tamed for adoption. Since late May, the rescue has stopped nearly 30 feral cats from breeding and found homes for nearly two dozen kittens.
The problem likely started when the housing market crashed in 2008 and many Mountain House residents abandoned their house cats, Harrison said. Over time, those cats have produced generations of feral offspring.
Based on statistics, he said, a single breeding pair of feral cats can produce 420,000 kittens in seven years, taking into account the progeny of their offspring.
If left unchecked, Harrison and others fear the population could become a huge nuisance.
“If we waited another year (to start), it might have been beyond a level of catch-and-release — we might have had to euthanize them,” he said.
Open-door policy
Many of the volunteers have opened their homes to become foster parents to dozens of feral kittens, including the Harrisons, who have shared their house with as many as 17.
“I’m a big animal advocate and lover — all of us are,” Patricia Harrison said.
Each kitten they save is a success story, she said, showing off the eight who occupied a special room in their house Tuesday, Aug. 14.
One kitten they named Smokey had a breakthrough the other day, she said, when he purred in her arms for the first time.
“It happened all of a sudden,” she said with a smile. “It’s a moment.”
The key to the foster program, Swainpoel said, is to provide the kittens the nurturing they need to rid them of feral instincts and prepare them for adoption as house cats.
The younger they are, the easier they are to train, she said.
The goal is to capture the kittens in the first six weeks, because after 12 weeks they are typically too feral to return to society as pets, she said. Cats that can’t be domesticated are sterilized and returned to the cat colony where they were captured, so they can continue to help the control the area’s rodent population.
Several volunteers around Mountain House have tried to care for feral cats by monitoring feeding stations that provide food and water to the colonies.
Catch me if you can
Catching feral cats is no easy task, Swainpoel said.
Each day, she sets up nonlethal traps at dawn and dusk in areas where cat colonies have been identified. Among the Mountain House hotspots is the creek that runs through a portion of the community.
She said cats live there because of the available food source of squirrels and rodents and great hiding spots in the shrubs.
“It takes 24 to 36 hours from trap to release,” she said. “If there are (young) kittens, we try to get the adults back in 24 hours.”
The key to the rescue’s success is educating the public, she said.
“Whether you like cats or don’t like cats, whether you feed them or don’t feed them — we want to keep them around, but we don’t want to overpopulate the community and they become a nuisance,” Swainpoel said. “I think we’re just touching the tip of the iceberg.”
Community outreach
Funding the program through their own efforts, group members have dished out thousands of dollars to keep the rescue going. The fees they charge for a kitten adoption, $100, covers only the spaying or neutering costs and the feline’s first set of medical shots. The other costs they incur — including cages, traps, food and resources to finance the rescue — are paid for by members.
Bryan Harrison said the members hope to attain nonprofit status soon to reap the benefits of state and federal grants.
Mountain House Community Services District directors Andy Su and Jim Lamb have voiced their support for the rescue, and Su said he placed the group on the board’s September agenda to discuss giving them $5,000 for their cause.
“I applaud them,” Su said. “Pest control is one of the 18 functions the MHCSD is responsible for. I think what they are doing is great.”
Lamb agreed that the volunteers provide a service that is beneficial to the community.
“Don’t want them to bear a fiscal problem that was our cost to begin with,” Lamb said. “It’s been on my radar for a while. I wish more was done earlier so it wasn’t as big of a problem that it is. Catch and sterilize seems to be an effective program.”
Donations welcome
The community has slowly rallied around the rescue, Bryan Harrison said, and donations are starting to come in.
Earlier in the week, a couple of children had a cookie sale and dropped off $2 in an envelope, which was preceded by a gift of $5 and portions of their allowances each week to help the cats. It’s small, but every bit helps sustain the group.
To spread their message, members of the rescue have created a website, www.mountainhousecats.com, and a Facebook page, which also advertises the kittens available for adoption.
“It’s been an adventure,” Bryan Harrison said. “It all happened pretty quickly. If we didn’t do something, it was going to get really, really ugly.”
The rescue will host a fundraiser from 6 to 8 p.m. Sept. 13 at the Mountain House Bar, 16784 Grant Line Road. The event will include live music and a silent auction, and donations of auction items are being accepted.
At a glance
• Mountain House Feral Cat Rescue: www.mountainhousecats.com or 597-8150
When they went on vacation for the past couple of weeks her boyfriend had found a small (3-4 week old) kitten outside of Popeye's in Tracy. The kitten was apparently in fairly bad shape with fleas and diarrhea and was quite thin and malnourished. There had been no signs of any other kittens her age, but she was found with a few other older kittens. My daughter's BF tried to take all 3 with him but the older ones were healthier and able to get away. So he just brought the one home (cont'd)
Instead, she was told that nobody would be taking the cat temporarily due to the fact that it was found in Tracy and not MH, and furthermore she was told that she should just put the cat back on the streets of Tracy. Even after she explained the state the kitten was found in and that her BF and done the work of ridding the animal of fleas and worms was she denied "babysitting" services for the week. My daughter told me that they were going to provide the cat-sitter with the food and litter needed, and pay for any emergency vet care if it came to that, but she was still told to put the kitten back at Popeye's.
Even as a non-cat person I find this to be extremely uncaring. Also I was unaware that Tracy feral cats were somehow less important than MH feral cats and that these cats should be left to die while MH feral cats should be saved and adopted out.
My daughter ended up calling a couple of rescue groups in Tracy and though they responded after she had found a friend to watch the kitten for the week, contact with one of these rescue groups has already led to an adoptive parent for the little kitten, whom they named "Olive Oil" since she was saved from a Popeye's restaurant. My daughter will not be charging the adopter for the adoption... she's just happy to be able to save a small life and find a loving home for the animal.
I have since spoken to people from other animal rescue groups who are as shocked and appalled as I am that she was told to put the cat back onto the street because it wasn't from the "right town". Perhaps it was an issue of space or money, but to deny someone a relatively small service who had worked as hard as anybody else to get the group off the ground seems hardened and uncaring to me. My daughter and her boyfriend are obviously adults and can do what they want, but I for one would not be fostering or providing financial help to this group if I lived in Mountain House, and certainly not if I lived in Tracy since Tracy cats are clearly less important. I'm sure this will offend a few people, but I suspect if that small kitten was aware of what was going on, she would have been offended that the people who saved her were instructed by a "rescue" group to put her back on the street to die.
Its strange life cycle is meant to infect rodents. Any rodents infected with it lose their fear of cats and are actually attracted to cat urine.
(Google, include quotes: "parasite hijacks the mind of its host" citizen )
Cats attract rodents to your home with their whole slew of diseases. If you want rodents in your home keep cats outside of it to attract diseased rodents to your area.
(Google for: rabid cat adopted wake county)
Adopting any cat that's been taken from outdoors is just playing Russian Roulette.
http://notesfromadogwalker.com/2012/07/21/how-i-failed-as-a-rescuer-lessons-from-a-sanctuary/
No, it is not a great life to be a feral cat...but being shot (and possibly only fatally injured...left to die a VERY horrible death) is not humane either.
These people are doing a wonderful thing...I've rescued 2 feral kittens that found me in the past 2 years...and I saved 3 others from being put to sleep as well. All 5 cats have loving homes and are spoiled rotten...unlike the "hundreds" that are laying underground at the "woodsmans" home. Thank God I don't live near him...
I have also taken ferals who are beyond rescue in for a HUMANE death...because it IS kinder than starving on the streets, getting hit by a car or shot by some jerk who thinks he's got all the facts.
this is not a "natural" problem...this is a man-made problem, which means we need to correct the errors of our ways.
spay and neuter folks...your animal will not "miss" those parts...they aren't nearly as important to them as they seem to be to us. ;-)
If a dog is found hunting native animals out of season and not under direct supervision of its licensed owner, that dog is destroyed. No questions asked.
Your cat has no special privileges for doing even worse. Its only pitiful excuse being that it's a cat that you like more than all other animals on earth and could care less about anything but yourself and your cats. That's NO excuse for your criminal behavior against all of nature and all of humanity.
Cats ARE actually a natural phenomenon...unlike the strange human made anomaly that you seem to want us to believe they are. You spoke early on about how cats have caused deaths from plague. That's the same thinking that led thousands of dogs & cats to be killed during the black plague because they caused it. Funny thing was...it was rats all along. Hmm...now, what sort of animal named in this article kills rats? Gee...can't think of one...must be hamsters.
My "criminal" behavior towards all of nature and humanity is laughable. Last I checked...I'm one of the one's spaying/neutering, finding homes for and humanely killing the one's that are beyond rescue/rehab...not the one counting on my Annie Oakley prowess to kill them in a field in one shot.
You go ahead and enjoy your manliness...it's obvious to me that you need to brutalize cats because they are an affront to said manliness. I'm done with your trolling self.
Kudos to the Mtn House Cat Rescue, the Tracy Shelter etc. THEY are good people!
"Anyone who has accustomed himself to regard the life of any living creature as worthless is in danger of arriving also at the idea of worthless human life". ~ Albert Schweitzer
“Man is the cruelest animal.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, & from man to pig, & from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” ― George Orwell, Animal Farm
"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~Immanuel Kant
"I looked at all the caged animals in the shelter...the cast-offs of human society. I saw in their eyes love & hope, fear & dread, sadness & betrayal. And I was angry. "God," I said, "this is terrible! Why don't you do something?" God was silent for a moment & then He spoke softly. I have done something," He replied. "I created you." ~The Animals' Savior Copyright Jim Willis
"To educate our people, and especially our children, to humane attitudes and actions toward living things is to preserve and strengthen our national heritage and the moral values we champion in the world". ~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy
FACT: During all this investigation I have discovered something that is unfaltering without fail. Something that you can bet your very life on and win every last time. That being -- IF A TNR CAT-HOARDER IS TALKING THEN THEY ARE LYING. 100% guaranteed!
FACT: When researching over 100 of the most "successful" TNR programs worldwide, JUST ONE trapped more than 0.4%. Oregon's 50,000 TNR'ed cats (the highest rate I found) is 4.9% of all ferals in their state. Yet, by applying population growth calculus on the unsterilized 95.1% they will have trapped only 0.35% of all cats in their state sometime this year. <0.4% is a far cry from the required 80%-90% to be the least bit effective.
FACT: Hunted To Extinction (or in this case, extirpation of all outdoor cats) is the ONLY method that is faster than a species like cats can exponentially out-breed and out-adapt to. Especially a man-made invasive species like these cats that can breed 2-4X's faster than any naturally occurring cat-species.
FACT: Trap & Sterilize (TNR) is an even bigger abject failure because these man-made ecological disasters cannot be trapped faster than they exponentially breed out of control, and they also continue the cruelly annihilate all native wildlife (from the smallest of prey up to the top predators that are starved to death), and the cats continue to spread many deadly diseases that they carry today -- FOR WHICH THERE ARE NO VACCINES AGAINST THEM. Many of which are even listed as bioterrorism agents. (Such as Tularemia and The Plague -- Yes, people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA. No fleas nor rats even required. The cats themselves carry and transmit the plague all on their own.)