'Operation Catsnip' targets area's homeless cat population
<p>Under anesthesia, a feral cat has its ear tipped as a way of identifying it as being fixed from being able to reproduce.</p>
<p>Jessica Reineccius, a veterinarian technician, controls a feral cat in a net after Nichole Leonard, veterinarian, transitioned the feline from a kennel Thursday while performing a series of spay and neuter surgeries on animals at the Kootenai Humane Society in Hayden.</p>
<p>Nichole Leonard, veterinarian with Kootenai Humane Society, performs a spay procedure on a feral cat.</p>
HAYDEN — Kathy Lanning's greenhouse is home to more than just plants.
It's a temporary stronghold where she is keeping eight free-roaming cats until she can successfully capture them in humane traps and have them spayed or neutered.
"I finally got them trapped in my greenhouse and I shut the door on them, so they’re in there wrecking everything. I came up here to see what I could do," Lanning said Thursday, standing in the reception area of Kootenai Humane Society. "They said if I trapped them I could bring them in and get them fixed. They can live out there, it's a large acreage, but I need them to not multiply.”
Lanning said her St. Maries property and the neighboring properties have at least 30 free-roaming felines. The area where she lives is a hotspot for people to leave unwanted kittens.
"I know somebody dumped them," she said. "They were real small when I first started seeing them and I know a couple of them got killed.”
Lanning said she has been working for about six months on containing the population. She has trapped several — five have been fixed and two have been tamed and are now up for adoption at KHS. She even kept one for herself, "and he’s awesome," she said. "He lost his tail, so now he has a bobbed tail."
Lanning's situation is not uncommon for North Idaho. KHS development director Vicky Nelson said in the Silver Valley alone, the free-roaming, or feral, feline population is at least 2,100, and the number of feral cats in the Coeur d'Alene-metro area is difficult to estimate. In the last three years, the society has altered 2,200 feral cats, removing them from the reproduction cycle in efforts to lower the numbers.
"We get them in days old,” Nelson said. "People will bring them in in a box, ‘I found these under my front bush’ or ‘I took the cover off my boat and I found all these kittens.'"
KHS has partnered with the Silver Valley Cat Wranglers for "Operation Catsnip," a movement to help control the populations of free-roaming cats from Mullan to Coeur d'Alene. Through KHS' Trap Neuter Release program, volunteers are renting the humane traps from the society, capturing males and females, bringing them in to be altered for $15 and releasing them in the same area where they were found.
"What so many people want you to do is they want us to take them, but they don’t want us to bring them back, they want to get rid of them,” said Debbie Jeffrey, KHS executive director. "But the way we are, and any humane society or rescue group, we don’t have the staff and we don't have the space."
“People think, ‘Well you’re the Humane Society, you’re supposed to take them,’ and wish we could,” Nelson said. "People come out here and they’ll just dump animals. They’ll look at you and say, ‘Well if you don’t take it, I’m just going to shoot it.' They literally threaten you with the animal’s life to get you to take it."
Jeffrey explained that once feral cats are safely trapped and altered, they can't just be released into the wild. They should return to their original colonies because cats are territorial and have established perimeters; moving them to unfamiliar locations can cause conflict and injury.
"You can’t just trap 15 cats in one area and move them to another," she said. “That’s not how it works.”
JoAnne Mendive of Kellogg is one of the coordinators for the nonprofit Silver Valley Cat Wranglers. She has worked in pet rescue for more than 20 years, and she said the goal of Operation Catsnip and the Wranglers in general is "to minimize the suffering for free-roaming cats."
"The reason I do it is because my heart goes out to these animals," she said. "Tons of them aren't even feral, they're sometimes last year's kittens. People drop them and they find themselves on the streets, wet and cold and pregnant and they can't keep their kittens. It's horrific."
The Cat Wranglers have a core group of about eight volunteers who do everything from grant writing to field work, plus fosters who care for the cats until they find homes. The organization began trapping and releasing in April and brings cats in to KHS for altering twice a week. Mendive said it is a daily job that has its heartaches and its rewards.
"We weren’t put here to create suffering, which is what happens to a lot of these poor animals,” she said. “We were put on Earth to take care of these animals, and we’re doing a lousy job of it.
"We can’t really say they’re somebody else’s responsibility when nobody does anything."
Mendive said the plan is to sweep west through the Silver Valley and communities along the Interstate 90 corridor, fixing and returning felines along the way. She said volunteers will be putting up fliers so people are aware. People will know if the cats in their neighborhood have been altered because the vets "tip," or clip, the point of one ear. The cats are also given rabies shots.
If the felines are still young, Mendive said there is hope they can become pets.
"If we catch kittens that are under 12 weeks, we can normally tame them, that's what we’ve been doing with the foster homes," she said. "As long as they’re young enough, we can tame them and adopt them out as real cats."
KHS also offers altering at a reduced price for domestic cats through the SPOT (Stop Pet Overpopulation Today) program, where pet owners can bring in their cats for $35 neuters or $45 spays.
"It's the humane thing to do. Get them fixed, let them live out their lives," Nelson said. "You have to go on a person’s heart. Can you live with yourself knowing that you took an animal’s life because it was in your way, or it was a nuisance for you?
“They are living, breathing, feeling creatures, and they need to be taken care of.”
Lanning said it makes her mad when people dump cats in her neighborhood, and that it's not fair to those who reside in those areas.
"It’s cruel. It’s thoughtless to the people you’re dumping them on. It’s mistreatment to the animals," she said. "Why couldn’t they bring them up here and pay the $15, that’s almost nothing, you know, and give them a chance to live?”
KHS and Silver Valley Cat Wranglers are actively seeking volunteers, reliable fosters and financial donations to continue the mission of "Operation Catsnip," promoting healthy feline populations in North Idaho while decreasing the number of free-roaming cats.
The Cat Wranglers are hosting a fundraising raffle that will be drawn Dec. 18. Tickets are $1 each or $5 for six. Ticket holders can win gift baskets that include prizes such as grocery store gift certificates, zip line adventure passes and dinner for two at the Brooks Restaurant in Wallace. For information, visit the Silver Valley Cat Wranglers Facebook page, http://on.fb.me/1UaAcfv.
Humane traps for feral cats can be rented from KHS for deposits of $50. For information about how to donate or volunteer at KHS, visit www.kootenaihumanesociety.com.