City considers cat conundrum

COEUR d’ALENE — In a quiet Coeur d’Alene neighborhood in a house with a yard, a garden and flower beds, birdsong pipes from the shade trees that line the street like a boulevard where Howard Kuhns considers cats.

Kuhns, willow lean with an easy laugh, said cats defecate in his flower beds and the garden where his wife works.

They aren’t his cats.

He doesn’t know who keeps the four or five cats that frequent his yard, but their feces makes unpleasant an otherwise peaceful experience like gardening.

“They poop in the flower bed, they poop in the garden,” he said. “My wife goes out to dig in the flower bed and it stinks.”

It’s not something neighborhood dogs do, nor do other pets that he can think of, and if they did, the city has an animal control division to deal with it. But the city’s animal control officers don’t take cats.

Kuhns thinks there is something wrong with this picture. Cat owners get a free pass, he told the Coeur d’Alene City Council this week.

“They just think that cats are different,” so they make no effort to contain their animals, Kuhn told the council.

“It’s difficult for some not to speed, but we still have laws against speeding,” Kuhns said. “It’s difficult for some people not to steal, but we still have laws against stealing. It’s difficult to contain a cat, but...”

The council has dealt with this divide in recent memory, and the memory isn’t considered fondly, council member Dan Gookin said.

In an effort to address the same complaint, the council called a meeting years ago to consider licensing cats, which drew a crowd.

“It was probably the biggest turnout the city council ever had,” said Gookin, himself a cat owner. “There were people on both sides of the fence, and cats on the fence.”

The issue became a mess, he said.

“It was a Dumpster fire,” Gookin said.

The council chose not to license cats, or restrict cats because of the headache the city foresaw.

“That would be a full-time job for someone all over the city just collecting all the (feral) cats,” Gookin said.

Council member Woody McEvers, who was on the City Council at the time of the earlier cat discussions, said the city had an agreement with the animal shelter to take cats.

The sun has since set on that agreement.

“They won’t take cats,” said Kuhns, who already checked. “It seems there should be something I can do about cats on my property.”

Mayor Steve Widmyer said council members will further peek into Pandora’s Box to see what the city can do to address the concern of Kuhns, and others with similar issues.

“We’ll do a little homework on that,” Widmyer said.