Kitten season ramps up heartache, another Berks group tackling trapping and sterilizing stray, feral, community cats with TNR
May 1—While tiny, fluffy felines can be cute, the height of kitten season is a nightmare for those trying to control the burgeoning community cat populations.
Kitten season has stretched to all months of the year in Berks, especially with the mild winters the area has been having says Joseph Salender Jr., founder and president of Berks Community Cats. In the warmer months, reproduction ramps up, but this spring has been unusual, he said.
On April 25 his organization had 14 spots set up for cats at a trap-neuter-release, or TNR, clinic.
"I've never seen numbers like this past clinic," Salender, who first did TNR in 1998, said Friday. "Out of 10 female cats, eight were pregnant and one was nursing. Only one cat was not with children, that's a 90% ratio."
One of the eight pregnant cats gave birth to four kittens while waiting for the clinic.
In addition to the devastating news that seven of the females that were brought to the April 25 clinic were pregnant and those pregnancies would be terminated, one cat was injured and needed to be euthanized and another died due to an adverse reaction to anesthesia.
Each death is something that tears away a little piece of Joe.
"We have some tête-a-tête on Facebook over 'How can you do that, have these kittens aborted?' and it's a really valid question," Salender, 67, said. "Nobody likes to see that happen, especially when you're talking about viable lives....
"Just this past week we would have had another 22-24 kittens had they been delivered. What do I do?"
Salender's nonprofit was formed in 2021 and operates to support community cats and the people who take care of them, with an emphasis on trap, neuter and return.
He says he never signed up to be running a rescue organization.
"I have friends in rescue and I try to get the cats over to them whenever I can because I don't want to make the mistake of handing somebody over to a dog fighter or somebody who is going to feed a kitten to a snake," Salender said. "I don't have the time, the experience or the desire to vet all the people that want a kitten. And there are organizations out there that do it very well."
The group has a closed page on Facebook that members of the public can ask to join.
Shoey Strays TNR Hub
Jillian Hyde, 37, of Shoemakersville started Shoey Strays TNR Hub and Kitty Tracker, which is also a closed group on Facebook, about one year ago.
"We've gotten dozens and dozens of cats fixed since that point," she said. "We've saved some of the kittens and gotten them homes. The friendly cats we've trapped, we've also found home for them. The ones that aren't friendly, the ones that kind of belong where they are, we got them fixed, got them vaccinated and put them back in their home outside."
Hyde, a stay-at-home mom to three children, two of whom are not of school age yet, said she routinely has applied to use the Animal Rescue League of Berks County's Operation CatSnip clinics to get outdoor cats sterilized and vaccinated.
"Each clinic I get four slots for people to get grants from the Animal Rescue League called CatSnip, where each cat you get fixed is only $15, which is a huge difference from the $40 or $50 price tag at other places," Hyde said. "So that's helped significantly.
"The appointments are kind of hard to come by. I set an alarm to wake up at 4, 5, 6 in the morning to try to get these appointments because they post them early, early in the morning. I did have a good stretch, four or five weeks in a row, where I was able to get four slots per week."
She noted that Shoemakersville has 10 certificates per year that borough residents can use to get cats sterilized at No Nonsense Neutering in Muhlenberg Township by paying a nominal co-pay.
"I have purposely not touched those for our efforts," Hyde said. "I've been raising money on my own to cover these $15 appointments. I wanted to make sure I left them for the rest of the community that isn't in our group or maybe doesn't have Facebook."
She said she also uses Berks Animal Hospital in Shoemakersville, where people can contribute to the Shoey Strays account there
"They're amazing," Hyde said. "They actually will TNR for us for $50, which is a big price tag, but it's convenient, it's close by. It's only $10 more than No Nonsense would be. And if I get in a situation where I have a cat that needs to be fixed immediately, or someone trapped a cat and didn't have a plan for it, they'll step in and help me out and fix the cat, or if we have a medical issue."
Last week Hyde's group trapped a feral cat that they discovered had three mammary tumors the size of baseballs. After being examined it was determined she needed to be euthanized.
"And that same day there was another female that also needed to be put down due to breast cancer, although she only had one sizable tumor rather than three of the pictured female," Hyde said.
According to a 2005 article published in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine, "cats spayed prior to 6 months of age had a 91% reduction in the risk of mammary carcinoma development compared with intact cats. Those spayed prior to 1 year had an 86% reduction in risk."
Worse things than death
In addition to injuries and diseases, unmanaged outdoor cat groups or colonies can spread fatal viruses that cause pain and suffering and other medical conditions. Unaltered cats are more likely to bite and scratch one another.
Salender said he recently trapped two cats with severe issues. One had flesh-eating bacteria, or MERSA, that had eaten half the top of her head away. Another in the same colony had a missing eye, was blind in the other and was filled with parasites and disease.
"As Dr. Fry says, 'there are worse things than death'," Salender said, quoting veterinarian Dr. Jennifer Fry, who is executive director of the Fairchild Feral Friends Foundation and operates The Vet on Main in Birdsboro.
"I think sometimes people ought to see the injured and sick cats and kittens in order to understand the life they often live," Salender said. "It's absolutely heart-wrenching."
The people who own the land where the two cats were trapped did not want the cats put down without a second opinion, but they didn't have the resources to take care of the outdoor cats they were feeding in the first place.
"Good people who found themselves behind the eight ball, as my dad used to say," Salender said. "Those are people BCC does a lot for."
The two cats were humanely euthanized.
"The most humane way to address a feral and stray cat population is actually trap-neuter-return because if you remove a group of cats from a location, all that is going to happen is a vacuum effect," Hyde said. "You're going to end up with a bigger group of cats than you started with and this group of cats are not going to be fixed, they are not going to be vaccinated."
Ones that shouldn't be outdoors
When trapping outdoor cats, the felines may be feral and not used to or able to tolerate human interaction, or they could be strays that once had a home and became lost or were dumped by their owners. Those cats are returned to their outdoor home after being fixed and vaccinated.
"We are surrounded by farms and we're right along a river, so our rat, mice, you know, vermin, population is huge," Hyde added. "So they're actually helping us keep down those populations."
There are exceptions, though.
"Our area is pretty bad for dumping, especially in the farming areas on the outskirts of our borough," Hyde said. "People dump all the time, which is illegal and second, it is not right because especially with established colonies, you drop off a cat that really doesn't belong, they're going to be pushed out and end up starving."
The cats that are used to human interaction and crave attention stand out when trapped.
"Sometimes people put the sweetest cats out on the street to fend for themselves," Salender said. "We round them up during TNR only to find they would do well as indoor pets."
Those are the cases that are especially sad, since it means they once had a home.
