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 Photo Above Photo By Joe Hu/Town Crier, Left Photo Courtesy Of Mary Ann Robertson
Ivor Durham and Christina Peck of Fat Cat Rescue hold rescued kittens, above. At left, a feral mother cat stands guard while her kittens play outside a Los Altos home. City Councilwoman Megan Satterlee first learned that Los Altos had a feral cat population when a young black-and-white kitten climbed onto her backyard deck one spring day last year.
An hour later, she spotted two kittens. Within a day, her husband Clay had pulled up the boards of the deck to unearth four kittens and they were en route to the veterinarian for vaccinations, spaying and neutering.
“If you haven’t been through it, you don’t know what to do or where to go,” she said.
As a novice last year, she turned to the Internet to research when kittens can be weaned, how to trap them humanely and to learn more about the feral cat population.
Satterlee can speak firsthand to the learning curve newcomers experience with the trap. After catching and neutering a male feral that may have fathered her adopted kittens, Satterlee got a raccoon instead of the mother cat.
“It’s funny, the raccoon was considerably calmer than the cat,” Satterlee said philosophically.
She found local homes for two of the kittens and kept two, Eleanor (Roosevelt) and Dolley (Madison).
Satterlee’s story represents an ideal of what residents can do when they want to take a hand in improving the lives of abandoned cats and their offspring. There are opportunities in Los Altos for residents interested in fostering, donating to animal groups or just learning more about why cats live wild in some city backyards. And this month is a prime time to consider adopting a cat or kitten.
The summer months are peak kitten season and litters of young animals are popping up around Los Altos. Six kittens were trapped at The Forum retirement community at Rancho San Antonio, four on Morton Avenue and five on Holt Avenue over the last two months. Female cats can start bearing young before they are even a year old, and can have more than one litter.
Los Altos resident Ivor Durham teams up with Mountain View resident Christina Peck to spearhead Fat Cat Rescue, a grassroots group that serves as a source of experience and advice for locals unsure what to do when a feral cat comes calling.
Peck described a four-step checklist for residents learning to treat abandoned domestic cats as something more than disposable animals.
“Be educated, be aware, take action and be compassionate,” she said. “There’s an alternative and there’re people willing to help you do the compassionate thing. … It’s going to make you feel really good and it’s going to teach your children.”
She and Durham go on rescue forays when residents call in search of help and broker foster placements and adoptions. Some of their ventures lead to stories of mayhem and heroism. One of their recent rescues, Scrappy, a gray-and-white kitten, was found wedged under foliage in a front yard with his front leg severed, perhaps by a dog.
“We had to clear a front yard’s worth of juniper bushes to get at him,” Durham said. After a vet visit and recuperation, Scrappy rockets around with his siblings (all of whom who are up for adoption), unimpeded by his three-legged gait.
Los Altos resident Mary Ann Robertson met two feral kittens last December when they visited her yard on Morton Avenue. At first, she didn’t know what to make of the newcomers – she had never had feral cats camp out in her yard before, but she got in the habit of putting out cat food. In May the female cat – who Robertson calls Siam – delivered four kittens and in June, brought them to Robertson’s patio for introductions and dinner.
“I call these teenage pregnancies, I think it was the first time Siam ever came into heat. She’s just a very small kitty,” Robertson said.
She was put in touch with Peck and Durham at Fat Cat Rescue, who helped her catch, spay and vaccinate the mom and all four kittens. The kittens, still tiny at 12 weeks old, are being socialized and offered for adoption this month.
Cat rescue efforts rely almost entirely on volunteer groups, and require involvement from even those totally unfamiliar with cats to interrupt the cycle of frequent pregnancies and kittens raised outdoors.
“They’re afraid they’re going to have to do the work,” Robertson said of some of her Los Altos acquaintances who hesitate to get involved with other feral cats in the neighborhood. “It’s matter of knowing (what to do) and then acting. There seem to be a lot of cats around.”
“If they want to deal with the feral problem in their yard they can trap, spay and neuter and release them, or trap and surrender them to the shelter,” said Palo Alto Animal Services Officer Cody McCartney.
His agency rents out humane traps for $15 and instructs residents on their use. The rectangular wire boxes are baited with cat food on one end and a spring-loaded door on the other.
While it takes effort to trap cats, cart them to the clinic and then back to one’s home for release, McCartney and others said such human intervention is the only way to control and reduce feral cat populations without wholesale euthanasia. Feral cats and infant kittens left with animal services are almost always put to death due to shelters’ limited facilities and manpower.
“If they are vaccinated, spayed and neutered, they live happier lives,” McCartney said. “We would like to see them released and work the population down naturally. Stanford did it. Moffett is doing it too.”
A few decades ago, the population of abandoned cats and their offspring on Stanford University’s campus had swelled to more than 500, according to University estimates. Stanford decided to implement a mass capture and euthanasia. After public outcry, the school partnered with a nascent local rescue group, the Stanford Cat Network, to trap, spay and neuter and release the cats. Today, the University has a population of approximately 50 cats, refreshed by continuing abandonment on campus and in the neighborhood, regularly vaccinated and sterilized.
Palo Alto Animal Services has a small clinic that provides low-cost neutering and vaccinations, and can refer residents to other low-cost clinics, including those that have days devoted to walk-in appointments for approximately $25.
As population demographics in Los Altos change, Peck has seen changing attitudes toward feral cats among newcomers who are building large prestige homes.
“They don’t want any critters or any wildlife around,” Peck said.
McCartney has observed something similar.
“I notice a lot of the more affluent neighborhoods, they want to trap and get rid of their problem,” he said. “We domesticated all of these animals and now we neglect them. Who’s going to take care of the ones who are neglected or forgotten?”
Local groups such as Fat Cat Rescue, Peninsula Catworks and Peninsula Fix our Ferals can’t neuter every abandoned cat and rescue every kitten themselves, but they try to seed the community with neighbors who will take action and spread awareness.
Robertson and Satterlee, neighbors in south Los Altos, share a common interest in their community’s homeless cats, and have connected to other residents through Fat Cat Rescue. Los Altos residents not in a position to adopt can help trap or foster animals who are on the way to a permanent home.
Another success story of a street-kitten turned good is Boots, one of a litter of kittens found on the street by a single mother in San Mateo. When she and her children went to stay in a family shelter, Fat Cat Rescue took in Boots and placed him in a foster home (full disclosure – it was this reporter’s home). An energetic year-old cat with a fondness for jumping on human’s backs and climbing bookcases, he needed an adoptive family that could keep up with his rambunctious nature.
The Blanchard family in Los Altos saw Boots advertised in 2007 as Pet of the Week in the Town Crier and brought him home to see if he would mesh well with their boxer, Bridget, and 4-year-old daughter, Lily, who was recovering from a serious illness. According to mom Lisa, Boots now believes himself to be a dog like Bridget, and has taken on a new line of work – Lily had a relapse of her previous illness this spring, and Boots is her “companion” as she goes through a new round of chemotherapy.
“He is quite the hunter and brings Lily little gifts and when she is tired. he just kicks back with her,” Blanchard said. “I have never seen an animal love one human so much!”
To meet Los Altos kittens available for adoption or to learn more about local fostering opportunities, visit www.fatcatrescue.org. For more information about the Palo Alto Animal Shelter, visit www.cityofpaloalto.org/depts/pol/animal_services.asp.
Contact Eliza Ridgeway at
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