PLATTSBURGH, N.Y. — When Carol Myette moved to her mobile home park here, she wasn’t planning to share her property with 13 feral cats.
“The problem has been here since I moved in,” she said. “I’m a big softy. I started taking care of them; I can’t stop now.”
She’s not alone. As populations of feral cats abound, there seems to be no easy solution to the problem.
Feral cats don’t live inside her home. They reside underneath it. They pour out from under the structure, meowing and pushing each other aside when they know it’s tome to be fed.
Across the park, one of her neighbors has the same cat crisis.
“I saw one cat when I moved in here,” Barbara Jones said. Two years later, the area beneath her mobile home is occupied by at least seven tabby cats.
“I feed them because I can’t watch an animal suffer,” Jones said.
The problem is made worse for the women because there’s no one to turn to for help.
The local health departments said they have no jurisdiction.
“The SPCA is seen as a cure-all, but it’s not,” said Inger Joy, president of Elmore SPCA in Peru.
She explained that because feral cats have never had contact with humans, it isn’t humane to bring them to a shelter.
Strays are different. They have been dumped somewhere or have been lost, Joy said.
The population of feral cats is not something that is specific to one area. “This problem is everywhere,” said Victoria St. John, founder and director of St. John Feral Cat Fund.
St. John said the problem is one governments don't want to take on. “I just think they don’t know how to solve it,” she said.
One solution is to trap the feral cats, take them to a spay-and-neuter program, and when they are OK release them back into the wild.
“Eventually, they will die off, and the numbers are reduced,” St. John said.
Regardless, something must be done, she said.
“It’s not about resources; it’s about determination,” she said. “We are human beings. We should be able to say that we don’t want to see anything suffer."
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