Feral Cat Colony

For many years there were two colonies of feral cats living on Morro Rock - a large one, that ranged in size from 25 to 35 adults at any given time - on the south side, and a smaller group on the east side - about 10 adults. They were maintained by well-meaning people and by a local cat rescue organization - HART.

One elderly couple arrived each morning in a van. They were lovely people and well-intended. They would cook for cats, often bringing an entire turkey (cut up, of course). One calico cat was their particular favorite. It would even (very cautiously) enter their van to eat its meal away from the others. Three other people would arrive each morning with scraps for the cats. I'm sure others would also throughout the day.

The Rock had also become a dumping spot for people who wanted to get rid of pets. Many mornings I would arrive to find some poor, frightened, abandoned cat looking desperately for its cruel owner. These people, not understanding the dynamics of a feral cat colony, apparently felt that their cats would be fed there. What I saw happen to these cats was not what the owner's probably had in mind - if they cared at all.

(To any of you idiots who dumped your animals and are reading this - your cats were often terrorized and harmed by the feral cats. Shame on you!)

One morning there was an all-black mother cat and two of her kittens that had obviously just been dumped. She was meowing plaintively and came to me quickly. I was preparing to take them to the Humane Society when other people began to arrive. Two young women roommates volunteered to take the kittens; another woman gave the mother a home.

Despite the food being brought to these constantly reproducing feral animals, they caught many birds, lizards, and other small wildlife. We saw many tailless sparrows - the lucky ones who only lost a few feathers and escaped without being eaten. This was having an impact on wrens and other bird populations at the Rock. Then one day, I was looking up at the aerie and saw a black cat just above the birds. That was it. The cats had to go.

This was about 1992, if I remember correctly.

On learning that HART had been given a grant of money from the city to remove and sterilize the cats, I talked with that group's founder to see what was being done. She offered to loan me traps; I was to bring the cats to her, supposedly to be adopted out or cared for. Only problem with that plan was that she ended up releasing them back at the Rock - something she hadn't mentioned to me that they had permission to do - ("They are Rock kitties and have a right to live there!") or at one of the other feral colonies she was feeding.

While the cats were sterilized and would no longer reproduce, they were still killing birds, lizards, and other wildlife and shouldn't have been there. I stopped using her cages and bringing cats to her.

In the course of the short time of working with HART, this woman shared with me that her organization collects money in stores (you've probably seen the collection jars at the check-out counters) and uses that and other monies to maintain cat colonies in the area - one she claimed had 200 members and was behind the high school; two others of slightly smaller sizes were at the corner of South Bay Boulevard and Los Osos Valley Road in Los Osos.

Anyway, with the permission of State Parks, I, my son, Michael, and a friend, Pete, began trapping the cats. HART asked that we give them the kittens that were part Siamese, feeling they could get a hefty adoption fee for finding homes for those more "desirable" ones, but wanted none of the others. We honored the request.

Knowing that HART had limited space for the work they were doing, I talked with Miners Ace Hardware in Morro Bay and got them to donate materials for HART to build new cages for housing the cats they were trying to place. Miners was very generous in their response.

I talked with the people I knew of who were feeding the cats daily about the importance of catching the cats. I asked them to stop feeding them so we could more easily catch them. Two agreed. The man in the van (his wife had died and he was now feeding on his own), refused to stop, feeling that the cats needed him. He was very nice about it and saw my point, but just needed to continue. I understood, but needed to remove the cats. He did continue feeding and we talked frequently. The day we captured the calico, I told him that the cat was in the cage in my car and asked if he wanted to take her home with him. He was obviously very sad about this, but said he couldn't take her as he already had seven cats at home. He never came back. That was the saddest part of the entire experience and I still feel bad about it. Even so, the cats shouldn't be there.

Pete was a kick. He, actually, was the first person to point out the Peregrines to me. He was an interesting fellow to talk with. Pete had grown up in England and as a young man had worked for a large estate there as a groundsman. Part of his job was to help with hunt parties. We spent a lot of time watching Peregrines together. And you should have seen him in his quest to trap the cats. He made intricate plans, especially in outwitting gulls who would try to get the bait. It was quite funny when the gulls would do their own plotting and figuring on just how to avoid tripping the wire and getting captured. They would circle the cages, looking from every angle, then carefully enter and, quite often, managed to grab that chicken wing and retreat before the door slammed shut. Pete would curse and we would both laugh and marvel at how smart those gulls were. He did, of course, end up several times needing to release one that hadn't been quick enough. And once there were three kittens balancing on the eleveted metal plate the trip wire was attached to. It took a fourth to have enough weight to set off the trip wire and be captured.

My son, Michael, loves cats. He was our quality control "expert" on the job. It was very important to him (and to Pete and I) that the cats not be injured in any way by us. He, of course, wanted to adopt each of the kittens - we already had a houseful of pets, so that didn't happen. But Michael also enjoyed working with Pete and helping to outsmart the gulls. It was a team effort.

Oh, one oddly amusing incident. State Parks had put up "Don't feed the feral cats" signs for us. (It's a lot easier to capture a hungry cat.) At some point a local reporter and his active-in-maintaining-feral-cat-colonies girlfriend were found by police defacing those signs (apparently more than a little inebriated). No arrests were made.

We were able to place a few of the adult cats with local ranchers for their barns. But, as you might imagine, there isn't a big demand for feral cats. The rest of the animals were, for the most part, taken to the Humane Society. Oddly enough, we started noticing that those same cats would turn back up at the Rock within a few days. That was frustrating. HART was apparently "rescuing them" and releasing them back at the Rock.

We sometimes saw HART volunteers later in the day trying to trap cats, but cats that would "disappear" that we hadn't caught, often showed up again. I have no idea how successful they were.

In the course of a little over a year, we completed the job, having captured approximately 48 adults and about 25 kittens - that's not counting the ones we caught, gave to HART, and had to recapture.

Some time after after, the woman who runs HART began taking credit for the removal of the colony, including doing so - I'm told - at a city council meeting- which makes little difference to me. We weren't looking for credit, only to protect the bird population - including the Peregrines. It was just such an odd move on HART's part, having fought us all the way on capturing the cats and keeping them off the Rock, to now claim they had earned their grant money and gotten the job done.

This (mostly correct) piece was part of an article from The Cat Rescue Movement vs. Wildlife Defenders on the Department of Fish and Game's website:

"Meanwhile, in Morro Bay, Judy Sullivan, a writer and bird watcher, held her peace for years watching good-hearted cat feeders at Morro Rock State Ecological Preserve, where nesting birds include the white-crowned sparrow, snowy plover, and endangered Peregrine falcon. Every morning an elderly couple served a sumptuous breakfast of fish, roast turkey, and gourmet cat food to some 45 cats. Evenings, an elderly man brought a simpler supper. Then, last spring, Sullivan and a friend spotted some white-crowned sparrows that, at first glance, they took to be mutants: they had no tails. Looking more closely, they realized that "the feathers had been mauled by cats." Shortly thereafter, the sole Peregrine falcon fledging seen that spring vanished from its nest in a rock crevice. Sullivan knew she had to take action.

"She persuaded the three feeders that neither birds nor cats were well served by cohabitation on the Rock. Together, Sullivan, her young son, and one of the feeders borrowed traps from the local cat welfare group, Homeless Animal Rescue Team (HART). (In 1994 HART had received a $2,500 grant from the city to catch and sterilize cats, with permission to return them to the Rock. State park officals have since prevailed on the Morro Bay City Council to rescind that permission.) With these traps Sullivan and her allies captured 45 cats within a year. HART could take only 20. So Sullivan found adoptive homes for 12, and took the remaining 13 to the local animal shelter. Two cats eluded capture but were later shot by unknown vigilantes. While the trapping was under way, state park staff posted a sign warning against abandoning or feeding cats at Morro Rock. City police caught a HART leader attempting to scratch out the 'no feeding' message. "

Over the years there have been a couple of feral cats that have stayed at the Rock, but they came and went, eventually not coming back. For the most part, the cats are gone. The issue of feral cat colonies is controversial and, in some places, become quite combative. Let's hope it never happens again in a sensitive, contained habitat like Morro Rock.

The real solution to all of this is for pet owners to spay and neuter their cats (and dogs) and to find homes for the animals they no longer want or can keep - don't dump them! It is ridiculous for these feral cat populations to exist at all. It's a bad situation all around - for the cats, who are an unnatural predator for wild animals, and for the wild animals.