Stray but Not Forgotten
With Low-Cost Sterilization Clinic in Southeast, One Woman Is Driving Effort to Provide Alternative to Euthanizing the Region's Feral Cats

By Sue Anne Pressley Montes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 1, 2007

These cats are not the ones that come running when you call, "Kitty, kitty."

They are stray and feral cats -- darting through the nighttime shadows, keeping their distance from humans. Most of the time, people don't even know they are there. But the alleyways, vacant lots and back yards of the Washington area are full of them.

For 17 years, Becky Robinson has cared about these elusive creatures in a way that many people and, historically, many overwhelmed animal shelters, did not.

When feral cats -- the untamed, usually unadoptable offspring of lost and abandoned cats -- are taken to shelters, they almost always end up euthanized. With her group, Alley Cat Allies, Robinson has worked locally and nationally to encourage a different approach: Cats are trapped, neutered or spayed, then released back to the outdoor life they know best.

This month, the Washington Humane Society, in partnership with Robinson's organization and others, will open the first low-cost, high-volume spay and neuter clinic for the region. The National Capital Area Spay and Neuter Center, at 1001 L St. SE, has the capacity to sterilize 75 animals a day and is geared toward helping to curb a feral cat population that remains a controversial problem throughout the country.

"Even though we are a nation of animal lovers and even a nation of shelters, this was a group that was being ignored. It was not being protected," said Robinson, a former animal rights lobbyist whose Bethesda office is patrolled by a half-dozen "retired alley cats."

"A lot of people were told, 'If you want to help cats, you should help the tame ones. You can't take these into your home,' " she said. "And that's okay with us. But we still want to improve their lives, and we don't want them killed."

It's clear that cats are the big cheese at Alley Cat Allies. Visitors are greeted in the entryway by six executive-style photos of the office cats. Down the hall, Sophia, a foster cat rescued recently from an apartment complex in Atlantic City, has a room filled with toys. Other cats roam at will: Jared, 9, a fluffy white male with a royal attitude, likes to tiptoe across the polished wooden table in the conference room. Taken from a feral cat colony in suburban Maryland as a kitten, he is proof that some of the animals are tamable, Robinson said.

Cats have kept company with humans for 8,000 to 10,000 years, and strays and ferals have probably been around since the first Colonists brought along their cats to the New World. It is, of course, hard to know how many are roaming the area. Robinson's group says thousands. Over the years, she said, the organization has "ear-tipped" more than 20,000 local outdoor cats; the method identifies an individual cat that has been sterilized by clipping a quarter-inch from its left ear.

For many people, feral cats might not be the most sympathetic group in the animal kingdom. People have concerns about disease and possible harm to birds and other wildlife. Some are bothered by late-night wailing. And they often envision the average feral as something straight out of the Broadway play "Cats," grizzled and battle-scarred. But often feral cats look so healthy and well fed that people mistake them for cats with a home, Robinson said.

The American Bird Conservancy, which tries to protect birds and their habitats in North and South America, is a critic of the trap-neuter-return program, calling it ineffective in reducing the number of feral cats. Since 1997, the group has had a program that encourages pet owners to keep their cats indoors or in outdoor enclosures. With 9 million pet cats nationwide, and an untold tens of millions of stray and feral cats, the impact on birds is great, spokesman Steve Holmer said.

"It's a cumulative effect. If each cat kills three or four birds a year, there is unfortunately a significant impact," he said.

Despite such opposition, however, something of a nationwide feral cat movement has emerged in the past 10 years, led by Alley Cat Allies. About 200 groups have sprung up across the country, championing nonlethal control of feral cats and seeking advice from Robinson's organization. Since 1998, Alley Cat Allies has grown from a grass-roots base in Adams Morgan with just a couple of employees to a national operation in Bethesda with 25 employees and 150,000 supporters. This year's budget topped $5 million.

These days, feral cats often are in the news: Last month, the Town Council in Pawleys Island, S.C., voted to continue a pilot trap-neuter-return program aimed at ridding the beach town of its feral cat population after quickly depleting an initial $7,000 donation. In Connecticut, the state Agriculture Department just launched a grant program to provide $40,000 for feral cat sterilization and vaccination. Recently, legislation was introduced to the Baltimore City Council to make trap-neuter-return the city's established method of managing its feral cats.

For Robinson, the public interest is gratifying. She grew concerned about stray animals at an early age. Her paternal grandmother and aunt founded the first humane society in their home town, McPherson, Kan.

"Before I could even climb over a fence, I was lifted over a fence to rescue animals," she said.

On a July night in 1990, Robinson, then working on Capitol Hill for an animal-protection group, became fully aware of the problem of feral cats. Late for a dinner appointment, she cut through an alley off Belmont Road NW in Adams Morgan and was surprised to see a dozen black-and-white cats -- tuxedos, as they are called.

She would soon discover there were a total of 54 cats in just that colony. Several residents had been feeding them, it turned out, but were concerned about what else to do. They did not want to call animal control, which would almost certainly result in the cats' euthanasia.

Robinson and her friends decided to help. Employing a method in use in Great Britain, they caught each cat, one by one, in a box trap baited with tuna. Spaying or neutering was expensive, and only one local vet was willing to work with the feral cats. It took the volunteers a year and a half to take care of all 54 animals, she said.

"Back in the beginning, nobody had Web sites or e-mail. You just had this network of people, and people heard about us through what I called the ultimate cat grapevine," she said. One evening back then, she returned home to find her phone blinking with 80 messages from people who wanted help with feral cats in their neighborhoods. Robinson decided to start the organization.

"Where we fit in, we don't want anybody to have to reinvent the wheel," she said, adding that the group responds to about 45,000 requests for assistance each year.

In 2004-05, Alley Cat Allies conducted a pilot trap-neuter-return program, called D.C. Cat, for the District government, that involved 1,800 feral cats. The Washington Humane Society embraced the approach about a year ago. The new regional clinic is "for everybody," spokeswoman Tara deNicolas said, but stray and feral cats will be sterilized for free.

Last year, Alley Cat Allies closed the books on the Belmont Road 54 -- the colony of cats that started it all. Many of them lived to old age in the wild, said Donna Wilcox, the group's executive director. The last one, Randy, 16, died last year. He had been transferred to Wilcox's back yard, where he lived happily for many years.

"The last few months of his life, he would come in the house. I could pet him," she said. "He had a great life."