Advertisement
Plants

CORONA DEL MAR : Free Brunch and a Huge Sandbox

Share

On a cliff overlooking the ocean in Corona del Mar, people picnic in the shade of trees, squint through the telescope at ballooning sails or sit with lovers on bluff-top benches.

Most don’t know that they are being watched.

Lurking in the bushes is a colony of homeless cats. But in this neighborhood of mansions and ocean vistas around Ocean Boulevard and Heliotrope Avenue, these street-wise cats aren’t your alley variety.

In fact, they dine on catered meals.

“It’s a legend here on the Corona del Mar cliffs,” said 20-year resident Suzie Conner, breathless from her daily jog down the stairs. “Someone has always taken care of them. You can see they’re healthy and happy.”

Advertisement

In the bushes along the stairs leading down the cliffs, nine of the promontory’s pets milled around six empty bowls, waiting for brunch to be delivered.

“The people who feed them are running a little later than usual,” Conner said, glancing up the stairway.

One frisky black cat, bored with waiting for breakfast, raced to the grassy bluff and gobbled a piece of croissant from a garbage can. The rest went off to loll in the bushes, play under the cantilevered driveway of a multimillion-dollar house or cavort on the cliffs, oblivious to the many dogs towed along on leashes.

No one knows how the cats’ ancestors arrived. Residents say they might have come from fishing boats or perhaps were strays who wandered down from the ritzy hill. But all agree that the descendants have lived well in their cat kingdom for at least 30 years.

“They come and they go,” Conner said. “We all used to grieve when some got too tame and the animal control people were able to gather them up. I’m glad they’re here. If they were at the pound, they’d be put to sleep, wouldn’t they?”

Suddenly, the cats all swarmed back. The Bergmans, residents who regularly feed them, had arrived with a bag of food.

Advertisement

“They love salmon and swordfish,” Barbara Bergman said, while her husband, Ray, filled bowls with water from a drinking fountain. “That’s their special treat.”

For the Bergmans, it all started one day four years ago when they were out walking.

“We saw all these little bitty things falling around the bushes,” she said. “Now these are our kids. We’ve gone through many cat families.”

When the couple go on vacation, they put out “Please feed the kitties” signs, and the job gets done.

And the task has been done by many people over the years, residents say.

In 1972, when there were about 20 cats in the colony, a book called “The Cats of Sea-Cliff Castle” was written by Ethel Jacobson and dedicated to the people who fed the cats. The book describes cat characters, such as Lucifer, the “fastest paw on the beach,” and Jinny, who was found on the hill with her head “forced into a tin can” which had been fastened around her neck. Jinny was rescued by residents and welcomed by the felines of the colony, the book says.

Now 17 years later, Bergman told her story about a misty New Year’s Eve morning when a local woman came to the bluffs to adopt whichever was the ugliest cat.

Bergman said she wishes she “could find homes for them all.”

So does Karin Christensen, president of the Orange County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Advertisement

“I’ve seen lots of these feral cat populations all over the county,” she said. “It’s neat that they’re being fed, but it would be neater if they weren’t there at all.”

Christensen said people who abandon their pets here are wrong if they think it is a cat paradise.

“They get infections from bird droppings and worms,” she said. “The females have kittens, most of whom die, every three months. Are they better off being abandoned and having diseases or humanely put to sleep in shelters?”

Christensen said the Orange County shelter destroyed 11,000 cats just last year.

“Shelters do the best job they can, given what the public is giving them,” she said. “And what they’re giving is abandoned cats.”

Advertisement