To the Rescue : Cat Lover Traps Strays, Helps Find Them Homes

Grace Hardgrove had a cat problem.

Stray cats were loitering in the alley outside her Alhambra house. Whenever she fed her own cat, the strays demanded food. She felt sorry for the other cats, but they were breeding and causing such a commotion that neighbors were threatening to shoot or poison them.

Police and animal control officers offered little help. So Hardgrove turned to Barbara Szul, 46, of South Pasadena, who has turned her love for cats into a full-time occupation as a cat rescuer. From Upland to Van Nuys, from mid-Wilshire Los Angeles to the San Gabriel Valley, Szul goes from alleyways to side streets and back yards to rescue even the wildest of cats and then find homes for them.

Over the course of a year, Szul went to Hardgrove’s home about twice a month, helping her trap 35 to 40 strays in the alley, then taking the cats to Concerned Animal Lovers, a privately operated, felines-only shelter in Fullerton. For five years Szul worked there as a volunteer. Last month, she opened her own business, Cat Rescuers United.

“I mother them,” said Szul, who caught 196 cats in April alone. “I’m working on a small enough scale to make sure everything works out well for most of them.”

Some animal lovers praise Szul’s one-woman campaign. “There’s really nobody out there that’s tackling the problem the way she does,”said Kate Sobocinski, a former director of the Concerned Animal Lovers.

But local animal regulation officials worry that she is usurping their roles and wonder if she is trapping not only strays but cats with homes. “She’s probably well-intended,” said Robert Rush, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation. “But it’s just wrong. Sure, we’ve got a big cat population. But if you’ve got a cat problem, we can work with it.”

Most local municipalities have ordinances providing that only animal control officers may pick up cats. And, officials say, it is often difficult to know whether cats are strays because they are not licensed and, under state law, are considered free-roaming animals.

People with stray cat problems, Szul said, would rather deal with her than with animal control workers because she takes cats to a shelter that will make an extra effort to place the animals in homes instead of killing them.

The cats that Szul rescues represent only a handful of the strays in Los Angeles County. In the six county-run shelters and another six run by the city of Los Angeles, animal control officials report handling 74,550 lost and stray cats last year.

“Cats are left out there to multiply endlessly,” Sobocinski said. “They’re getting hit by cars, or spreading disease.”

Working from the apartment where she lives with three cats of her own, she lives her life on a cat schedule, making nocturnal forays, catnapping day and night to compensate. Hours on end, she waits near her traps, baited with oily, smelly tuna or a cat-trap favorite: fresh-cooked Kentucky Fried Chicken (original recipe).

She quit her part-time waitress and secretarial jobs to become a full-time cat catcher. To finance the venture, Szul charges $50 for an initial visit and lesser amounts for subsequent ones. She insists that her efforts are not directed at moneymaking, but rather to start a nonprofit clinic devoted to free spaying and neutering services.

“If there is a cat in distress and people can’t pay, I go anyway. People are having to bail me out so I can keep going,” she said. In her first four weeks, she said, she took in $1,000.

When Szul catches a cat, she said, she does so only at the request of people who can identify it as a stray. She takes great care, she said, to ensure she is not trapping pets.

But according to Steve McNall, director of the Pasadena Humane Society, Szul is “providing a real disservice to pet owners. If one (owned) animal goes to this Fullerton facility . . . then you’re going to have a problem.”

Szul’s supporters discount such fears.

“There are very, very few people who do the work that Barbara does,” said Carmen Gutierrez, chairwoman of the San Gabriel Valley branch of Pet Assistance. “If animal control people don’t like it, then they should get out there, be humane and do the job.”

Susie Moser of Covina considers Szul a saint. For nearly a year, Moser has been dealing with a growing number of strays, some of them, she said, left by neighbors who moved from her condominium complex in Covina. She was feeding as many as nine, besides her own purebred Persian.

“The humane society isn’t very humane,” said Moser, explaining why she recently called Szul.

Right away, Szul set up traps. Within two days, by dusk on a Saturday, she had caught one thin, blue-eyed, part-Siamese.

“Poor guy. His face is so pretty,” Moser said, recognizing the cat as one she had fed for months.

As darkness fell, Szul loaded the cat into her car, equipped with one seat--the driver’s. All of the other seats had been removed to make room for her bulky traps.

As she headed for the Fullerton shelter, Szul said: “The happiest part of my day is driving home, with empty cages, after I’ve taken the cats there.”