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She Gives Feral Cats a Fighting Chance at Their Nine Lives

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Times Staff Writer

Cats, as the saying goes, have nine lives. But Anne Macleod knows all too well the gap separating myth from reality -- at least for feral cats.

Macleod, 42, heads a group of Burbank Animal Shelter volunteers and does what most shelters won’t: taming and placing young feral cats in loving homes.

“I saw so many animals being killed,” she said. “I wanted that to stop.”

Resembling battlefield maps, numerous red scratches on Macleod’s arms attest to the hazards of turning feral animals into adoptable pets.

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“Feral cats are either no use to humans or had a bad experience with a human,” she said. “They are wild animals.”

Labels attached to feral cats -- felines abandoned by people or born in the wild -- range from “free-roaming” and “unowned” to the more common “stray.”

Just as hard to pin down as the animals themselves are their numbers. In the absence of official figures, the Feral Cat Alliance, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group, estimates between 200,000 and 500,000 live in the county.

Most shelters in Los Angeles lack systematic care programs for hard-to-place feral cats, resulting in a death sentence for thousands.

“We think that of the 80,000 cats killed each year in city and county shelters, between 50% and 60% of them are stray,” said Feral Cat Alliance director Christie Metropole.

In neighborhoods with stray-cat problems, discussions about what to do frequently trigger clashes between parties with conflicting interests.

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Public health agencies fear that feral cats, as potential carriers of disease, could become a hazard if left unchecked. Residents often consider feral cats unsightly nuisances and complain about noise and waste, while some biologists worry about their effect on wildlife.

“You have all these neighborhood disputes over cats,” said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “The extreme position on one side is ‘you trap ‘em, you kill ‘em.’ The other extreme is you feed them. Somewhere in the middle is a healthful multilevel plan.”

Although most feral cats are impossible to domesticate, Macleod believes kittens can be tamed and has persuaded the Burbank Animal Shelter to allow volunteers to provide foster care for feral cats under 4 months old.

“Normally, they would have been put to sleep,” she said, “but I think they’re young enough that they deserve a chance.”

Before Macleod began volunteering at the Burbank shelter a year and a half ago, only kittens under 2 months old were eligible for foster care. Feral cats were generally euthanized within three days, the holding period set by state law.

Of the 220 kittens she fostered last year, about 20 were feral and all were adopted, Macleod said. Only one of her cats, referred to as “the problem child,” was returned to the shelter for bad behavior.

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Taming a wild cat is a painstaking exercise in patience. Feral cats, Macleod recommends, should be kept in a separate room, preferably a bathroom, for at least a week and should be handled with gloves.

“The first day, I just sit and talk to them. Sometimes I try to touch their side or their leg,” she said.

Slowly, the foster owner may get closer and, after a few days, the cat may be picked up and held. Generally, it takes a week or two to finish the job, but Macleod warns against false expectations.

“Some of these animals are never going to be lap cats,” she said.

Macleod, a receptionist at a Woodland Hills animal clinic, informs foster caretakers of the difficulties involved in raising feral cats, and tracks their progress after they commit to an animal.

Although she believes in her work, Macleod realizes that more than small, volunteer efforts are needed to deal more humanely with feral cats.

Eventually, she would like to see shelters implement trap, neuter and return programs. This method of population control is believed to be successful in significantly reducing the number of feral cats in the wild. Despite its effectiveness, the method has not been implemented in local shelters.

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“We just don’t have the manpower to do it,” said Jackie David, a spokeswoman with the city’s Department of Animal Services.

But trap, neuter and return programs, which began as grass-roots efforts, have proliferated over the last decade independently of shelters, a number of them with great success.

Such is the case in San Diego County, where the number of cats euthanized each year declined, in large part, thanks to the work of organized volunteers who trapped, neutered and returned thousands of feral cats to their colonies in the wild.

“There’s no question that [the work of volunteers] has to have a positive impact on controlling reproduction of feral cats,” said John Humphrey of the Department of Animal Services in San Diego County.

The Feral Cat Coalition, a San Diego-based group of 500 volunteers, has trapped, spayed and neutered 18,000 feral cats since its creation in 1992. Over a five-year period ending in June 2004, feline euthanasia rates dropped 43%.

Los Angeles County is considering adopting a trap, neuter and return pilot program and on Jan. 20 will sponsor a workshop for the public with the Feral Cat Caretakers’ Coalition. Although the city lacks a trap and release initiative, the Department of Animal Services began a pilot program a year ago to distribute $30 spay-and-neuter discount coupons to rescue groups devoted to helping feral cats.

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For now, feral cat groups and individuals such as Macleod are doing most of the work related to the welfare or rehabilitation of the animals.

A native of the Hebrides Islands, off western Scotland, Macleod moved to California at 21. Today, she is training for a career in animal hospital management and heads a group of about 20 kitten-care volunteers, five of them devoted exclusively to feral cats.

Talking to volunteers and setting up adoptions require that Macleod spend a lot of time on the phone. But that has never stopped her from making her rounds in the cat room and taking time to touch each animal.

During one such visit, she reached for an 8-week-old tabby. The cat was so scared, it hissed and spat uncontrollably while she gently touched its back.

Unimpressed, Macleod shot back, “Oh, stop it. You know you’re just a kitten.”

A kitten she’s hoping will grow up to take full advantage of all nine of its lives.

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