Citizens provide animal services ‘off the record’ as Costa Mesa delays TNR law
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Stacy Bushey has always had a soft spot for cats, having grown up with them as pets and taken in a few of her own as an adult.
So when the Costa Mesa resident started seeing post after post on social media about injured, sick or pregnant felines found by local residents who didn’t know what to do with them, she’ got involved, helping people transport cats to local vets, shelters and rescue groups.
But recently, shelters have become too full and are turning away intakes, creating a backup of unwanted cats that outpaces the number of rescuers and fosters able to care for them.
“They’re telling everyone we can’t take any more cats,” Bushey said Wednesday. “They get overwhelmed by the number of kittens and community cats.”
In time, Bushey found herself part of a network of about 40 or 50 people in the area who arrange for the care and feeding of stray colonies, occasionally capturing the animals and paying for them to be fixed, then returning them to where they came from. She and a colleague recently started a nonprofit, Urban Tiger Foundation, to coordinate local efforts.
The only problem is, in the city of Costa Mesa, the trap, neuter and return (TNR) of feral cats — including community cats known to and fed by neighbors but belonging to no one — is illegal, due to a law barring the return of non-domesticated animals to the streets at large.
While provisions have recently been made to allow the city’s veterinary provider Priceless Pets to return fixed felines to their colonies, a series of bureaucratic obstacles associated with the group’s opening a brick-and-mortar shelter in Costa Mesa has prevented that from happening.
Unwilling to euthanize animals simply because of overcrowding, the nonprofit service provider has been struggling to find places in other counties that might accept strays, but it’s a daunting and time-consuming endeavor.
So Bushey and her cohorts, people who work full-time jobs and shell out thousands of dollars to capture, treat and transport strays, continue their work under the cover of relative anonymity.
“We’re like animal services but off the record,” the 52-year-old rescuer said. “We’re like a shadow group, making it happen, but in the shadows. We’ll keep doing it, but we want Costa Mesa to help us.”
For the past seven years, citizens like Bushey and members of the city’s Animal Services Committee have asked city officials to adopt a local trap, neuter, return ordinance that would sanction the rescue efforts already taking place.
More than 900 individuals have signed a petition on Change.org supporting the effort. But despite years of meetings and impassioned pleas about finding ways to stem the tide of feral felines, enactment of a law is not likely this year.
That’s according to Mayor John Stephens, who addressed more than a dozen residents and animal advocates in an Oct. 7 council meeting.
An effort by animal activists has been underway since late August to tend to about two dozen feral cats at a property in Costa Mesa, but city officials say the animal control department is handling the situation.
The mayor pinned the holdup on the fact that Priceless Pets, which oversees adoption and veterinary services for animals brought in by Costa Mesa Police Department’s animal control officers, is poised to move into a new facility next month.
“We’ve decided to prioritize Priceless Pets getting into their new space,” Stephens said. “We need them to be up and running and fully in their new space in order to execute on TNR.”
Despite the slowdown, some good news is on the horizon. On Wednesday, the city’s Animal Services Committee is expected to consider an ordinance drafted with help from CMPD that could keep the legalization of TNR on track for the new year, the mayor continued.
“We may be able to get a vote of the City Council on a TNR program before the first of the year, so when [Priceless Pets] is open and fully staffed they’ll be able to hit the ground running.”
Councilmember Loren Gameros, whose wife is a manager at Priceless Pets, will be recusing himself from voting on the matter. But he said during the Oct. 7 meeting he supported such legislation.
“We definitely don’t want to see a strain on the cat population,” he said. “On the same note, we also want positive reinforcement and a way we can go about, in a professional manner, to try and mitigate the problem.”
For Bushey, the mitigation can’t come soon enough.
“We’re still doing what we’re doing, no matter what,” she said Wednesday. “The city needs to stop delaying the inevitable — it’s the only solution.”
The Costa Mesa Animal Services Committee’s next meeting takes place at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22 in Conference Room 1A at Costa Mesa City Hall, 77 Fair Drive.
