TNA by C.M.I.

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Wednesday, May 11, 2022

Saving feral cats in Columbia County Originally published in The Chief Vol. 130 May 6, 2022 ZOE GOTTLIEB chronicle2@countrymedia.net

hough her hours are long and unpredictable, though the work never seems to stop and at times reveals the ugly side of humanity, a Columbia County woman has made it her life’s mission to change society’s perception of cats. Mist resident Wendy MacDougall is in charge of Feral Cat Project & Kitten Rescue, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to “humanely reducing Columbia County’s feral cat population through trap, neuter and release and maintaining a dedicated kitten rescue.” The program is funded through grants and costs approximately $30,000 to run annually, MacDougall told The Chief. MacDougall said she started the program back in 2018 after noticing an increase in missing cat reports and sightings. “The more that cats are free-roaming, whether they’re feral or a pet, the more predators you’re going to have coming in taking those cats out because it’s easy pickings for them,” MacDougall explained. “A lot of our neighborhoods are forested bound. So it became a well, what can we do to reduce the prey for these predators and protect household pets? And really, that was the beginning of it. But once you start working on colonies, you realize it goes a lot deeper than that.” Cat colonies are small groups of female cats and their offspring, according to petplace.com. “It’s a situation where a stray has been rejected, or put outside, or lost, or what-

ever, dumped, there are all kinds of reasons, and it’s not fixed and it hooks up with another cat that’s not fixed,” MacDougall said. “They find an area where there’s food. They have enough of a relationship with humans to seek humans for food.” An infographic on the Feral Cat Project and Kitten Rescue website shows how large cat colonies can grow. According to the infographic, two unfixed cats can create 2 million offspring within eight years. According to MacDougall, cat colonies are a problem 100% created by people who choose not to get their cats spayed or neutered. “They’re domestic pets, but there’s this attitude that cats run free, let cats be free, cats aren’t happy until they’re free,” MacDougall said. “That’d be all good and fun until you start seeing that this freedom idea for cats involves not spaying and neutering. And then when you’re not spaying and neutering, you’re witnessing a lot of misery and suffering, abuse.” MacDougall acknowledged while cat colonies are often cared for by reclusive people, those same people often don’t have the resources to provide long-term care. “We’ve taken cats with fatal injuries (and) cats with non-fatal injuries left to die and suffer,” she said. “There’s a lot of suffering by these cats.” How it works Feral cat trapping cannot be accomplished in one session, according to MacDougall. Instead, it is a weekslong process that involves multiple steps following the initial phone call. “Once I get a phone interview, I make a plan with them to go visit the colony. I go out there, and I want to see, is it around a

Cat rescuer MacDougall cradles a newborn kitten.

Zoe Gottlieb / The Chief

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These twin kittens were rescued by the Feral Cat Project and Kitten Rescue.

home? Is it on rural land? Is it in a neighborhood?” she said, citing examples of the questions she asks herself. “What other kind of factors am I dealing with? If it’s in a neighborhood, am I going to have to be trapping pets?” “I have to know the whole neighborhood,” she added. “I have to know how cooperative the people (will) be.” Once MacDougall knows where to implement the traps, she stages them a week before the actual trapping begins. “We’re not setting up the traps to catch the cats,” she explained, “but we want the traps around, and we want them to get used to the traps.” At the same time, she calls a Portland clinic managed by the Feral Cat Coalition of Oregon to set up an appointment to spay and neuter the cats the day following the trapping event.

MacDougall showed The Chief the remote she uses to trigger the trap mechanism. “If you go in cold turkey, they’re not going to go into that trap, even for food,” she said. Once the procedures are completed, MacDougall and her rescue volunteers release the cats back to their colonies. A ‘big problem’ Feral cats are “a very big problem,” according to MacDougall. “I think that you don’t see it because feral cats don’t just lay out in the sun in groups and expose themselves to everybody that’s driving by,” she said. “But when you’re up in these hills back in Rainier and Columbia City, everywhere, there is no place in Columbia County where it doesn’t exist. I cannot even put a finger on how many cats we might be talking about, but it’s thousands.”

Zoe Gottlieb / The Chief

A curious kitten wanders inside the kitten and cat sanctuary.

Zoe Gottlieb / The Chief

People also have a tendency to “take matters into their own hands,” which may involve shooting the feral cats, says MacDougall. While feral cat colonies may appear to be a rural problem, they can also affect small towns. On Thursday, April 14, St. Helens Police officers were dispatched to the location of a vacant, boarded-up house in St. Helens. They found four abandoned kittens inside the property and promptly reported them to the Feral Cat Project & Kitten Rescue. MacDougall said she wishes Columbia County officials would pass an ordinance to address the issue of feral cats. “We have made these (cats) domestic animals. We have made them pets,” she said. “We need to reel this in and make sure that this domestic pet-type animal is living among us everywhere in a humane way.”

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This feral cat rests at the Feral Cat Project and Kitten Rescue.

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