A growing coalition of cat guardian angels is taking on the contentious issue of stray and feral cats, ensuring the felines are kept warm, fed and not impregnating other cats in the neighbourhood.
“I just really love animals and I really don’t want to see animals suffering,” said Tari Kelly, a business owner in Riel Park. “It makes me really sad when I look outside, and I see a cat and it's -40C. They have no food and shelter so if there’s something I can do to help it, why not?”
Since last summer Kelly has been looking after a colony of stray and feral cats in the back of her Riel Park shop. They come and go as they please, taking advantage of the heated house, food and water she has put out for them.
Recognizing it is not helpful to only feed feral cats, Kelly also started participating in the Edmonton Humane Society’s Trap Neuter Return (TNR) program. The program encourages people to trap feral cats and bring them to the clinic, where they are neutered or spayed. Whoever dropped the cat off then returns it to where it came from. Last year Kelly TNR’d four cats.
Another St. Albert resident, Lori Nagazina, is building insulated winter cat shelters and will be placing them throughout the city, with Kelly advising on where to put them. So far Nagazina has built seven houses, each of which took about a day and a half to build.
The two women were connected through the St. Albert Lost or Found Pets Facebook page, and they, along with a few other women from the page, have canvassed businesses in Riel Park to see who would take one of Nagazina’s houses. Three businesses have signed on to taking a cat house so far.
Nagazina said a big part of the reason she is building cat homes goes back to St. Albert’s lack of a cat bylaw.
“I think it would really help having a bylaw for people to fix their cats, so their loose cats don’t go out and impregnate a stray, and then those kittens become feral because there’s no human contact,” she said. “Then in the winter time all these kittens that have frozen tails and ears, that’s what I can’t handle seeing. That’s why I build the houses.”
There are no requirements around licensing or fixing cats in St. Albert, unlike dogs. There’s also no city-owned kennel where pet owners might look for their lost pets.
Through her cat activism, Kelly was able to reunite a cat owner with her kitten, after months of him being missing.
Jackie Mowat's cat, Peanut, slipped out of her home in early May and by August she had given up hope, thinking a coyote had gotten to him.
After Mowat posted another photo of Peanut on the St. Albert Lost or Found Pets Facebook page, someone connected her with Kelly, thinking Kelly might have seen her cat. Kelly had seen Peanut, and knew exactly where he was hiding.
“I went to where she said they saw him. He was in a shed. I said his name and he popped up and started crying,” Mowat said about meeting Peanut again last week. “I started hysterically crying because I couldn’t believe he was alive.”
Mowat agreed there should be a cat bylaw in place, to help pet owners like herself be reunited with lost pets.
In April city council visited the issue and decided against implementing a cat licensing program, instead opting for an education campaign while administration gathers more information to report by the end of March 2020.
Mayor Cathy Heron said council did not feel they had enough information to make an informed decision.
“We can’t have a cat bylaw unless we have some authority to seize a cat, and we have nowhere to take it,” she said.
“There’s two sides, some like cats some don’t, so what’s your bylaw trying to achieve? We’ll have to have that conversation in the spring.”
As winter approaches, Nagazina will continue to look for homes or businesses that will take her cat houses.
Anyone interested in donating materials to help Nagazani build more cat homes can reach her at [email protected].
