community cats

It took three days, but a couple of weeks ago a group of volunteers, coordinated by the city, trapped 42 cats in the McKinley Street area and had them spayed or neutered, vaccinated and ear-tipped before releasing them back to the same location.

It was a big success, said Assistant City Manager Gretchen DiFante, for the city's fledgling effort to get a program up and running to deal with Batavia's community cat (commonly called feral cat) problem.

The City Council-approved effort was a bit bogged down because the city had been unable to find a volunteer to lead the all-volunteer committee to operate the program.

Recently, Ann Marie Brade, the county's animal control officer, volunteered to lead the group and has secured the permission of her employer, the Sheriff's Office, to take on the task.

There will be a meeting tomorrow of committee volunteers to organize the next steps.

The McKinley Street undertaking began with a phone call to city's animal control officer, James Sheflin, about a large colony of cats in the area.

That began a five-week effort to organize and coordinate the task.

"One of the keys to success for this was that this colony manager, which is what the industry calls them, if you will, really took responsibility for the cats," DiFante said. "That makes it a lot easier. Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of ease in attacking some of these colonies."

The animals were all treated at State Street Animal Hospital.

Because he also authorized income verification, the city was able to use available grant funds to pay for the veterinary care. 

"We were able to use that grant and we'd love to use that grant more, but that's not usually how it works," DiFante said.

The city's effort to come up with a strategy for dealing with stray cats, aka, "community cats," will now move to a committee phase with the inclusion of representatives from county government.

Assistant City Manager Gretchen Difante told Council on Monday night that she's met with County Manager Jay Gsell, which led to a meeting with Public Health Director Paul Pettit, who agreed to assign a staff member to the committee. The committee will also include a representative of the Animal Shelter.

Difante said the committee is nearly in place, but she's still trying to find a local veterinarian to serve on the committee.

The job of the committee will be to review all the research, explore what's going on in the community now related to feral and stray cats, and come up with a comprehensive plan for how to deal with the issue.

People care passionately about the issue, Difante said, and she and others in the city have gotten a tremendous amount of feedback from local residents since she first presented potential solutions to the problem in March. The range of suggestions from residents include doing nothing up to poisoning them all.

Difante's original presentation included three members of a pro bono legal team out of Buffalo that specializes in this matter and a lengthy written report detailing the pros and cons of every potential option for dealing with stray cats with the recommendation that communities follow a practice known as TNVR (Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate and Return).

That program, since first proposed, has generated some opposition, including from some on Council.

Councilman Eugene Jankowski expressed some interest in alternatives including getting captured cats adopted or euthanized. 

But TNVR doesn't exclude those options, Difante said. 

"There's a lot of pieces of TVNR that we're not talking about," Difante said. "It's a very comprehensive piece."

Part of the job of the committee will be to explore ways to bring into the process those people in the community, either as inviduals or as part of groups, who are already dealing with stray cats, either through their own mini-TVNR effort or simply by feeding and sheltering stray cats.

"People who take care of feral cats, of community cats, are not likely to stop, no matter what you do, so best practice TVNR says make those people part of the solution; bring them in, give them training," Difante said.

After the meeting, Difante said she thinks the committee approach is the next best step.

"When we're all on the same page and putting all of our effort into targeting them in one approach and we're all bought into that, we're going to have a lot more positive impact that we could ever have when we're scattered," Difante said.

While a great deal of fact-based research backing TNVR has been presented to Council, the committee will present an opportunity for a more local approach.

"It was a solid research piece, but getting people involved in the community in the research is what Council needs to hear," Difante said.

The inclusion of the county, the wider geographic area, is going help the city secure grants to fund any sort of TVNR program, Difante said.

"I believe that if we don't try to have this be a citizen, community effort and explore every opportunity to be able to work with existing nonprofits who can help us with access to grants, then we're doing a disservice," Difante said. "That's where we need to start because trying to figure out how to get money from taxpayers to fund this is not the way to start."

Since this is an issue a lot of people are passionate about, whatever the final determination is, there will be detractors, Difante said.

"We need to acknowledge the fact that we're not going to please everybody," Difante said. "There's no way we're going to come up with something where everybody is going to be happy about. We have to decide what we're going to do and then march towards that."

Tomcats, alley cats, stray cats, may strut around howling at the moon, but don't call them feral.

They're community cats and a community problem.

The Batavia City Council will be asked tonight to look at a possible community cat ordinance that has reportedly worked well elsewhere to help reduce the unowned cat population and made them less of a nuisance.

The proposal is the result of research into the issue by Assistant City Manager Gretchen DiFante.

The most successful method for deal with stray cats, tail in the air and otherwise, is the trap, neuter, vaccinate and release method, according to a written report provided to the council.

"Properly managed sterilization-vaccination programs do not create cat overpopulation -- the cats are already there," according to the report, prepared by the Humane Society. "The choice is between making progress or continuing to experience an unmanaged problem. Well-designed and implemented community cat programs are in line with public opinion and can mobilize an army of compassionate, dedicated people who care about cats, wildlife and their communities."

Also on the agenda for tonight's 7 o'clock meeting:

• City fire has an opportunity to receive a $515,000 Homeland Security grant to fully fund six firefighters for two years. The funding will help fill vacancies that have increased over time as City fire has struggled with unfilled openings. The grant fully funds the positions for those two years, but the city will responsible for the expense once the grants expire.
• The council will receive an update on the city's efforts to deal with vacant and abandoned properties.
• Councilman Eugene Jankowski has requested a council discussion on the process for adopting budget resolutions.
• The water plant needs a roof replacement.