BALTIMORE — Baltimore has a large population of stray and feral cats.
The non-profit Park Heights Animal Welfare Group has a total of 14 colonies they monitor.
Elaine Rice says at one time one of the colonies had over 30 cats they had to try to catch, neuter, and release.
“We’re inundated with cats; there is new cats every day and we can’t, we just can’t keep up with it. We're trying to TNR as fast as we can, and unfortunately, it's just been a really hard season," Rice said.
She says the main problem is that the cats breed at a high rate, so it is important for them to capture as many as they can to spay or neuter them.
It's all an effort to reduce the population.
“It's definitely difficult, but we do it because we don’t, you know we don’t know if anybody else is going to do it, and that's another thing; we really need more volunteers so that we can be able to help more," Rice said.
Besides neutering, they also give the cats food each day and are working to find the stray cats forever homes.
Rice says it has been difficult lately because there are so many cats and no more room for them to be housed for adoption or fostered, but more volunteers would help expand the range of cats they can help.
“A lot of them ask why we don’t put the cats down; these are healthy animals, you know I understand they are not great for the environment, but it's not, who are we to say that this animal cannot continue to live? So we're doing everything that we can to humanely control the population, and we want to eventually not have any stray or feral cats. And that's really the whole goal of everything is to just not have stray and feral cats," Rice said.
The stray cats are prone to catching deadly diseases, like Leukemia, FIV, and Panleuk, which can only be caught by being outside. So, it's important to get as many cats off the streets as possible.
“The most important things is if you have a cat, and you live in the city, don’t let it outside," said Rice.
She says it is not safe for domestic cats to be outside, and people who let their cats out or dump them when they no longer want them end up contributing to the rapid population growth.
Click here to adopt one of the rescued cats.
The Park Heights Animal Welfare Group is also seeking volunteers.
