By Sharon Balke –

Kind hearted.  It’s a term we use frequently, maybe too often, but I’m going to use it to describe two neighbors who took action rather than just sitting back and complaining.  Here is their story.

The two women, who don’t wish to be identified, have lived in Timbergrove for 15 years.  They keep their yard neat and are friendly with everyone who passes by their home.  Both are runners and regularly walk their three dogs so they know a lot of people in the subdivision.  Last summer they started noticing feral cats on their block.  They have their own cats which are kept indoors but the women were concerned with the feral cats because they were breeding and were thin.

They contacted another neighbor who volunteers at Friends for Life, a no-kill shelter in the Heights.  The non-profit loaned them live traps and referred them to a low cost spay and neuter clinic.  They trapped six cats in August and had them fixed and vaccinated for rabies, releasing four of them back into the neighborhood two days later.  Another neighbor officially adopted two of the ferals and they are now leading the good life as pets.

The two women and new pet owner feed the colony.  Their lives won’t be as care free as a domestic indoor cat whose biggest hardship is finding a sunny window sill on a cloudy day, but they are fed and have at least three women keeping an eye on them.  Friends for Life claims that removing a colony of feral cats from a neighborhood only opens up the area for new colony.  Keeping a colony in place ensures that other ferals won’t come in and produce more litters.

As a wildlife rehabber and a cat lover, I have mixed feelings.  Ferals eat rats and mice which are abundant in our neighborhood because of the creek, bayou and dense greenery so that’s a plus in their favor.  Unfortunately they also eat native birds, squirrels and even baby opossums which isn’t desirable.

Thank you, kind hearted women, for tackling this problem rather than ignoring it.