'They're my babies' - Brooklyn locals care for feral cats living on New York City streets

Record ID: 1734174

  • Title: 'They're my babies' - Brooklyn locals care for feral cats living on New York City streets
  • Date: 18th July 2023
  • Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (JULY 17, 2023) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF KAY MASON, COMMUNITY CAT CARETAKER, GETTING READY TO FEED CATS IN THE FLATBUSH NEIGHBORHOOD OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK (SOUNDBITE) (English) KAY MASON, COMMUNITY CAT CARETAKER WHO HAS BEEN FEEDING THE CATS EVERY DAY FOR 10 YEARS, SAYING: "I call them my babies. They really give me a lot of love, and (I
  • Embargoed: 1st August 2023 18:03
  • Keywords: Flatbush Cats TNR Trap-Neuter Return cats kittens
  • Location: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • City: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
  • Country: US
  • Topics: North America,Human Interest/Brights/Odd News,Society/Social Issues
  • Reuters ID: LVA001797018072023RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text:In the early evening hours under a hot summer sun, cats hide beneath abandoned cars in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
    They come out when they hear Kay Mason coming, who has been feeding these feral cats daily for the past 10 years.
    "I call them my babies," she said. "They really give me a lot of love, and (I give) attention to the cats that don't have a home. To know that some of them are being abused, people put them out, it's so sad. When they see me, they all come, and they make me feel happy. So by seeing them coming to me when they see me, they're showing me that they care for me and they're happy to see me. No matter what the weather is like, I will still come."
    While Mason was walking through her neighborhood a decade ago, she saw cats eating garbage. She went to the store and bought them 10 cans of cat food.
    "And then I put the food there and ever since I started, I didn't stop," she said. "It's very expensive, but I have no kids and all my family is back in the country, Trinidad, so I don't mind spending my money on it."
    Mason's cat colony used to be a lot larger, but with the help of the nonprofit organization Flatbush Cats, which is trying to solve the cat overpopulation crisis in Brooklyn with a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program, the amount of feral cats she tends to has gone down.
    Trapping, sterilizing, and returning the cats back to their communities is an effective and commonly used method of managing feral, or wild, cat colonies.
    "The TNR cats, the trap-neuter-return cats, the feral cats for the most part, are placeholders in their colony on their block," said Ryan Tarpey, community cat program manager for Flatbush Cats. "If you just went and trapped all those cats and didn't take them back, whatever that means, you relocated them, you had them euthanized, we don't do that, we don't believe in that, if somebody else did though, and just took them away from there, in a very short amount of time in a neighborhood with this many cats and this many intact cats inside and outside, that area would fill back up in a matter of time. One year or two years, come back, if you don't do anything, just leave and come back, in two years, there'll be another eight, 15 cats there."
    Tarpey said the problem was not just the tens of thousands of feral cats in Flatbush alone, but the cats who are pets who aren't spayed or neutered.
    "We can trap until we're blue in the face outside, but we're never going to get to the bottom until we can also get inside until we can offer our neighbors, our community, access to low-cost spay/neuter for their pets because the inside cats eventually come outside and just continue to reproduce," he said.
    Flatbush Cats is building a 3,700-square-foot spay/neuter clinic Flatbush Vet, which will provide more than 7,500 spay/neuter surgeries a year and also provide wellness care for pets. Flatbush Vet will open in September, but they still need help raising the remainder of the funds to finish construction and open their doors.
    Tarpey said the work they're doing can at times feel "overwhelming."
    "It can be crushing to see this many cats suffering, dying, on the street," he said. "And no, we don't have anywhere near the number of resources to be able to put an end to this at the moment. But the clinic is a good start. It's a good start. And our hope is, that will help us to get momentum or raise awareness."
    More than 50% of pet-owning households in the U.S. can no longer afford a basic veterinarian visit, which is why New York City shelters have been overcrowded for decades, with some estimates that there are as many as 500,000 cats on New York City streets, according to Flatbush Cats.
    "We realized in this work that if we truly want to get to the bottom, who truly want to see the time when there are no more cats suffering on the street, then we have to provide the resources and educate our neighbors about the importance of spay/neuter for their pets," said Tarpey.
    (Production: Roselle Chen)
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