AR-News: NY Newsday: They May Not Need All Nine Lives

[DTanzer16 at aol.com]

They May Not Need All Nine Lives
Thanks to Ravenswood activists, cats have a chance to escape from dangerous 
places

By Jesse Serwer
Jesse Serwer is a freelance writer.

February 16, 2004


For as long as Olga Duell can remember, there have been stray cats hanging 
around Ravenswood Houses.

Duell, who has lived in the Long Island City public housing complex for more 
than 35 years, estimates there are hundreds of cats calling Ravenswood's 38 
acres and 31 buildings home.

"They go into the basement to keep warm," said Duell, who occasionally fed 
strays until diabetes forced her into a wheelchair several years ago.

The cats make their way into ground-level crawl spaces that lead to the 
buildings' ventilation system. For years, according to Duell and other tenants, the 
city Housing Authority's efforts to seal vent openings have resulted in the 
deaths of countless strays caught in the crawl spaces at the wrong time.

"The cats die right under my apartment and horrible smells come up from the 
basement," said Irene Richter, a tenant of 27 years who said she began noticing 
odors every fall about a decade ago. "The air gets awful," added Richter, who 
has been feeding, caring for, and even administering antibiotics to a gray 
tabby she calls Phillip for several years. "It is like a cemetery for cats down 
there."

But Housing Authority officials say there are no strays at Ravenswood.

"Our people have gone through the buildings, inspected each one and they have 
not found any cats," said spokesman Howard Mader, who said vents are closed 
to stop rats from infesting the buildings. "We're going to do everything we can 
to keep rats off our property - if it means sealing vents to the basement, 
that's what we're going to do."

Duell said that in all her years at Ravenswood she has never seen a rodent. 
"Not even a mouse," she said. Richter argued that cat carcasses actually 
attract rodents and other pests into the basements.

When residents learned of plans to again seal the vents earlier this winter, 
they decided to take a stand, enlisting the aid of Joe Mora, an American 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals volunteer and animal rescuer who 
lives a few blocks from the complex.

"You can't always see the cats - they're sleeping in the crawl spaces, which 
people can't get into," said Mora, who believes ASPCA enforcement officers 
were misled by a Housing Authority official who took them only to Ravenswood's 
management building, which has no crawl spaces, in the fall.

Learning vents had been sealed for as long as a week in mid-December, Mora 
alerted Mike Pastore, director of field operations for Animal Care and Control, 
the city's animal welfare agency, who convinced Ravenswood manager Marcia 
Rosero to allow Mora to reopen the vents. The vents remain open, but they will be 
closed again, said Mader.

"I basically asked, 'What positive qualities could come out of this?'" 
Pastore said. "'Open up the vents and let us get the cats out before you close 
them up. But if cats turn up dead, you'll be charged with animal cruelty and have 
a major problem.'"

Although the Housing Authority insists there are no cats at Ravenswood, Mora 
gave a reporter a copy of written authorization from Rosero to trap the cats.

"The first snowstorm of the year I was out there from 4 in the afternoon to 
11 at night opening every vent with a tire iron," Mora recalled.

Mora said he has trapped and removed 44 cats from Ravenswood since December, 
but he believes many more might have met their end inside the vents. The death 
of only one - which was taken to a Manhattan veterinarian, where it died and 
was sent to the Department of Health for testing - is documented, and Mader 
maintains maintenance crews have found no carcasses.

Instead of bringing the mostly feral, unadoptable cats to a city animal 
shelter, Mora has been relocating them to stray colonies at several Long Island 
City industrial locations. There he practices what is commonly known as 
"Trap-Neuter-Return." The ASPCA, through its ASPCA Cares program, supplies him with 825 
pounds of cat food a month.

Trap-Neuter-Return is the "only proven way" to reduce the feral cat 
population, said Animal Care and Control executive director Ed Boks, who is developing 
a program to legitimize the care of strays by providing low- or no-cost 
spay-neuter services to people who manage colonies like Mora's.

"It reduces the number of cats in a colony and virtually eliminates the 
problem without killing," Boks said. "A lot of folks who are caring for these cats 
are doing it covertly." 

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc. 
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