She Gives Feral Cats a Fighting Chance at Their Nine Lives
Anne Macleod and her group of Burbank Animal Shelter volunteers work to mold
wild kittens into pet prospects, greatly improving their odds.

By Claudia Zequeira, Times Staff Writer

Cats, as the saying goes, have nine lives. But Anne Macleod knows all too well
the gap separating myth from reality — at least for feral cats.

Macleod, 42, heads a group of Burbank Animal Shelter volunteers and does what
most shelters won't: taming and placing young feral cats in loving homes.

"I saw so many animals being killed," she said. "I wanted that to stop."

Resembling battlefield maps, numerous red scratches on Macleod's arms attest to
the hazards of turning feral animals into adoptable pets.

"Feral cats are either no use to humans or had a bad experience with a human,"
she said. "They are wild animals."

Labels attached to feral cats — felines abandoned by people or born in the
wild — range from "free-roaming" and "unowned" to the more common "stray."

Just as hard to pin down as the animals themselves are their numbers. In the
absence of official figures, the Feral Cat Alliance, a Los Angeles-based
advocacy group, estimates between 200,000 and 500,000 live in the county.

Most shelters in Los Angeles lack systematic care programs for hard-to-place
feral cats, resulting in a death sentence for thousands.

"We think that of the 80,000 cats killed each year in city and county shelters,
between 50% and 60% of them are stray," said Feral Cat Alliance director
Christie Metropole.

In neighborhoods with stray-cat problems, discussions about what to do
frequently trigger clashes between parties with conflicting interests.

Public health agencies fear that feral cats, as potential carriers of disease,
could become a hazard if left unchecked. Residents often consider feral cats
unsightly nuisances and complain about noise and waste, while some biologists
worry about their effect on wildlife.

"You have all these neighborhood disputes over cats," said Madeline Bernstein,
president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals. "The extreme position on one side is 'you trap 'em, you
kill 'em.' The other extreme is you feed them. Somewhere in the middle is a
healthful multilevel plan."

Although most feral cats are impossible to domesticate, Macleod believes
kittens can be tamed and has persuaded the Burbank Animal Shelter to allow
volunteers to provide foster care for feral cats under 4 months old.

"Normally, they would have been put to sleep," she said, "but I think they're
young enough that they deserve a chance."

Before Macleod began volunteering at the Burbank shelter a year and a half ago,
only kittens under 2 months old were eligible for foster care. Feral cats were
generally euthanized within three days, the holding period set by state law.

Of the 220 kittens she fostered last year, about 20 were feral and all were
adopted, Macleod said. Only one of her cats, referred to as "the problem
child," was returned to the shelter for bad behavior.

Taming a wild cat is a painstaking exercise in patience. Feral cats, Macleod
recommends, should be kept in a separate room, preferably a bathroom, for at
least a week and should be handled with gloves.

"The first day, I just sit and talk to them. Sometimes I try to touch their
side or their leg," she said.

Slowly, the foster owner may get closer and, after a few days, the cat may be
picked up and held. Generally, it takes a week or two to finish the job, but
Macleod warns against false expectations.

"Some of these animals are never going to be lap cats," she said.

Macleod, a receptionist at a Woodland Hills animal clinic, informs foster
caretakers of the difficulties involved in raising feral cats, and tracks their
progress after they commit to an animal.

Although she believes in her work, Macleod realizes that more than small,
volunteer efforts are needed to deal more humanely with feral cats.

Eventually, she would like to see shelters implement trap, neuter and return
programs. This method of population control is believed to be successful in
significantly reducing the number of feral cats in the wild. Despite its
effectiveness, the method has not been implemented in local shelters.

"We just don't have the manpower to do it," said Jackie David, a spokeswoman
with the city's Department of Animal Services.

But trap, neuter and return programs, which began as grass-roots efforts, have
proliferated over the last decade independently of shelters, a number of them
with great success.

Such is the case in San Diego County, where the number of cats euthanized each
year declined, in large part, thanks to the work of organized volunteers who
trapped, neutered and returned thousands of feral cats to their colonies in the
wild.

"There's no question that [the work of volunteers] has to have a positive
impact on controlling reproduction of feral cats," said John Humphrey of the
Department of Animal Services in San Diego County.

The Feral Cat Coalition, a San Diego-based group of 500 volunteers, has
trapped, spayed and neutered 18,000 feral cats since its creation in 1992. Over
a five-year period ending in June 2004, feline euthanasia rates dropped 43%.

Los Angeles County is considering adopting a trap, neuter and return pilot
program and on Jan. 20 will sponsor a workshop for the public with the Feral
Cat Caretakers' Coalition. Although the city lacks a trap and release
initiative, the Department of Animal Services began a pilot program a year ago
to distribute $30 spay-and-neuter discount coupons to rescue groups devoted to
helping feral cats.

For now, feral cat groups and individuals such as Macleod are doing most of the
work related to the welfare or rehabilitation of the animals.

A native of the Hebrides Islands, off western Scotland, Macleod moved to
California at 21. Today, she is training for a career in animal hospital
management and heads a group of about 20 kitten-care volunteers, five of them
devoted exclusively to feral cats.

Talking to volunteers and setting up adoptions require that Macleod spend a lot
of time on the phone. But that has never stopped her from making her rounds in
the cat room and taking time to touch each animal.

During one such visit, she reached for an 8-week-old tabby. The cat was so
scared, it hissed and spat uncontrollably while she gently touched its back.

Unimpressed, Macleod shot back, "Oh, stop it. You know you're just a kitten."

A kitten she's hoping will grow up to take full advantage of all nine of its
lives.