Feral Colonies

Every $100 donated spays or neuters one cat in one of these colonies.

Animal advocates struggle to manage Tuolumne County's exploding population of feral cats

• Guy McCarthy

• Jul 25, 2023 Updated Jul 27, 2023

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Email

Three adult cats in a so-called colony in East Sonora that have been spayed or neutered. 

Eight kittens, ranging in age from a day old to a week old, taken from a feral cat nest in Quail Hollow. Photo taken April 3.

"Cats are coming out like cockroaches right now," Twain Harte resident Jean Van Rappard said this week. "They’re everywhere." To prove her point, she shared this photo of kittens. Four feral cats outside her house gave birth to 14 kittens from April 16 to May 3, Van Rappard said.

A box of kittens found under the deck of a deceased person's home in Cedar Ridge. Photo taken April 30. The woman who found the kittens called the nonprofit Sonora Cat Rescue. Three of the kittens were still available for adoption at PetSmart in Sonora earlier this month.

Carol Stoddard with the nonprofit Tuolumne Spay and Neuter said this week, "Right now we’re trapping a feral cat colony in Jamestown. We've caught 25 so far. Probably 25 more to catch. Near a home off Jamestown Road."

• Courtesy photo / Tuolumne Spay and Neuter

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Email

• Print

• Save

The annual late spring, early summer cat population explosion is underway again in Tuolumne County, and animal advocates say their rapidly multiplying numbers are draining resources and stretching people and funding thin at nonprofits and at Tuolumne County Animal Control.

Some humans in the local cat community say feral cat colonies this spring and summer are the worst they’ve ever seen, and somehow it’s due to the weather. Others say it’s the delayed reaction of massive numbers of cats that were abandoned during and after the COVID-19 pandemic that are now breeding at exponential rates. There are also people who say feral cat populations are simply growing every year.

Estimating the size of the problem in Tuolumne County has proven next to impossible, because so many of the county’s cats are undomesticated, feral animals that live outdoors. 

According to accounts from nonprofits like Tuolumne Spay and Neuter, Sonora Cat Rescue, and Friends of the Animal Community, and from Tuolumne County Animal Control, there are untold thousands of feral cats in the county.

“We definitely have seen an uptick in feral cats and kittens, and it seems to be getting worse each year,” Christina Whitcomb, a veterinary technician with Tuolumne County Animal Control, said.

“The medical part of it, when we don't spay and neuter cats, they will populate. They are induced ovulators, which means they automatically ovulate while mating, while they are having sex. Also, kittens become sexually mature at four months. They are able to mate and have kittens at four months of age. Cats are extremely proficient at having multiple litters.”

Tuolumne County Animal Control works with local trap-neuter-release advocates who try to manage feral cat colonies, and the agency also sends a lot of cats and kittens out of state. Whitcomb estimates the county has sent more than 500 cats to Oregon in recent years.

The agency needs more staff to take care of cats because the numbers of captured cats being turned in have increased. The greater numbers of cats are using up agency funding for food and medical funding for vaccines.

“We also get a ton of calls regarding bringing stray feral cats into the shelter,” Whitcomb said. “It definitely increases our call volume as well. We’re recommending do not adopt or take on an animal if you can’t get them spayed or neutered. Because if you don’t, it will lead to overpopulation, 100%.”

Rendering cats infertile through surgery involves spaying female cats and neutering male cats. Nationwide, it’s estimated there are 60 million to 100 million homeless cats across the United States.

Jean Van Rappard, a resident of downtown Twain Harte, said four feral cats outside her home gave birth to 14 kittens from April 16 to May 3. She’d counted 17 cats as of earlier this month, with only one spayed or neutered.

“Cats are coming out like cockroaches right now,” Van Rappard said. “They’re everywhere. I’m not part of any group. I’m trying to get these kittens turned over to Sonora Cat Rescue. If I give them to county Animal Control, they will put them down. It’s a kill facility. I want to give them to Sonora Cat Rescue.”

Van Rappard said her daughter lives near Bulwer and Olive streets, next to Sonora Lumber, and there is a feral colony there with eight cats and three kittens as of earlier this month. She said she also knows of feral cat colonies of about 20 cats at Rambling Hills Mobile Home Park in Columbia; 30 to 50 cats at Big Hill Mobile Home Park; and at least one colony near the Starbucks and Kohls in The Junction shopping center.

“The list goes on and on,” Van Rappard said. “It is a catastrophic disaster. What I’m being told is, during COVID, people didn’t get their animals spayed or neutered. Then a lot of people moved away and abandoned their animals, and it’s turned into a catastrophic mess with cats everywhere.”

A 2009 grand jury report on Tuolumne County Animal Control stated, “​​Because of the large volume of cats, 70% of them are euthanized” and “no feral cat is ever put up for adoption.”

Whitcomb said the agency currently euthanizes 10% of the cats it takes in.

“And we will adopt out a feral cat, under the right circumstances,” Whitcomb said. “Our euthanasia rate has dramatically decreased. However, euthanizing for space is still a reality.”

Tuolumne Spay and Neuter, a Sonora-based nonprofit founded in July 2022, is seeking donations to focus on providing spay and neuter services at discounted prices, Carol Stoddard, president of the organization, said.

Stoddard and the nonprofit’s vice president, Elizabeth Mazzetti, said they formed Tuolumne Spay and Neuter last year to help address overpopulation issues with stray cats and dogs.

“Right now we’re trapping a feral cat colony in Jamestown,” Stoddard said in a phone interview. “We've caught 25 so far. There’s probably 25 more to catch. Near a home off Jamestown Road. We’re going to be doing a once-a-month spay and neuter clinic in Twain Harte starting in September.”

The nonprofit organization Sonora Cat Rescue has been around since 2005. Former group leader Judith Rodan passed away earlier this year, said the group’s secretary, Sadie Anderson. 

The group advocates for all cats, including feral cats. It also advocates for cat rescue, adoption with spaying or neutering, covering medical costs, and responsible pet ownership, and the group is seeking donations. 

Volunteers with Sonora Cat Rescue work out of PetSmart off Sanguinetti Road in Sonora seven days a week, with set hours from 1 to 3 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays.

Anderson said Sonora Cat Rescue also advocates for trap-neuter-release programs “because it is the best way to keep the cat population from growing while not euthanizing healthy cats, which we believe should always be a last resort. 

“We want them to live healthy, fulfilling lives whenever that is possible,” she said.

The rescue wants to prevent feral cats and abandoned cats from having litter after litter of kittens, to prevent them suffering from the types of diseases and cancers that can come from being unfixed, and to avoid engaging in frequent fights over mating partners in the case of males.

“While in a perfect world we would take them off the streets and find them homes, that simply isn't practical,” Anderson said. “Once a cat is a year old and is not socialized with humans, it is very unlikely they will ever be tamed. There are not nearly enough people who want to adopt a cat, much less a very scared and challenging cat.”

As long as a cat colony is not right on a busy road, the cats may actually do quite well when left to their own devices, Anderson said. Colonies can even be effective at controlling rodents and other pests when the cat population isn't growing exponentially.

It’s difficult to count feral cat populations because feral cats are stealth masters, Anderson said. They hide incredibly well, spook easily, and give humans a wide berth. Simply finding them in the first place is the most obvious challenge.

In addition, Anderson said, many people and businesses are reluctant to disclose there are feral colonies on their properties because:

• There can be social stigma with having lots of cats on a property, especially if neighbors do not want cats around.

•  If someone has more than a certain number of cats on their property, even ferals that are not pets in any way, they might be designated a cattery, which is illegal in many places.

•  In some areas, it is illegal to feed stray animals, and people do not want a colony to starve because they are legally prevented from caring for it.

Anderson said it’s also hard to estimate how many self-designated cat colony managers there are in Tuolumne County, for similar reasons.

“Just based on the number of people who walk up to us and tell us anecdotally about their own colonies when we’re at community events, there are likely dozens or scores of these people, if not hundreds,” Anderson said. “Those same people often decline to tell us where they live or work for all the reasons I mentioned above. And there is a distinction between managing a colony and just complaining about a colony.”

The international nonprofit organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, believes that trap, vaccinate, spay/neuter, and release programs are acceptable when cats are isolated from roads, people, and other animals that could harm them; when cats are regularly attended to by people who feed them and meet their medical needs; when they are situated where weather is temperate; and where they do not have access to wildlife.

Caara Williams is a member of the nonprofit Friends of the Animal Community, based in Tuolumne County, and has lived in Twain Harte for 50 years. She said she has tried to care for stray and feral cats and kittens for about 20 years. Her husband, John Gleason, helps her.

“We have fed one feral cat for seven years, and we are feeding two feral cats right now, for about six months,” Williams said in a phone interview. “I think there are more stray cats this spring and summer in Twain Harte than I’ve ever seen before. We want to find a home for a feral cat.”

Darlene Mathews, founder of FOAC in 2001, said she and FOAC staff and volunteers have noticed more calls about feral cats and kittens every day, and it’s more than previous years, even with all the spaying and neutering.

“This year has been horrific with the amount of cats and kittens needing help,” Mathews said. “FOAC gets multiple calls every day for assistance. 

“It seems like there’s an over abundance of people needing help, because they’ve found kittens or cats with injuries. People are finding cats from the feral population and calling and needing medical assistance or a place to take them.”

Mathews said FOAC’s focus is not feral cat populations. FOAC has been helping all it can, “but that’s not our mission.” She emphasized that “we have stepped up and we’re helping as much as we can.”

The feral cat situation in Tuolumne County so far this year has been outrageous, Mathews said.

“In all the calls we get to help, I hear there is a new spay and neuter program for feral cats,” Mathews said. “We’re here to help, but feral cats is not our mission. It’s increasing and it’s hard to control. We have helped hundreds of kittens and cats in the past 12 months. We help everyone we can, and it has taken a huge hit on us financially because this feral cat population is not our scope or focus. We try not to turn people away or any animal. Yes I think the cats are coming in heat more frequently and having more litters. This year is higher than average!”

Ways to help

For more information about Tuolumne Spay and Neuter, go to www.tspayneuter.com. For more about Sonora Cat Rescue, go to www.sonoracatrescue.net. For more about Friends of the Animal Community, go to www.foac.us.

Contact Guy McCarthy at gmccarthy@uniondemocrat.net or (209) 770-0405. Follow him on Twitter at @GuyMcCarthy.