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Working Cats: Service With a Purpose
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PHOTO COURTESY SARAH HODGE
s many as 3 million feral cats roam the streets of Los Angeles County, according to the website LAWeekly.com. Most of these feral cats originated from unneutured strays, former pet cats who were lost or abandoned and forced to live on the streets. These cats breed, and as they have less and less contact with humans, they ultimately become feral—avoiding people and possibly even showing aggression to avoid being touched. Homeless, hungry, and vulnerable, they form colonies, often with a “queen,” and always centered around food sources like dumpsters, trash cans, or drop-off points where caregivers provide the colony regular meals. Left unsterilized, feral cats breed and their numbers increase exponentially. Various organizations, such as Voice for the Animals (VFTA), founded in 1999, participate in Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) programs—a compassionate choice that allows the cats to continue living outdoors with their colony mates, rather than trying to force them to exist indoors or, worse, in a cage. VFTA maintains several sterilized feral colonies around Los Angeles through their thriving TNR program. But VFTA Founder and Executive Director Melya Kaplan realized the value of putting these cats to work, serving the public in a way that only they can. It started at the historic, original Los Angeles Flower Market, where operators and vendors
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were desperate for a solution to their very serious rat problem. The market’s operators and vendors were concerned they might have to close as the rats’ presence began keeping customers away. The extermination methods they were using began making people sick and did little to deter the rats. Melya brought in some good candidates from VFTA’s cat colonies and gave them sufficient time to acclimate to the location, an important step in the process that usually takes about a month. “You can’t just take feral cats and put them in one location and expect them to stay,” she says. “A feral cat will kill himself trying to get back to his old location.” Once acclimated, the cats settled very naturally into their work—“They prowl, they eat, they sit in the sun,” said Melya. Great work if you can get it, as the cats generally don’t even get the chance to kill the rats and mice—they do nothing more than leave their scent, and the rodents head for the hills, in search of safer territory. In 2012, when the Mid-Wilshire District of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was having trouble controlling an infestation of mice and rats with traps, Melya stepped in to suggest a new approach. Commander Kirk Albanese, a caption at the Wilshire station at the time, said, “I learned about the Working Cats Program, so we gave it a try.” Melya installed cats on the station grounds, and Albanese reported, “Once we got the cats, problem solved. I think it’s a very humane way to deal with a very stubborn problem.” The approach has since been extended to several other districts, with similar success. “I’ve never seen a place it didn’t work,” said Melya. In late 2018, Los Angeles City Hall regularly made the nightly news because of its embarrassingly public rat infestation. The LA County Department of Public Health reported that cases of typhus were on the rise, mostly because fleas contract typhus from rats and other carriers, and then transmit the bacteria to people when they bite. Liz Greenwood, a deputy city attorney, was one of those diagnosed with typhus, which she believes she contracted through a flea bite received in her workplace inside City Hall East. In February 2019, City Council President Herb Wesson broached the idea of drafting cats to fight City Hall’s rat infestation. Melya, who by then had placed hundreds of unsocialized cats
PHOTO COURTESY SARAH HODGE
By Anabel Dflux
