Stray and feral cats missed a chance to roam free and
”
live out their natural lives
”
at airports and other county-owned land, but life may still
remain good for felines under a proposed county regulation.
Morgan Hill – Stray and feral cats missed a chance to roam free and “live out their natural lives” at airports and other county-owned land, but life may still remain good for felines under a proposed county regulation.
District 3 Supervisor Pete McHugh is looking to establish a formal process for finding new homes for stray and feral cats trapped on public property. His latest proposal, expected to go before county supervisors Sept. 25, represents a scaled-back version of a plan he proposed in spring. That plan would have called for trapping cats found on any of the county’s 500 properties, sterilizing them, and then returning them to feline colonies already established on other county properties. There, they could “live out their natural lives” under the watchful eye of volunteers, according to an August staff memo outlining the policy.
But faced with concerns from county animal control and health department officials, McHugh, who could not be reached for comment, tweaked the ordinance so that the county would not be required to create and maintain cat colonies on public property. It also calls for volunteer animal-rescue groups to handle the relocation of cats. While euthanization would have been less likely under the original plan, it remains a “last resort” in the latest incarnation of the ordinance, according to Mainini Cabute, a senior policy aide for McHugh.
“What we’re doing with this revised policy is formalizing current practice,” Cabute said. “This is good news because right now department heads can take care of the cats in whatever way they deem necessary. This policy would say that if you see a cat on your facility, you must contact the animal care control division once you have sighted … or moved the cat, so that county staff can resume their process.”
And that process will involve working closely with cat-rescue volunteers to find new homes for the animals, though not on county land. The policy change came in response to a number of concerns raised by county animal and health officials, who worried about diseases borne by the animals as well as the threat posed to endangered species such as the burrowing owl.
Supervisor Don Gage, who represents South County, shared staff concerns about the county creating cat colonies on its own property.
“I think it’s a bad idea,” he said. “You put liability on the county and then you have to pay for people to maintain it. We have a colony at the jail and volunteers go over there. The inmates could get scratched, infected … It goes on and on.”
McHugh wrote the original proposal in spring in consultation with the county’s Animal Advisory Commission, a seven-member citizens’ advisory group. He plans to review the latest proposal at a formal meeting of the commission Sept. 13. Members of the group could not be reached for comment.
“I think ideally, each of them would have wanted to see the original proposal to go through,” Cabute said. “But at this time, Supervisor McHugh wants to make sure he moves forward with a (workable) plan for the cats, rather than push forward on something that might not prevail.”
