GILROY
– Cats, both strays and pets, have been dying mysteriously on
Ronan Avenue.
Residents believe someone is intentionally setting out poison to
control what Dawn Appelman calls an
”
explosion
”
of stray cats in her neighborhood.
City police, who are Gilroy’s only animal control agency, can’t
tell how the cats died but confirmed that killing them
intentionally is a crime, falling under the category of animal
cruelty.
By Lori Stuenkel
GILROY – Cats, both strays and pets, have been dying mysteriously on Ronan Avenue.
Residents believe someone is intentionally setting out poison to control what Dawn Appelman calls an “explosion” of stray cats in her neighborhood.
City police, who are Gilroy’s only animal control agency, can’t tell how the cats died but confirmed that killing them intentionally is a crime, falling under the category of animal cruelty.
“We don’t do blood toxin (tests) on every dead animal,” police Sgt. Noel Provost said this morning, “(but) if we did develop a suspect, I can assure you that the case would be thoroughly prosecuted.”
When police Community Service Officer Maria Cabatingan picked up a dead cat on Tuesday from Appelman’s house – a stray her daughter had adopted and was attached to – she reported that it was the sixth from the neighborhood recently.
Appelman and her next-door neighbor, Diane Hernandez, say the count is much higher – 21 in the past six weeks, they say a police officer told them. Three weeks ago, Hernandez and her son found five dead cats in one day and eight in a week, she said. They reported them all to police, she said.
This is not the first string of cat deaths on Ronan Avenue, Appelman and Hernandez say. In the fall, 12 cats were found dead in a short time span.
All the dead cats showed the same symptoms, according to Appelman and Hernandez.
“They’re throwing up chicken,” Appelman said. “There’s a line of throw-up, and then there’s the cat. … They were stiff as a board, as if rigor mortis had set in.”
“Normally, cats will crawl into a space and die, but around here they seem to just drop,” Hernandez said. “This is not normal.”
Both women have taken to feeding the strays, but they put out dry cat food, not meat.
“They’re fine when I feed them at night, and the next morning they’re dead,” Hernandez said.
“Someone’s feeding them either rotten meat or putting poison in the meat for them to be dying this quickly,” Appelman said.
Across the street at Lilly Garden Apartments, Manager and resident Janet Sotelo agrees. Ever since she saw her third dead cat – all pets at Lilly Gardens – she’s been convinced someone is killing them on purpose.
“There’s someone in the area who truly doesn’t like cats,” Sotelo said. “They had been OK minutes before, and then the next time we see them they were dead.”
Appelman’s and Hernandez’s houses, at 100 and 100B Ronan Ave., are relics from a time when Ronan Avenue was on Gilroy’s northern outskirts rather than inside the city. The unkempt property between the two houses, with uncut grass and plenty of places for animals to hide, has become a breeding ground for stray cats.
“We had a problem with stray cats coming in, getting pregnant and having more cats,” Appelman said. “It was really bad.”
It’s still bad, Appelman said, but she’s appalled at the thought that someone thinks poisoning the felines is the solution.
Instead, she said, someone should be “trapping them and taking them to the pound. At least they could find homes.”
The problem is that the San Martin Animal Shelter will not take animals for free from inside the Gilroy city limits because it and the city do not have a contract. Instead, the shelter charges $100 per animal, according to Gilroy police CSO Gary Muraoka, the former animal control officer.
The closest place a Gilroyan can drop off an unwanted animal for free is the humane society in the city of Santa Clara, about 40 miles away.
Appelman said she is disappointed with city police because they were reluctant to launch an investigation into whether someone was poisoning the cats. In addition, she said, police told her they would not trap the stray animals themselves.
“They should at least offer some help,” Appelman said.
Police will loan traps to citizens to catch live animals such as cats, raccoons or skunks, free of charge.
Appelman said she also looked into trapping the stray cats and getting them spayed and neutered at Saint Francis of Assisi Spay and Vaccination Clinic in San Martin, but she decided not to when clinic staff said they would charge her for every cat.
“They’re not our cats,” Appelman said.
The Saint Francis clinic charges $20 to neuter male cats, $40 to spay females. Dogs are $55 for either sex.
The procedure is done by appointment only on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. The shelter is booked for female cats through May.
