GILROY
– Mary Fambrini is on a mission to spay, neuter and find homes
for Gilroy’s stray cats.
GILROY – Mary Fambrini is on a mission to spay, neuter and find homes for Gilroy’s stray cats.
Since January, Fambrini says she has taken about 40 cats in to be spayed and neutered at her own expense. Such operations cost about $75 each, and while she gets a slight discount due to her association with SafeHaven Animal Sanctuary, she has still invested more than $2,500 in fixing strays.
On top of that, Fambrini says she footed a $500 medical bill for Patches, a stray cat she found in the Ronan Avenue neighborhood with a scabrous wound on its hindquarters.
“She’s a very dedicated lady,” said Claire Ramey of the San Martin Veterinary Hospital, where Fambrini takes the cats she finds. “She pays for everything.”
Fambrini doesn’t fit the common perception of a “cat lady” – a reclusive spinster who lives in an old house with dozens of felines. Rather, she is a manager at Sun Microsystems who drives an Infiniti sport-utility vehicle and describes herself as “upper-middle class.”
Perhaps “cat rescue lady” is more appropriate, or “cat reproduction police.”
Fambrini moved to Gilroy from Campbell last fall. In 2003, she says, she spayed and neutered about 70 cats in Campbell and Gilroy with her own money.
Gilroy has plenty more cats to fix. According to Fambrini, more than 40 stray cat colonies in and around this city are being maintained by animal rescue groups such as SafeHaven and Towncats of Morgan Hill.
“We are overwhelmed,” Fambrini said.
On Feb. 11, Fambrini read a Dispatch article about mysterious cat deaths in the area of Ronan Avenue and Lilly Gardens Apartments. Neighbors there suspected someone was trying to control an exploding population of strays by poisoning them.
Horrified, Fambrini did something about it. Since February, she has been going to Ronan and Lilly Gardens every night with cage traps. So far, she has caught 15 cats and paid for them to be spayed or neutered.
“The problem has definitely gotten better, but it only takes two unfixed cats,” she said.
She has taken seven of the Ronan cats into her garage until she can find people willing to adopt them. She has had success with only one so far, but she features them at a SafeHaven cat adoption fair every Saturday at the PetClub in San Jose.
The others she has released near where she trapped them. It’s sad for her to do this, she said, but at least these cats can’t make more kittens.
“I can’t take in anymore,” she said. “I’m returning ‘friendlies’ who will live out their very short lives unloved, unfed and possibly poisoned like the other cats.”
Fambrini says 95 percent of the stray cats she sees around Ronan Avenue are not feral, or wild. Feral cats are generally shy of civilization, but these wander amiably around looking for handouts. She describes them as “adoptable, wonderful cats.”
Lilly Gardens manager Edie McKinley loves having Fambrini around.
“When I first started a month and a half ago, there was like 20 or 30 cats everywhere,” McKinley said. “I would say we only have three or four now, and I think a couple of them belong to the residents. … I think Mary knows which ones those are.
“The cats that she’s taken are starving,” McKinley said. “They’re super skinny.”
Fambrini is dreaming of a day when Gilroy will have an animal shelter. The county runs one in San Martin that serves unincorporated areas, but Gilroy and Morgan Hill have not signed contracts for county animal control, leaving city police to do it on top of their other duties.
Fambrini also hopes the city of Gilroy will pitch in for an education campaign on responsible pet ownership and wants area veterinarians to offer low-cost spaying and neutering for poor people’s pets. The Saint Francis of Assisi Spay and Vaccination Clinic in San Martin specializes in the latter, charging $20 to neuter male cats, $40 to spay females and $55 to fix dogs, but they are almost always booked months in advance.
“The people who can afford to get their cats spayed and neutered are taking all the appointments at St. Francis,” Fambrini said.
Fambrini would not say how many cats she has in her home “sanctuary” because she is wary of a city ordinance forbidding more than five cats and dogs in a residence. She did say that the cats are in her garage, not her house, and that everything is kept clean.
“I’m very (careful) about making sure I don’t become a crazy cat lady,” she said.
