DRAPER — Bonney Thom cannot imagine her newly adopted cat, Bleau LeBeare, trying to fend for himself as a feral cat.
“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” she said of the fact that the woman who found him was told to leave him in the field where he jumped into her car because he was healthy and likely just wandering too far from home. “Bleau would have made it only because he’s huge. ... He might have made it for a year or so. But I don’t know if he would have made it after that. There are so many other animals out there (where he was found).”
The 17-pound Russian Blue with a French name made his way into Thom’s home and heart after jumping into the vehicle of two women who trap, spay or neuter and then release feral cats in Salt Lake County for two different rescues.
“We called Salt Lake County (Animal Services), and they said, ‘If he looks good, put him back, and he’ll find his way home,’” Fernandes recalled. “I said, ‘This is a feral colony, and he doesn’t belong here.’”
The women, who’ve been voluntarily working with stray and feral cats for nearly three decades, worried that if the other feral cats didn’t see him as a threat and attack him, he’d be hit by a car or stalked by other animals in the remote area far from any residential housing.
Instead of putting him back in the field, Fernandes and her friend took him home, adding him to about a dozen other foster cats. They posted his picture and a bio on websites for lost or found pets for two weeks before putting him up for adoption through a non-profit rescue, Community Animal Welfare Society (CAWS), which agreed to pay for his vaccinations so he could be adopted.
“This is a tremendous burden for rescues,” said Fernandes, who also raises money on her own to spay and neuter stray cats. “Especially if they’re volunteer, foster-based rescues. That means we have to post them online, and make the calls and do all the running around to see if anyone will claim them. We feed them and get them medical care ... and it’s expensive.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on almost every aspect of people’s lives, and animals are no exception. When state government officials shut down businesses in mid-March, government-run animal shelters completely changed operations, and part of that was declining to take stray animals that weren’t hurt or sick. The shutdown also meant veterinarians could only perform “essential services,” and spay and neuter was not considered essential, even for feral animals.
And in the last few weeks, there is a new fear for rescue groups. In at least two counties, they are worried that COVID-19 restrictions, which have placed a massive burden on a patchwork of nonprofits and volunteer-run organizations, will make permanent changes that leave cats like Bleau out in the cold.
“They are no longer going to be taking in stray cats,” said Dede Minardi, a longtime volunteer with CAWS, about potential changes in Salt Lake and Washington counties. “The only way they’ll take in a cat is if it is visibly ill or injured. They’re putting the responsibility back on the people and the community. ... It’s a new model, from what I’m being told.”
Both Salt Lake and Washington counties said they have not made these virus-related restrictions permanent policy changes.
“The St. George Shelter ... (is) still taking in stray cats regardless of age,” said David Cordero, communications and marketing director for the city. “One change they have made is that on a stray call, they will check out the cat and look for obvious signs of distress and if the cat seems healthy, (they) will return the cat to the area in which it was found. That cat will be fixed before putting it back in the field, if it wasn’t already.”
In Salt Lake County, spokeswoman Callista Pearson said they’re adhering to pandemic protocols outlined by the National Animal Care and Control Association.
“So the only thing we aren’t bringing in are healthy stray adults who don’t have ID, aka community cats, who don’t have an owner and are comfortably living outside,” Pearson said. “Currently we have 184 cats in the shelter and in foster homes.”
Jessica Vigos, who started Whiskers in 1991 to help senior, special needs and medically fragile cats, said the restrictions made a difficult problem even worse as many shelters either don’t take strays or only take them by appointment.
“How do animals get back to their owners?” she said. “Where are the places people can look for their lost pet? They take in dogs. They’re both domesticated animals, and I think it’s very strange how differently cats are treated.”
She said without shelters as a clearinghouse for lost or stray pets, families who lose a pet must navigate the state’s 54 animal rescues and various social media or online search sites.
As to when operations might return to pre-pandemic restrictions, Pearson wasn’t sure.
“I can’t speak for when we’ll return to taking strays, but because the risk of COVID is still very real, we are still working with decreased staffing,” she said. “Because we have fewer staff members here each day, we aren’t able to appropriately and adequately take care of the volume of animals we previously were. There is a hiring freeze, big cuts to our budget, we are going to be understaffed for a while. Once we are better staffed we will be able to implement expanded programming.”
The COVID-19 restrictions made a complicated situation even more confusing.
Andrea Nelson found another cat now in the care of CAWS, Lady Di, who was obviously sick or blind when she wandered into Nelson’s yard on June 26.
“We told them we thought the cat was pregnant, walking in circles, sick and acted like it couldn’t see,” Nelson said. “It was just heartbreaking. ... They told us to release the cat.”
Fernandes saw a Facebook post about Lady Di and reached out on Nelson’s behalf. A dispatcher told her someone would pick the cat up that day, but by midnight, no one had come. Instead, Fernandes found the cat a foster through CAWS, which is again paying for the cat’s medical needs.
“I think Lady Di will have a happy ending like Bleau, but this takes a lot of resources,” Fernandes said. “We’re all going crazy trying to take care of cats that the shelters won’t take in.”
Pearson acknowledged Lady Di’s case was “mishandled.”
“There was a breakdown in communication and information between the agencies involved, VECC (dispatch) and animal control,” she said. “Ultimately, an animal control officer should have picked up the cat because it was sick. ... Our agency will continue to work on fixing this communication problem.”
