Fur flying over feral cats at Salem mobile-home park

For once, this is not a column about a feral-cat problem.

It's a people and community problem. And boy, is it an intense one.

Some residents of the tidy Center Street Mobile Park in northeast Salem like cats and are thrilled that a feral-cat colony that once numbered between 50 and 60 felines has been reduced to just about a dozen or fewer of them.

This collection of mobile-home owners, who lease from among 55 spaces at the park, are pleased that a TNR (trap, neuter and return) plan executed by local animal advocates a few years ago has reduced the park's feral population and ensured that the remaining cats have been spayed or neutered and vaccinated and have had their ears tipped to prove they're not quite as wild as they once were.

Let's be clear, though. These are not doe-eyed cats with well-combed coats who ripple in alternating directions through a human's legs, purring and demanding to be scratched behind the ears. Nor are they owned cats who return home daily to a raked litter box, two square meals and a handful of treats.

They are skittish, untamed and nearly wild. Their fur and ears stand up straight at the smallest movement or random sound. They bolt on a wisp of wind or the approach of even a well-intentioned animal lover.

Center Street Mobile Park residents, including Ed and Jan Archer, who don't mind the remaining cats, are eager to point out that for the first time in more than three years there were no new kittens added to the feral mix this year. Jan said she and her husband like finding them curled up on their porch even if they "do run every time we open the door."

"See, TNR works," said Lora Meisner, of the Coalition Advocating for Animals. "This is a really good number for this place, which is right next-door to a large apartment building, which many in the animal-advocacy community suspect of being a dumping ground for abandoned cats. This proves that TNR is working."

But Meisner's idea of "working" doesn't exactly align with the beliefs of other park residents such as Steve Hilden, who is frustrated with the continued problem of cat feces in his vegetable garden and flower beds. Or with that of the park's on-site managers, Alice and John Bartlett, who say the majority of residents want the cats gone.

This collision of ideals has led to some hostility recently at the sleepy Salem park east of Lancaster Drive NE, where residents own their manufactured homes but rent their spaces by the month.

And it escalated last week when a few residents received what they thought were eviction notices from the property management company, Commonwealth Real Estate Services in Portland.

Jim Ryan, regional manager for Commonwealth, told the Statesman Journal that the communiques were not eviction notices. He said they were written warnings to residents of the park who were violating the terms of their lease agreements. He said they all have fairly easy remedies.

"Our intent is not to evict, but to get them to uphold the rules that hold up the values of our communities," Ryan said. "Our on-site managers, who've been there a couple of years, have turned the park around, and it's improved financially and aesthetically the last few years and we'd like to keep it that way. The warnings are very curable with the right behavior. This is about common respect. If these residents comply with the rules, they have nothing to worry about."

But Lee Sullivan, a double amputee who has lived at the park for 11 years, is worried because she has been feeding the cats. As is Barbara Baker, who said she immediately stopped feeding the cats upon receipt of the notice and paid a $50 fine.

Baker said she is in late-stage kidney failure and can't afford to be evicted.

Sullivan, who said she, too, paid the fine, recently went as far as to get a restraining order against one of her neighbors (it was later dismissed) whom she said moved in earlier this year and has a problem with the remaining cats.

She accused him of chasing the cats onto her space, yelling at them and spraying them with water. She said the park's solution of starving the cats to death is not a solution. She's hoping someone reading this column will need a few good mousers and come trap and relocate the cats.

Hilden, her neighbor,who has lived in the park for months, denies he's chasing cats.

He does admit to spraying the ones that soil his vegetable garden by using it as a toilet because he's tired of digging in his garden and accidentally reaching into cat feces, and then tracking it into his home.

"I'm not confrontational," Hilden said. "I don't like to fight. I'm just frustrated with cats pooping in my yard. I'm not opposed to cats;'m just opposed to them soiling my environment. My space is the collective litter box, and I can't tolerate it."

Hilden said he's spent hundreds of dollars trying to keep the cats out of his gardens. He ticks off a list of treatments he's tried,including red-chipped cinder, animal repellent, coyote urine, egg shells, orange peels and coffee grounds.

He also pointed to chicken wire surrounding his deck.

"But still, I find giant clumps of cat fur all over my deck and cat poop in my garden," Hilden said, picking up a couple of 2inch gobs of white cat fur to illustrate his point.

Meisner said Hilden is spending money "in all the wrong places."

She recommends that he try hazelnut mulch or lava-rock mulch instead, something that will scratch a cat's pads and discourage it from digging or even walking near his garden.

"I'd be happy to buy him a bag of hazelnut mulch if I have to," Meisner said. "He and the managers and the management company don't understand that simply relocating the cats or starving them won't solve the feral cat problem."

BJ Andersen, executive director of the Willamette Humane Society, agrees. She said the reduction in the colony is proof that TNR works, and she said simply telling tenants to stop feeding feral cats isn't going to solve the problem.

Jeanie Sloan, executive director of Salem Friends of Felines, said both shelters each have more than 200 cats in foster care at the moment and have a hard enough time finding homes for them. Getting ferals permanent homes is next to impossible.

Andersen said removing the cat dishes won't force them to move either. Instead, they'll start foraging for food in the same location, but in different ways.

"They'll start rummaging in dumpsters and garbage cans, and they will start killing many more birds and other wildlife to feed themselves. It's not a solution at all," Andersen said. "The reduction in the size of this colony is actually a success story. I'd encourage the residents to find other ways to deter the cats from using parts of the park as a litter box."

Andersen said relocating feral cats isn't an answer either. She said most don't survive in a new location for a variety of reasons. Removing a spayed and neutered colony will also create a vacuum that will be filled by other cats from neighboring areas who won't be fixed or vaccinated and will likely bring annoying mating behavior and disease to the area.

"Just relocating them to a rural barn doesn't always work. Most will be in a constant state of panic, and they might be intruding in an area already claimed as territory by another cat. It can be very challenging and borders on cruel."

She recommends managing the colony that is there to help Hilden keep his garden free of cat feces. She agreed with Meisner that hazelnut mulch can work. But she also recommends motion-activated sprinklers.

"It doesn't harm the cats or other pets, but strongly discourages them. And it doesn't hurt the veggies to get a random blast of water every now and again either," Andersen said.

A quick Internet search found several reasonably priced models. The Havahart 5266 Spray Away motion-activated sprinkler animal repeller was $66.44 online. The ScareCrow motion-activated animal deterrent was $79, and the Jet Spray Animal Repeller was $49.99.

Perhaps we should start a GoFundMe crowd-funding account so that the small community of folks at the Center Street Mobile Park can get back to being neighborly soon.

In Your Corner columnist Carol McAlice Currie can be reached at 503-399-6760 or at InYourCorner@statesmanjournal.com. To submit an issue for possible action, complete the form online at http://www.statesmanjournal.com/InYourCorner.