Congratulations to Sallie Higgins who won a free outdoor shelter for their colony cats and a bottle of Feral Flower Essence from FixNation board member Jackson Galaxy’s Spirit Essences line through FixNation’s National Feral Cat Day story competition!
When I first moved into my house in South Hollywood it had been vacant for 10 months. I soon discovered that not only had my fixer been home to the homeless but when I took possession it was still home to a dozen rapidly multiplying feral cats that had taken residence in the crawl space beneath the house. It didn’t take long to find out that my next door neighbor Mario, was the number one culprit for the out-of-control stray cat population. Mario was an old-fashioned Italian man, who just refused to listen to logic or see things in a 21st century light. He vehemently disapproved of spaying and neutering cats and explained to me with great passion how Rome is known for wild cats and how wild cats are good for keeping away the plague. Despite my pleas to the contrary with this illogical rhetoric he stubbornly justified never fixing his solid white deaf mama cat. She was undoubtedly the matriarch of the feral pride that occupied the crawl space underneath my house.
For several weeks I pleaded with Mario to get her fixed. I tried humor. “I think we have enough feral cats now to combat the plague Mario—in case it makes a comeback.” But soon I realized that my words were falling on deaf ears and that I may as well be talking to the deaf cat. I knew I must take matters into my own hands so I bought a raccoon cage. Secretly I began trapping them one by one and traveling in the wee morning hours to have them fixed. Despite my efforts to evade detection one afternoon Mario caught me red-handed returning with one of his mama’s litter in the cage. “You’re turning him into a homosexual!” he screamed at me in his broken English with both fists in the air, “The other cats are going to beat him up!” “It will be OK Mario,” I countered, “don’t forget we’re West Hollywood adjacent.”
I continued to trap cats and take them in until in a few short weeks I had finally captured, fixed and released eleven feral cats total! The white mama cat however eluded me—like Mario, she was just too set in her ways for her own good. Much to my surprise and dismay shortly thereafter Mario had to move away abruptly as his house was foreclosed on. And when the bank tented the house for termites the white mama cat was accidentally fumigated. I do wish I could have known in time to help Mario keep his house and of course I wish I could have saved the mama cat too. But we do what we can and learn as we go.
