Woman works to improve lives of feral cats
Thursday, November 16th, 2006Feral cats have spent a long time as the low animal on the totem pole of the animal welfare movement.
Their caretakers didn’t fare much better. They were often characterized as crazy old women who wear scarves in summer and spent their money on wild cats who don’t belong to them and run away when they show up to care for them. Things are changing. Many of those who care for ferals are like Leonie Nelson – caring, compassionate people who hate to see animals suffer.
Nelson began with a feral cat colony near Florida Community College at Jacksonville’s North Campus. It didn’t take her long to realize that just feeding the cats wasn’t going to be enough. She talked with a rescue organization that lent her a trap, and she started trapping the cats and working with veterinarian Pat Gionet, getting them spayed and neutered and giving them vaccinations.
When she changed jobs, she found another colony at her job’s Southside location. (It’s a funny thing about animal lovers. When I’d ask my late husband why I saw so many stray animals, he’d reply, “Because you look for them.” He was right. I think all animal lovers do, consciously or subconsciously.)
Nelson had been paying $220 a cat until she found Gionet again at River City Community Animal Hospital (www.rccah.org), a nonprofit mobile animal clinic that specializes in spaying and neutering feral cats. At the clinic, which is scheduled at different locations around the city, the cats are treated as first-class citizens, Nelson said. The cost is $35 for males and $50 for females.
First Coast No More Homeless Pets offers a similar program called Trap-Neuter-Release. The surgeries are done by appointment only at Edison Avenue Veterinary Hospital in Jacksonville 10 days a month. The service also includes rabies vaccination and parasite treatments, and there is a minimum donation of $15. To schedule surgeries and for more information, contact Nicole Rossi at 316-2262.
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