LEWISTON – The Greater Androscoggin Humane Society will host a “Community Cat Meeting” on Saturday to give feral cat caregivers and others an opportunity to talk about cats living around the Lewiston-Auburn area and what can be done for them.

Feral cats are unsocialized cats that have lived apart from humans for so long that they’ve essentially become wild animals. Some were abandoned and left to fend for themselves. Others were born to feral cats. Unlike stray cats, which have spent a short time on their own, feral cats typically can’t be adopted and turned into pets again.

The humane society has no statistics on feral cats living in the Lewiston-Auburn area, but Executive Director Steve Dostie believes the numbers aren’t insignificant.

“There is a problem out there,” he said.

Some feral cats are fed and cared for by people, and the shelter recently started a program to trap feral cats, neuter and release them. But there is no large, organized group interested in the welfare of feral cats in Central Maine. Dostie hopes the Saturday meeting will lay the groundwork for such a group.

“We want a meeting of the minds, basically,” Dostie said. “It’s something we’ve always wanted to do, but we just didn’t have the time or the facility to do that. The feral cat problem is something that has been on our mind. We were not able to do it until now.”

The meeting will be held Saturday at noon at the shelter on Strawberry Avenue in Lewiston.