OXFORD — When Audrey Hewins saw the tiny kitten peer over the top of the porch she appreciated the size of the problem.
Now 8 weeks old, Nika, a gray and white kitten, sat inside the office of the Oxford Pines Regency Mobile Home Park on Tuesday, staring at Hewins’ hand as she idly waved it, describing how she became involved in combating the issue of an overpopulated feral cat colony dating back at least a decade.
“We’re going all the way with this. We’re going to save them, if they can be saved,” Hewins said, holding a 15-year-old orange tiger named Neptune. The cat is known for napping on her porch during blizzards, and before being trapped in a wholesale effort to stem the cat colony population, bled from the eyes due to an infection.
Led by a trailer park resident, its manager and a local shelter organizer, an effort to stem the cat population at the trailer park is underway, aided by their own out-of-pocket contributions and the generosity of strangers.
Feral cats differ from stray cats, which are lost or abandoned by an owner and are still accustomed to human contact. Feral cats are not domesticated and though they can become accustomed to human contact, they sometimes find it a difficult life to adjust to.
Animal shelters often lack the resources, time and money to spay and neuter cat colonies, and the effort to sterilize a population is usually undertaken by a patchwork of concerned citizens and nonprofit agencies. Spaying or neutering cats is the favored method, because euthanasia comes with financial costs, limits to effectiveness and moral objections, according to Liam Hughes, director of the state’s Animal Welfare Program.
Instead, said Stephanie Mains, president of the Western Maine Cat Coalition that helps communities trap and find homes for feral cats, most efforts now involve trapping, neutering and releasing the cats back to their habitats — just like a wild animal.
“Euthanasia isn’t going to take care of a problem. If you euthanize a whole colony, a new colony is going to come in,” Mains said.
The coalition coordinates a network of feral cat barns, enclosed spaces for the sterilized colonies, though most of their sanctuaries are already filled.
“It won’t be done overnight, but it will get done,” she said.
Size estimates for the Oxford population vary between 20 and 100, living either together in the woods, the nearby transfer station or — in Hewins’ case — inside the insulation of her trailer. To get a better sense of the numbers, Hewins has proposed setting up a nighttime camera to track the cats.
In the two weeks since trapping began, Hewins said they’ve captured about 40 cats, ranging from Nika, the youngest, to Neptune, by far the eldest. As the animals are sterilized and released, they hope to build shelters for the cats to live in.
As the animals are captured, they’re neutered at Responsible Pet Care in Paris, which takes in new cats as space opens. Thus far, Lucille Larsen, the shelter manager, estimated the bill for spaying and treating any issues with the cats at $3,800.
Typically, shelters help offset the cost of stray and feral cats by charging $22 to the town from where each cat is brought. However, Larsen said she doubts she’ll ever ask the town for money — times are tough enough. A clerk at the Oxford Town Office said last year it spent $638 on stray cats and, halfway through this year, it has already matched that tally.
Instead, Larsen and Hewins are appealing to the community for food, supplies, monetary donations or simply to adopt the animals, many of which they said buck the myth that feral cats are unfriendly.
Hewins said the impetus is on them to solve the issue now before spring, the traditional ‘kitten season,’ descends as temperatures warm and movement is less restricted.
Meanwhile, they’re imploring people to stop feeding the animals, so hunger will drive them into the baited traps, toward treatment.
Cindy Hodgdon, who manages the park, said the issues have been around for at least eight years. The park doesn’t allow tenants to have cats who are not spayed or neutered, but the rules are difficult to enforce, and she estimates just four of the 136 trailers have registered their pets.
But finally, she said, there’s hope.
“The business is responsible for bringing this under control. The problem was, when I started, it was so expensive and time consuming, how could we?”
Where to donate:
Responsible Pet Care, 9 Swallow Road, South Paris
(207) 743-8679
Oxford Pines Mobile Home Park, Skeetfield Road, Oxford
(207) 539-8233
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