LA County's Feral Cat Extermination Method, Revisited

This picture was taken January of this year, when LA County decided they were going to board up the crawl spaces used for shelter by the Rancho cats. The plan was to use plywood to cover the openings missing a screen and to leave 1 opening for the cats to use. We are talking about enormous buildings, a cat would die looking for that 1 exit, assuming the path to the exit is clear. Below you can see the cat pawing at the screen, he didn't run hundreds of feet away to the 1 exit. After some unwanted attention the project was discontinued and the cat you see in the picture was freed.

Fast forward to the day before Thanksgiving, the brand new chain link fence is complete and the gates leading to more than 10 feeding stations is locked. Below is the picture of a few cats eating what a passerby managed to slip underneath the gates. After the fence was completed it was said that the next step would be to board up the crawl spaces used as shelter by the Rancho cats. Sound familiar?

Difference is that now with the chain link fence around a large area, including a public alley, the public can no longer see the boarding up of the crawlspaces within the 2 big courtyards located on either side of the alley. Fail-Safe voluteers can no longer go into the alley and save a trapped or injured cat. They will not find the exit, assuming they are leaving an exit. It would be like dropping a person inside a HUGE dark maze without any food and water, accompanied with obstacles and extreme temperatures.

In the past, they didn't check and didn't care to see that all cats were safely out from underneath the buildings and they won't do it now that they are hidden from view.

When calls were made to Don Knabe's office about the cats going without food or water, his spokesperson Aaron Nevarez assured concerned citizens the cats were getting plenty of food and water from Animal Care & Control. Below is the picture of a feeding station, there is no food and there is no water. Here are some explanations you will get when calling Knabe's office. I will keep updating these as they seem to change all the time.

• Animal Care & Control is feeding the cats.

Not true. An animal control officer asked his supervisor if he had to give the cats food or water and the supervisor said, "absolutely not."

• Rancho staff is feeding the cats.

Not true. Rancho staff was given a memo warning them not to feed the cats. Video surveillance is used to monitor if any Rancho staff is feeding the cats.

• Animal Care & Control sees no need to feed the cats since people keep feeding the cats.

After 3 days of seeing the cats without food and water, yes concerned citizens disregarded the Do Not Feed the Cats signs and gave the starving cats a well deserved meal.

• If they or anybody feeds the cats it will interfere with their trapping.

Ok, animal control arrives 6 days a week with 4 traps. They don't feed the cats nor do they want the cats fed because they want them to be hungry...all 7 days of the week. The area the cats occupy is approx. 164 acres. Voluteers aren't allowed to feed ANYWHERE on the 164 acres because they then will be interfering with animal control's approx. 6' trapping area. What???

• There will be automatic water bowls set around the various feeding stations.

Sounds nice, but it can't be true. Within the fenced in area, there is no electricity and there is no water source either.

• They might also say that the reason for putting up the fence is to keep copper strippers out and it is not to facilitate the trapping of the cats.

There is nothing of value left in the old abandoned buildings (except our kitties) and a fence sure isn't going to deter anybody looking for mischief. The fence is to keep Fail-Safe and concerned citizens, looking out for the safety of the cats, out.

Another serious concern that Fail-Safe was confronted with was the mysterious disappearance of 5 cats they had placed holds on. They were listed as second interested parties on the following cats:

1. A3906188


2. A3906187


3. A3906186


4. A3905274


5. A3910030.

All these cats are no longer in the area designated for the Rancho cats. Just a week before a supervisor at the shelter admitted they only had a few calls inquiring about the cats, not a long list of people like they first claimed. Where then are all these cats?

They will insist that they don't want to kill the cats, that they are going to relocate them all, and adopt them out to good barn homes. If they have a long list of barn homes, what about giving the building full of feral cats they currently have a chance at life? It seems wrong and cruel to continue killing hundreds of feral and friendly cats with one hand and in the other hand have a long list of people wanting to adopt a cat. As for the Rancho cats, leave them alone, they already have a home and people to take care of them.

If relocation was really their main focus, perhaps all the money they have spent on putting up the chain link fence, having the animal control officer there 6 days a week, and paying a company to board up the buildings, could have been given to Fail-Safe to help relocate the cats...IF relocation was really their plan. Instead they want to starve the cats and subject them to a ruthless and outdated policy of extermination funded by taxpayer dollars.

Please keep calling and press for answers. Tell Don Knabe to put an immediate stop to all of this and let Fail-Safe care for these cats as they have for the last 4 years. Trapping the cats and having them suffer and die is not the right thing to do.