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Home > Out of the Cage! > February/March 2005 > NYC Feral Cat Council: An Interview with Jesse Oldham, Founder of Slope Street Cats NYC Feral Cat Council An Interview with Jesse Oldham, Founder of Slope Street Cats
When I first moved to South Slope in Brooklyn, I used to see a white and gray feral cat sunning itself in my neighbor's yard. When winter rolled around, I realized it wasn't someone's pet — it was sleeping in a cardboard box in the snow, huddled up with another cat, which broke my heart. I took the Neighborhood Cats course, bought traps, and began independently doing TNR and caretaking the small colony of cats. When I wanted to branch out and do more, I realized it was a bigger job than I, an independent trapper, could handle. I knew there were other independent trappers and caretakers in the area. So I got the idea to form a group to network all feral advocates in Park Slope. To help us organize, I named the group Slope Street Cats. That was in June 2004. What geographic areas does Slope Street Cats cover? We don't have a shelter. We work with caretakers of feral colonies wherever we find recovery space. As much as I wanted to focus on the Park Slope area, our initial efforts have had a broader geographic scope. Park Slope has a very high number of feral cats — I think it's the result of a combination of the yards, parks, and cemeteries, and the kind people who feed them but who don't realize you can trap-neuter-return. We'd like to focus on doing a street-by-street TNR effort and community outreach specifically in Park Slope. As of now we've been working with people who call us about colonies in Park Slope, Bed-Stuy, Cobble Hill, Red Hook, and Sunset Park. It seems that everyone knows of a colony somewhere. When we brought in a group of cats to the ASPCA mobile unit, the tech asked for help with a Park Slope colony. When I used a private vet for two ferals who the mobile unit couldn't take, the vet asked me if I knew of anyone doing TNR in Nassau County. So at this point we've been doing projects "by request," and trying to get a few mass spay days planned in our own area in the coming months. Is TNR the only activity in which Slope Street Cats engages? We try to stay focused on TNR, primarily. We do rescue/adoptions for friendly cats or kittens who are living in feral colonies. Sometimes we work with adoption groups with whom we have relationships to place our kittens or cats. In the beginning, I tried to do rescue as well. But we don't have enough resources or volunteers to do both. I believe TNR is an integral part of getting the feline euthanasia rates down, so we focus on that. There are so many groups already doing adoptions, so I feel strongly about our decision to focus on TNR. Of course, when we see a cat in need, we do rescue — we just don't do intake from people surrendering animals or take cats from AC&C.
Can you tell us about one of your rescues? One of our best examples was Liberty, who we found on the Fourth of July. The Brooklyn Papers actually wrote an article (page 6) on her and SSC. I was walking with two other SSC people after watching the fireworks, and we found this wee orange cat who was all beat up, only four pounds on an adult frame, with an eye so abscessed that her lid wouldn't close over it. We found out shortly thereafter at the ER that she was eight years old. She had a hairline jaw fracture, pelvic fracture, dislocated tail, and nerve damage, which prohibit her from expelling waste on her own. We have her kenneled with a wonderful vet in Park Slope — Prospect Park Animal Clinic. For the past six months they've treated her as one of their own. We've looked high and low for her former owners, to no avail. She has regained some control over her bowel movement, and can pass them on her own now, but she still needs to be expressed three times a day. We're hoping she eventually regains some control of that as well. We are looking for someone very special to adopt her. How are you working within your immediate community? Our work with TNR includes trying to get a Park Slope or Brooklyn census under way so that we have an estimated target list of colonies and their caretakers. It's important for us to locate the caretakers. We like for them to take the Neighborhood Cats course, or at least read the tutorial, so they have a good understanding of TNR. We will help them with TNR and organize the logistics with the Humane Society of New York or the ASPCA mobile unit. Sometimes that's not possible — especially if they are elderly or don't speak English. We need their cooperation in accessing the colonies, withholding food on trapping days, and identifying the number of adults and kittens they normally observe. The feral cat situation is a community-wide issue, and we need the community's understanding and support. We can't just swoop in and TNR the colony and think everything is going to just work out after that — it's important for the cats to be monitored afterward and have advocates on their own turf who already have community relations on the block. We're also working on creating an Education Committee for spay/neuter education, feral and TNR education, and outreach. Last autumn we had a Shelter Building Party where we got together to make different styles of shelters and go through the winter caretaking information as a way to make it a networking and exchange of information activity rather than a solitary activity where all the caretakers are amassing their own information with no feedback.
Roughly how many cats does Slope Street Cats care for each month? We directly monitor and provide food and shelter for a few colonies. There are a few small (5-10 cats) colonies in Park Slope and a 14-cat colony in Red Hook. The rest of the colonies we've worked with have caretakers who are monitoring and feeding them and letting us know if there are any problems. Right now we have three friendly cats in foster care — Liberty, at Prospect Park Animal Clinic, who needs an adopter who will be good with medical attention; Isabella, a mother cat whose kittens were adopted out and who ended up being friendly; and Pepper, a tiny black kitten who we were able to pull from the Red Hook colony because she was still friendly and non-aggressive at almost four months. How do you find adopters? We use Petfinder, which is linked to our own web site, and flier the neighborhood. Park Slope is a very animal-friendly town, and we've found many good adopters here. A pair of kittens we'd adopted out this summer has moved to Wyoming, but I believe the rest are still in NYC. I'd like to be able to use the adoption events, but the timing hasn't worked out and since some of our cats are "recovering ferals" their personality isn't suited for adoption fair viewing, which makes it a little difficult sometimes. How do you feel about being a member of the Mayor's Alliance? The events are perfect for gaining visibility with animal people. The Alliance has definitely made it easier to make connections within the animal community. They have been very supportive in trying to find us volunteers, getting the word out about some of our harder to place borderline ferals, and have helped us out with transportation. Why is being a part of the NYC Feral Cat Council important? It is really amazing that we have the NYCFCC as an organizing factor in the feral cat "big picture". It's important to know the climate of the overall feral cat advocacy scene, and for NYC specifically, how we can share ideas, resources, and experiences to make our own groups more effective with the common goal of reducing feline overpopulation and maintaining healthy and safe feral colonies. NYC is incredibly fortunate in our feral spay/neuter programs from the ASPCA and Humane Society of New York, and they always have someone at the FCC meeting, giving us direct access to representatives. Do you have companion animals of your own? Of course! I have four cats, all black domestic short hair rescues, oddly enough. Orko came from a woodpile in New Jersey, J. Oneida and Ollie came from the streets of Queens, and Timmy is my back office feral I've been trying to socialize for six months. Are there any members of your team you'd like to acknowledge? Yes! David Greene, Sarah Starbuck, and Karen Delgado are the core volunteers and have been amazing with trapping and organization efforts. Why do you believe Slope Street Cats is important to your community? I love the Gandhi quote, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." Brooklyn, and NYC at large, is so progressive, and there are so many animal lovers. I think the presence of SSC lets Brooklyn people learn that maybe there is a way they can help ferals besides just providing food and shelter. With ferals being wild when most of the public think they're domestic — it makes them somewhat enigmatic to people — even those who want to help them. I believe many people assume they can't help them. And I think a lot of people don't assume that these ferals are the ones producing those kittens who end up (hopefully) being snatched up for adoption in the few homes that are available. I hope we can start doing more humane education and spay/neuter outreach. We recently had a scare on my own block that involved losing at least three of our ferals to poisoning. Since the neighbors knew about SSC, we were able to educate the people who live on the block that poisoning is illegal. We got a poster campaign going, which resulted in a "neighborhood watch" for the ferals. I don't think that would have happened if they didn't know of SSC and think of it as a resource. Slope Street Cats is a member of the Mayor's Alliance, and a member of the NYC Feral Cat Council (NYCFCC), a coalition of Alliance Participating Organizations dedicated to providing responsible care for NYC's feral cats. Click here to learn more about Slope Street Cats. Click here to learn more about the NYCFCC.
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