6/24/99

NEW YORK -- From behind bags of trash, a dozen cat eyes gleam in the weak beam of a sweeping flashlight. Though a locked steel gate blocks the abandoned railroad tunnel in Manhattan's Riverside Park, someone had slipped seven pie plates, now empty, through the rusty bars. 

An eighth plate was full of kibble.

Few people realize it, but New York is overrun with wild and stray cats.

Seven and a half million people share the city with 1.5 million to 2 million homeless cats, according to the New York Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which served as city dogcatcher until 1995. Cats have been domesticated for 8,000 years, but trust and friendliness wear off quickly on the mean streets. Strays become skittish and surly. Many alley cats are completely feral -- wild animals, born on the streets, with no trust for humans.

"It is not a minor attitude problem," said Ira Manhoff, who rents a basement space where he tries to get cats to "come around," or adjust to human contact.

He works with five cats at a time, and the taming process can take months.

Often, it takes weeks of petting with a back-scratcher before a cat will allow Manhoff to use his hands. A "floral essence remedy" in the water dish soothes the patient's frazzled nerves.

"They are terrified," Manhoff said. "They have suffered at the hands of humans, and now they are reacting to it."

Manhoff's group, Manhattan Valley Cat Rescue, has 20 reformed feral cats in foster homes, hopefully the final step before adoption. It is one of dozens of small animal rescue organizations in the city. Most are groups of friends who focus on removing kittens from the street while they are still impressionable, and putting them up for adoption at pet stores. The ASPCA has a list of 16 organizations, and pet store inquiries produced several more.

In the wild, cats live in colonies, preferring dark, enclosed spaces where hiding is easy. A railroad tunnel does well, or the space under a construction trailer. Colonies of 60 cats are not unusual, and as many as 100 cats are said to live together in abandoned buildings on Manhattan's northern tip. Left to their own devices, cats become nocturnal and secretive. Colonies form quickly. Cats multiply at an astonishing rate -- at a litter of eight every eight months, two cats could beget 2 million in six years' time.

Feral cats may lose every domestic impulse, but never the love for good food and a nice bowl of milk. Rescue workers say that most wild cat colonies are supported by human "feeders."

"They are going to go where there is food, and it is not going to be rats and mice and birds," said Holly Staver, president of the rescue group City Critters.

"There are feeders on every block."

The colony of nine cats in the Riverside Park tunnel are fed every morning at 5 a.m. by a neighborhood woman, known as "the cat lady" to denizens of the park.

The people who live in the park also help support the colony.

"A lot of us, we pick up cans so the cats stay full," said J.R., who lives in the park and declined to give his last name. "We take care of them real good."

Debt for the animals: For a few people, caring for cats has become a passion. With so many needy cats out there, sympathetic humans can be overwhelmed.

"I'm going broke with this thing," said Mary Zawada, a textile designer who spends weekends trapping pregnant cats so their kittens can be adopted. Lately, Zawada has been spending all of her spare time nursing a sick kitten that needed $600 worth of veterinary care when she picked it up off the street two weeks ago. "My credit cards just revolve and revolve," she said.

Cats demand a certain punctuality, and feeders learn to be on time.

"Time is very important to them," said Manhoff, who was anxious to leave the house to be on time for his feeding appointments. "These are cats who don't have very much to regulate their lives on," said Manhoff, adding that if he's a few minutes late, "the next thing you know, they are wandering around and crossing the street and everything."

The most ambitious rescuers pursue a"trap- neuter- release" policy. City Critters, a rescue group that has raised $75,000 so far this year for the cause, captures 500 wild cats each year. All the cats are neutered and given shots, and the ones that are too wild to be adopted are returned to their old colonies on the street.

The New York Center for Animal Control and Care has no problems with rescue groups putting sterilized feral cats back on the street. "We are not in a position to round up all of the animals," said Kyle Burkhart, director of external affairs. "If they spay and neuter, then we are grateful and it helps a lot."

Budget concerns as they are, the Center for Animal Control and Care only bothers with feral cats when neighbors complain, Burkhart said.

"We get calls constantly regarding packs of wild dogs in Queens and Brooklyn, but I can't think of a single complaint regarding cats," Burkhart said. "They tend to keep to themselves."

I wrote this story as a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and it moved on the New York Times wire.

Several papers picked it up, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Montreal Gazette and the San Diego Union-Tribune.