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By Karla Browne, March 13, 2005

Last updated: Sunday, March 13, 2005 10:58 AM EST

Huddling in cages or cat carriers, about 35 cats seem wary and poised to run when they get the chance.

They don't.

Two-by-two, they are carried into a medical van, where a veterinarian waits.

When they come out — missing an ear tip and bearing a shaved belly from spaying or wound from neutering — they lie limp on their sides, eyes glazed with anesthesia.

Volunteer assembly line

A counter-top assembly line is next at the PAWS clinic in the back room at Superpetz store on Carlisle Pike in Hampden Township.

PAWS President Christine Arnold is in charge of taking blood for testing for feline AIDS or leukemia. Any cat testing positive for those diseases goes to a hospice home in Linglestown to live out its life — unless it's too sick. Then it's euthanized.

In the next room, volunteer Linda Kelley of Newport, who has brought three cats she trapped the day before, grabs a syringe and prepares to inoculate for rabies and distemper and inject post-operative penicillin and a de-worming agent.

"Excuse me," says Linda Mummaw of York County Cats as she reaches in front of Kelley to grab a syringe from a box of disposables so she can fill it.

Kelley slides the yellow tabby she's injected down the counter, where a flea and tick solution is squirted behind its shoulder blades.

"Do you have any cotton balls?" another volunteer asks. Farther down the counter, she begins to swab out a cat's ears with a cleansing solution. The swab comes out dark with dirt.

One by one, the cats are carried to a third room, where volunteers gently lay them on newspapers and watch while they come out of the anesthesia.

Then it's back into cages to drive them back to their territories.

Once there, they'll likely receive food and some shelter from the people who brought them to PAWS, but life won't be easy.

May not survive winter

"A lot of times, they don't survive the winter," says Audrey Biller, a clerk at Freysinger's Pontiac on the Carlisle Pike in Hampden Township, where a colony of 12 reproducing feral cats was reduced to eight neutered or spayed and immunized animals with the help of PAWS.

"Several were hit on the Carlisle Pike," Biller says. "Sometimes, they crawl up in cars to keep warm," then are killed when the car is started.

Despite that, Biller is happier with the situation now than before she contacted Superpetz to begin managing the colony.

"It started a long time ago with two cats — and then, of course, we didn't realize what we were doing," she says. "We decided to be nice and take food to them. They started mating and having kittens. At one point, we had 16 cats."

Although Biller feels bad because the cats have to eat and sleep outside and live next to a busy road, she enjoys the cats' company.

"I feed them a little after 5 p.m. They're usually sitting out there waiting for me," she says.

Two even allow her to pet them. Employees dubbed one cat "Mommy" — "because she was the one having the litters."

A little black and white cat Biller calls "Sweetie" runs up to her and rubs against her legs. "He's got personality," Biller says. She thought about finding a home for him, but realized she would miss him.

Others not so friendly

The feral cats are not so friendly at United Methodist Home for Children in Lower Allen Township, but they receive the same care.

"I just decided I had to do something," says Jodie Graham, an aide in the Daron Emergency Shelter where children live before they are placed in foster care or in the home's dormitories.

"I'm an animal lover for sure. I had to do something," Graham says. In November, she discovered the cats eating from Dumpsters on the grounds of the 56-acre children's home.

Red scratches cover the backs of Graham's hands and wrists as she shows photos of the kittens she rescued from behind the building.

The kittens can be adopted after they are socialized and old enough for spaying or neutering. Graham is keeping four at home with the hopes of finding owners for them.

Meanwhile, "I keep putting the traps out. I think of those kittens out there ... in the log pile, in ground hog holes..."

PAWS volunteer Sue Whitcomb of Silver Spring Township is working with United Methodist Home on its colony.

"If you just get rid of them, more come," she says. But when all of the cats in a colony spayed or neutered, "you won't have 100 kittens in the spring," Whitcomb says.

Across the road from the home, the snow is pocked with round prints around the piles of food Graham puts out — donations from PAWS. Nearby are her makeshift shelters of cardboard boxes, a discarded waste can turned on its side and an igloo-shaped dog house.

Also nearby is a trap covered with a towel to ward off falling snow. Graham plans to check it after work and pick it up if no cat is in it. Sometimes she comes by at midnight to set a trap, then checks it at 5 a.m. before work.

Graham does it "because I'm just that determined."

She's trapped 16 cats, which PAWS volunteers picked up for spaying or neutering and immunization and returned. She's seen five other cats she hasn't been able to trap. Some cats she trapped were tame and she suspects they were abandoned or wandered away from surrounding neighborhoods. Most are too wild to handle.

"I don't think it's ever going to be down to zero," Graham says, "but the numbers could have been a lot higher. It could get out of hand rapidly. A year ago we had four or five.

"If everyone in their own little neck of the woods ... could do what I'm doing, they have no idea how much of a difference they could make."

All the trapping and feeding "is tiresome," she admits. But "it's important to do your part."

Colony under control

Newport residents Linda Kelley and Rob Campbell spearheaded a trap, neuter and return program in their Perry County community with the help of PAWS.

Newport's feral cat population, once a public nuisance, is largely under control now, Kelley says. After two years and 125 cats and kittens treated, she's through trapping until she gets another complaint.

Holly and Rocky Butler of Waynesboro are in the process of controlling a feral cat population of about 25 at their rural home. They have several appointments scheduled at PAWS.

"We brought three today, five last time. Two were very sick," Holly Butler says as they wait beside the traps they filled at a Superpetz clinic. The couple have eight cats in their house, six kittens in an outdoor shelter and the rest roam, she says.

"PAWS is a great program. They're doing so much good. Babies are such a problem everywhere," she says.

Harrisburg resident Anita Blizzard brought five cats to the clinic and says she could easily get five more in the next couple of weeks.

"They come to my house because I feed them," she says. "So I'm overwhelmed with cats like those cat ladies you hear about. There's been so many litters."

The PAWS spay/neuter program "is a blessing," Blizzard says. "There's no way I could afford to have this done."

PAWS asks for a donation from people who bring in cats, but depends mostly on contributions and fund-raising to pay for supplies and veterinary services.

Like clockwork...

Every other Friday, the scene at Superpetz in Hampden Township is similar as up to 50 feral cats are brought to the clinic.

In the last couple years, PAWS volunteers have treated more than 200 feral cats from Penn National Racetrack near Harrisburg, says Arnold.

Whitcomb has volunteered with PAWS for seven years, "sometimes much to my husband's displeasure," she adds. She has more cats than she likes to admit.

"You can't help yourself," she says. "I take calls on the surrender line — ‘Please help me. The mother cat got hit on the road. I've got these six kittens.' It's heartbreaking. It's so hard to say, ‘No.'"

But PAWS is saying "no" to any more surrenders.

"We have 500 to 600 cats in foster homes," Whitcomb says. "That's more than some shelters."

However, anyone with a feral cat problem is welcome to bring cats to the clinic, then return them to the area where they were found.

Like Whitcomb, Karen Koch of Silver Spring Township brought cats to a clinic then got hooked on the program. Koch has volunteered for seven years.

2 left out of 20

One day in 1998, at a fast-food restaurant drive-through in Silver Spring Township, Koch says, "My daughter and I heard kittens crying and that's what started it all."

"We trapped 20 at that location" with the help of PAWS volunteers and found homes for the kittens. After six years, only two males are left in the area.

Both are "beautiful Russian blues," Koch says. She calls them "Marly" and "Genes." The latter is named for his suspected role in the burgeoning population before he was neutered.

Three PAWS volunteers monitor the pair and feed them daily.

"A new colony hasn't moved in because they're there," Koch explains.

"Usually their lifespan is half that of a house cat because of the elements, worms" and other factors, she says.

Until they got involved, volunteers say they were completely ignorant of the number of cat colonies in the area.

"The public has no idea what goes on. I didn't a year ago," says Zella Anderson of Hampden Township, founder of Central Pennsylvania Animal Alliance, an all-volunteer, nonprofit group of area shelters and rescue organizations for dogs, cats and other animals.

With 32 member organizations, CPAA is still growing, she says.

"Part of the reason we're having such momentum is that we're all working together finally," Anderson says. "We're not viewing each other as competition. We're all in it for the same thing. We're all helping each other.

"It doesn't matter which group you help — you're helping an animal."