B4
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2022
Coastal towns crack down on jetty cat colonies
Long part of local culture
By KRISTIAN FODEN-VENCIL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
From the driver’s seat of his mini-
van, retired mechanic Joe Hodge watches
the fi shing boats head into the harbor in
Brookings. He’s 93 and has lost his wife,
so he comes here to watch the world go by.
He used to enjoy watching the feral
cats that lived here, too, before the small,
feline colony was removed.
“The cats were pretty,” Hodge said.
“People came in and made sure they got
fresh water and food and so forth. The
cats looked good.”
For years, people who didn’t want to
keep their pets would leave them here at
the docks. But over the last few months,
a dozen cats or more have been caught,
spayed or neutered and relocated.
For years, jetty cats have been part of
coastal culture, dating back to the days
when local leaders didn’t mind them
hanging around to gorge on fi sh parts
left behind by fi shermen, French fries
tossed by tourists or even cat food left by
well-intentioned animal lovers. There are
colonies in communities up and down the
West Coast.
But now, a number of Oregon coastal
towns, including Brookings, have taken
steps to remove cat colonies; animal lov-
ers say they’re inhumane and a nuisance.
Hodge remembers another colony,
about 30 miles up the shore on Gold
Beach’s north jetty, that came complete
with a row of little, painted houses that
locals built decades ago.
“They had churches and grocery
stores and hotels, and all kinds of stuff ,”
Hodge said.
But over time the paint on the little
houses peeled and the wood rotted. Cat
food left by locals attracted rats and other
wildlife.
Bo Shindler lives just up the hill from
the Gold Beach colony and said he ini-
tially enjoyed the cats, like the time he
found kittens in his wood shed.
“I fl icked the light on and went to reach
for the fi rewood and the cat and these
kittens were sleeping on top of the fi re-
wood,” he said. “It scared the living day-
lights out of them and when they jumped,
it scared the living daylights out of me.”
Over the years, he said, problems
developed. People started dumping trash
nearby. He also accidentally killed three
cats on three separate occasions because
they were seeking warmth under the hood
of his car when he started the engine.
Shindler said the whole place became
a nuisance.
“It brands that north jetty as a place
where, I don’t know what you want to call
Joe Hodge often drives down to the harbor in Brookings to watch the world go by.
He used to enjoy watching the cats here, but the colony was removed recently.
Kristian Foden-Vencil/Oregon Public Broadcasting
These are some
of the very last
cats collected
from the Gold
Beach jetty this
spring. All were
spayed, neutered,
vaccinated and
dewormed. Some
went to homes,
others to stores or
barns, and some
were taken to an
animal sanctuary
in Florence.
Jude Wickley
it, it’s a no-man’s land,” he said.
Local cat enthusiasts noticed the peel-
ing paint and the rot. They banded together
to refurbish the houses. But Shindler and
other neighbors had seen enough.
“It was a real nasty kind of politi-
cal-ish type of incident that happened,”
said Amanda Trover, director of the Wild
Rivers Animal Rescue in Gold Beach.
The shelter deals with feral cats in the
area.
“They worked really hard to get all the
cats out and adopted, fi xed, put up into
barns. If they were social, they got them
into homes,” Trover said of the people
who cleared the cat houses. “They busted
their butts and did what probably should
have happened a long time ago.”
Feral cats are great mousers. They’ve
learned how to hunt in the wild. But
those qualities often mean they don’t take
kindly to domestic life.’’
Trover thinks society has moved on
from the quaint notion that waterfronts
are a good place for cats because they’re
close to fi sh.
“Some of the old-school people think
that it’s fi ne for the cats just to roam loose.
And then the new age, they are like: ‘No,
let’s get them fi xed. Let’s get them real
homes, real families,’” Trover said.
There is no concerted eff ort to shut
down all jetty cat colonies. It’s a more
organic embrace of trapping, spaying,
neutering and relocating.
In fact, not every town is removing its
cat colonies. In Port Orford, there’s been
a group of cats living near Ray’s Grocery
Store for years. Jude Wickley has been
working with locals to trap, spay or neu-
ter and rehabilitate the cats. Now seven
remain, and they’ve all been fi xed.
“The most humane way to quell the
problem is to trap, neuter and release,”
Wickley said. “The colonies will eventu-
ally die out. If you just eliminate the cats,
that’s not going to eliminate the problem.”
Back in Brookings, Joe Hodge misses
the cats, and the skunks, coyotes, rats,
crows, sea gulls, opossums and raccoon
that all used to enjoy the free cat food left
where the feral cats used to live.
“Why do we want to get rid of every-
thing except the thing that you or I want?”
Hodge said. “We’re changing the balance
throughout the whole world.”
At 93, Hoge has probably earned the
right to be philosophical. But for every-
one else, it may be that the time has come
to balance the advantages of dropping off
an inconvenient pet against the knowl-
edge that one cat can produce 24 kittens
in a single year.
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