Group works to reduce feral cat numbers
22.05.12
At Bullock Mobile Home Park off Pughsville Road in Suffolk Tuesday, Suffolk Humane Society volunteer Shelley Childs was getting set for a day’s trapping.
Unloading about a dozen elongated rectangular wire cages from her car, the society’s feral cat manager was hoping that by sundown her efforts would have made some dent — however small — on Suffolk’s population of feral cats.
Childs says she trapped her first feral cat when she was 8. The feline was under her neighbor’s shed. “I reached in and got shredded,” she said.
“He was a long-hair orange tabby, and he was beautiful. It took me about a month to tame him.”
Childs, one of a handful of volunteer feral cat trappers in Suffolk, says she has caught “30-something” feral cats so far this year.
In 2011, she and Lisa Branton, whom Childs describes as her Suffolk trapping counterpart, trapped more than 200, according to Childs.
“I work (trapping) two or three days in a row, depending on the week and my family schedule,” Childs said. “There’s never enough time; there’re never enough hours.”
Source: Suffolk News-Herald