NORTH HAVEN, Conn. — North Haven neighbors said an abundance of feral cats have been impacting their quality of life, but now, some people are accusing the community of being heartless cat killers.
The town's animal control announced a plan on Facebook Friday to trap and euthanize the cats, which First Selectman Michael Freda has since apologized for and noted that the cats would not be euthanized.
According to animal advocates, Connecticut has a cat crisis. Shelters are overrun and rescues are under-resourced. But the people who live in the Vineyard Road neighborhood of North Haven said something needs to be done.
“I called my office and they were getting inundated with calls because of the post,” Freda said, noting that the town made a mistake. “We’ve got some work to do internally to ensure that something like this gets the approval of both the police chief and I before a post is made.”
After reading the Facebook post, Holly Fontaine with Bikers Against Animal Cruelty said "animal advocates were extremely upset that this was going to take place."
The post advised residents in the Vineyard Road area to keep their cats inside for the next six weeks while they began trapping feral cats.
“Every town has so many feral cat colonies. It is out of control,” Fontaine said.
The post cited a Connecticut law and said, “the cats will be advertised and held for seven days then humanely euthanized.”
Freda noted that he didn’t know about, authorize or support the plan. So he changed it.
“We are going to engage in a humane entrapment of the feral cats to ease the tensions in the neighborhood there," Freda said.
Vineyard Road neighbors expressed that they are afraid to speak out with people online "threatening and saying that [they] are horrible people."
"We’ve been called heartless and have been accused of creating a cat genocide,” a resident said.
That neighbor added that someone drove by her house the other night yelling obscenities out the window. She is calling on everyone to lower the temperature.
“It’s horrible how they want to vilify people on Facebook without first hand knowledge," she said. "Just be nicer to your neighbors.”
As for the cat issue, neighbors say it has been a nuisance for 30 years. Cats are digging and defecating on lawns. It’s gotten worse due to trash around a foreclosed home and a neighbor who keeps feeding them, but it came to a head last month when a feral cat attacked a neighbor's dog, gouging out its eye.
“The state needs to support our rescue shelters and animal control officers with funds to help get this under control,” Fontaine said.
Neighbors said many of the cats end up sick or dead.
“Really all in all what we want is for the cats to be taken care of. These poor cats are outside all winter and it’s not good for them,” a neighbor added.
Freda said instead of trapping and killing the cats, they have engaged with local shelters and rescues to trap and spay or neuter them to keep them from multiplying.
Matt Caron is a reporter at FOX61 News. He can be reached at mcaron@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X and Instagram.
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