Cat catcher continuing care

Pamela Sears saved Daisy from a cat colony two years ago.

Casey Dorrell
caseydorrell@gmail.ca

It’s 8 p.m. on a Sunday and Pamela Sears is creeping around the back of a North End apartment building – trying not to be seen by the people living there.

“I start to feel a little like a criminal skulking around at night,” she whispers.

Sears is trying to take something that doesn’t belong to her, but she’s not much of a criminal.

She’s putting down a trap in hopes of catching a pregnant cat that’s been spotted in the area, along with others that make up a small colony.

Sears is head of the Halifax chapter of Cat-Rescue-Maritimes – a loose network of five to 10 people who volunteer their time catching and caring for abandoned or feral cats.

“If you can alleviate their misery that one day just a little bit, how could you not?” she asked.

Sears feeds three smaller colonies in Dartmouth and North End Halifax every day and is involved in overseeing five others in Halifax. The bigger work comes with trapping cats.

As part of a trap, neuter, and return program, cats are caught and then taken to a local vet to be spayed and neutered – all of which is paid by the charity organization.

It’s determined whether the cats are “friendlies” or cats that aren’t socialized to people: “ferals.” Feral cats are returned to their colony; friendly ones are cared for until a proper home can be found.

Last year Sears, along with other volunteers, caught 105 cats. But it’s just a drop in the bucket according to most estimates.

Two Halifax Regional Municipality reports and one Ipsos-Reid poll have offered the possible number of domesticated cats in Halifax, thought to be roughly on par with the amount of homeless cats.

The lowest figure, from a 2007 report, is just under 40,000 but the 2008 Ipsos-Reid poll puts the number at well over 100,000.

Either way, it’s a lot of cats.

“If we all take it upon ourselves to clean up the messes left by other people, then we can manage it,” Sears said.

For Sears, there’s no point in educating people on the importance of spaying and neutering their pets or on why not to abandon them.  She said people already know better.

Her goal is to help educate caring people on how to manage strays in their own backyards.

“I don’t want people to take the problem and give it to me. I want to empower them to do.”

Janet Mouton was inspired to help after a run-in on her property with an abandoned cat, which ultimately had to be put down. Since then, she’s fostered cats for Sears until a home can be found for them.

“I don’t think I could do her job at all – I just couldn’t do it,” Moulton says of the trapping Sears does. The cats often have feline leukemia and have to be put down.

Sears grew up in small-town British Columbia, where her family owned a horse, a dog and a cat.

After graduating from school, she went on to get an undergraduate degree in zoology and a graduate degree in health sciences. She also did a lot of traveling.

“I was traveling in these countries where often animals weren’t really cared for at all and I felt really powerless to help,” she said, explaining that she understands why people may feel overwhelmed.

“It was really distressing to me, even in this country, feeling like there was little I could do.”

Then, six years ago, Sears was in Halifax taking a third degree while struggling to stay financially afloat, when she saw a stray cat run over by a car.

“I thought she’d run off to die in her death throes, but there was a moment there when I thought, ‘I’m going to do something. That cat will not go off and die alone in the woods’,” Sears said.

With the help of another person, she found the cat and took it to a vet. She still has the cat, named Hershey.

“I was just done being powerless – and since then I’ve learned the power of one; what one person can do.”

She’s carried that message with her ever since. It’s the same message she brought with her to her fundraising table at the Sunnyside Mall in Bedford earlier Sunday.

This was before she made the rounds of colony-feeding, before she transported four kittens to a foster-home to be socialized, and before she set her trap.

Sears spends at least eight hours a week doing the work, while working full-time as an industrial hygienist at an environmental consulting office.

Spending time raising money in malls isn’t always helpful, though. On Sunday Sears, who spends about $1000 a month on the cats, raised almost nothing.

The Nova Scotia SPCA presented a proposal for a self-sustaining facility to deal with the feral problem at a Halifax Regional Council meeting late last month, but no decisions have been made.

By working with existing charities like Cat-Rescue-Maritimes, they estimate a one time cost of about $200,000 with an annual cost of just under $100,000.

“We very much support TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) programs. We think they’re invaluable,” said Kristin Williams, executive director of Nova Scotia SPCA.

Sears will likely move back west sometime in the next few years, but she said she’s optimistic that the problem will be addressed.

Along with other volunteer groups in the area, she’s had a lot of help, whether from individuals, Nova Scotia Power workers, the military or a Kia dealership.

She said the important thing to remember is that people have to help themselves

“It’s not a dial-up solution, it’s a step-up solution. If more people stepped up instead asking others for help, there wouldn’t be a problem.”