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Saturday, October 15, 2005
Creekside Business Mall
Killing Cats?
or
Protecting the Public?
The Creekside Business Mall on Hamilton Ave. in Campbell, CA has long had a problem with cats. A feral colony set up shop long ago, and their numbers have waxed and waned with the weather and other factors.
The cats are a subject of some contention in the neighborhood, with some thinking there could be nothing better to do than exterminate the felines, while others support the little kitties as far as they can.
Those who like the cats bring them food, which probably exacerbates the problem, if you think having lots of cats around is a problem. On the other hand, volunteers have also trapped many of the cats, taking them in to be spayed or neutered. The older, wilder ones were then released, but at least some of the younger ones were turned over to people with experience in cat rescue and the taming of ferals.
Building management is on the "no cat" side. Or at least the visible part of management, which sends out regular warnings not to feed the cats. It is not clear whether this is a top priority, or whether select managers and/or maintenance people are pushing the issue while others let it go.
Feral cats can, of course, pose a problem, and so one wants to believe building management's heart is in the right place. However, the memos they send out very rarely talk in a chipper tone about how they're dealing with "the cat problem." Rather, their tone is threatening, as though they expect the typical tenant - i.e. client - to have a problem with what they're doing.
Yesterday afternoon - a Friday afternoon, after half the building was empty - a maintenance person went from door to door distributing memos about the cats. The friendly notices from building management said a) the cats were a health hazard, b) anyone caught feeding or helping them would be fined $1000 and c) they are planning to trap them and take them to the "human society".
It is not clear whether this plan was approved by the whole of building management, or whether it represents the work of a few managers and maintenance people who don't like cats. The traps are out this morning. That much is clear. Whether the cats will actually get taken to the "human society" where they at least get three days before being killed, or whether the people who have taken charge of this will just kill them themselves, assuming no one cares, is unclear.
The TurkeyBlog does not wish to get into any tussles, and certainly wants to avoid libel charges. But he can't help but distrust the motives of people who claim to be professional building managers but can't even correct "human society" to "Humane Society". It looks to me like someone was given the greenlight to take care of the cat problem however he saw fit, so long as details were kept quiet. That is in keeping with the distribution of a poorly typed, unedited memo that treats building tenants like the next problem after the cats, rather than clients of the organization.
posted by gbarto at 10:15 AM
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