Rescue asks Kane Co. officials to deal with stray cats crisis

A South Elgin-based animal rescue group is lobbying the Kane County Board to follow Cook County's lead in adopting a law to help control the feral cat population.

The law would officially recognize feral cat caretakers like Guardian Angels Animal Rescue so that those groups could take the cats to approved veterinarians for low-cost sterilization. Cook County's ordinance, approved earlier this month, takes effect Thursday. Feral cats are healthy adult cats that are too wild to be adopted as house cats.

"We're trying to get Kane County to sit up and take notice that other counties are having a feral cat problem as well and we need to do something about this," said Carol Schultz, Guardian Angels founder.

Schultz sent a letter to the county board chairman this week to request consideration of the ordinance. She's encouraging others in the local animal welfare community to do the same.

Kane County Public Health Director Paul Kuehnert said he would review Cook County's ordinance and bring it before the county board's public health committee for consideration. Municipal leaders also should be part of the discussion, he said.

"Estimates (on the number of feral cats in Kane County) are all over the place," Kuehnert said. "I don't think at this point in time we have a handle on how big of a problem it is in Kane County. But it certainly bears looking into."

The county's animal control department is required by law only to collect stray dogs, not cats. And there is room for just 15 cats at the county's shelter in Geneva.

If Kane County approves an ordinance recognizing stray cat caretakers, those caretakers could take advantage of the Illinois Pet Population Control Act. Administered by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the act allows feral cats to be spayed or neutered and vaccinated at participating veterinary clinics for only $15 a cat.

Without passing a local ordinance, low-cost cat sterilization is available only to Illinois residents who receive food stamps or Social Security disability benefits. There are three participating clinics in Kane County.

Guardian Angels volunteers take cats to be spayed and neutered to Anderson Animal Shelter in South Elgin, which charges the group $50 per cat. Taking in several cats to the nonprofit shelter represents a big investment for Guardian Angels, which operates on a shoestring budget. The group also takes advantage of spay and neuter clinics offered periodically by bigger animal welfare groups like PAWS Chicago.

Alley Cat Allies, a Bethesda, Md.-based animal welfare group, helped draft the Cook County ordinance. The group advocates the trap-neuter-return method of reducing feral cat populations.

Referred to as TNR, these community-based programs rely largely on volunteers to trap feral cats, take them to a veterinarian for sterilization and return them to the wild. This process costs about half as much as trapping, holding, euthanizing and disposing of a feral cat, the group claims.

"There's definitely a trend that municipalities and policy makers are learning that you cannot just approach the (stray cat) situation with a decades-old lethal approach," said Becky Robinson, president of Alley Cat Allies. "They're learning they have to do something different."