Q: We stay on the primary and second flooring of a brownstone in East Harlem, and we love the yard. Two buildings over, a neighbor within the second-floor condominium has put a litter field on the hearth escape outdoors their window for neighborhood cats to shelter. The neighbor additionally places out meals for them. Within the morning, there are often half a dozen grownup cats lingering across the field and the steps. Inevitably, they find yourself roaming in our yard, peeing, pooping and preventing. The odor in the summertime is horrible. We’ve had two feminine cats give start in our yard this 12 months alone. The kittens are cute, their cries not a lot. What can we do?
A: Sadly, there are not any straightforward fixes to this downside. New York Metropolis is house to many free-roaming cats, which might trigger complications for neighbors who must cope with the noise, odor and waste that go together with them.
Apart from making a nuisance to individuals, cats who roam freely can harm populations of birds and different wildlife, and the query of the right way to humanely cope with them is a perplexing one.
Your neighbor will not be committing any crimes by feeding stray cats, however there may very well be violations for waste that isn’t cleaned up. You possibly can file a service request relating to animal waste on personal property with town Well being Division.
Town’s Division of Well being and Psychological Hygiene reminds individuals who feed free-roaming cats to take action in a managed approach, eradicating meals after a restricted time interval to forestall attracting different animals, in addition to cleansing up animal waste. Meals ought to be put away earlier than night, and no meals ought to be out in a single day.
A number of native organizations neuter unowned cats and return them to their neighborhood, a course of referred to as trap-neuter-return. Cats who’ve been fastened have a tendency to not have interaction in preventing or extreme vocalization, and males now not have odorous urine used to mark territory.
The cat organizations that associate with town additionally reply questions from people who find themselves coping with the identical issues that you’re. You possibly can attain Bideawee’s Feral Cat Initiative right here, or Neighborhood Cats right here.
“I wish to say that there’s a motive we spay or neuter our pet cats, as a result of in any other case they’d be inconceivable to stay with,” stated Bryan Kortis, nationwide applications director at Neighborhood Cats, based mostly in Manhattan. “The identical is true for cats who stay outdoors.”
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