Population Control | Coastal Magazine

It’s 9am in downtown Half Moon Bay and foot traffic is starting to pick up. Jane Ganahl is working on something in the trunk of her car. I come closer and see that she is opening cans of cat food and emptying them into a plate attached to a bucket.

Ganahl is preparing to feed stray and feral cats on the coast, something she and 15 other volunteers do daily at five sites where known cats spend time. In total, they feed around 30 cats per day.

“This is a problem I encountered 13 years ago. I saw a bunch of cats eating takeout food in the parking lot,” Ganahl said. “Onions and other ingredients are toxic to cats, but they are so hungry they don’t care.”

Ganahl runs Coastside Feral Cat, a nonprofit that’s about nine years old. The group’s mission is to reduce the population of stray and feral cats. Ganahl said he hopes to achieve this goal by trapping, neutering and releasing cats, an approach known as TNR. Before releasing cats after surgery, she determines whether they are adoptable.

The organization initially received a grant from the city of Half Moon Bay to address the feral cat problem. Ganahl said that since its founding the organization has captured about 250 cats and more than half of them have been adopted.

“It’s a shame that it’s covered in vegetation here. The food dish needs a flat spot,” Ganahl said as he lowered the food dish to the cats, Lafcadio and Silver, who appear to blend in with the tall growth in an undisclosed location.

In these hard-to-reach areas, Ganahl uses a hook and rope to lower fresh food.

In the last 6 months alone, the group has captured and neutered almost 20 cats. Some were adopted, while others had to be returned to the wild.

In another location outside of downtown Half Moon Bay, Benjamin Franklin, a graying two-year-old boy, watched Ganahl from the bushes. His severed ear indicates that he was already TNR. The procedure does not traumatize cats as it does with dogs.

“Benjamin is an interesting story. We were told there were three cats in a dense area. We only found two and we thought he was long gone,” Ganahl said. “A few weeks later we saw a big guy that matched the other two cats that were here.”

As the organization works to reduce the number of cat colonies — two stray cats are enough to create a new colony — volunteers occasionally spot coyotes and other predators in the dense vegetation that kill cats they know.

Ganahl pauses and breathes for a second. “You harden yourself to reality,” she says.

To change the mood, she says she recently found someone to adopt a cat that was recovering from surgery. “He was rubbing himself against the box, wanting someone to rub him,” says Ganahl. “He went from living in the wild to a little girl’s room.”

Ganahl prepared Benjamin’s food and left it behind the bushes. He came out of hiding to eat and then began to roll over in an empty parking lot. When a car entered the parking lot, Benjamin took off running.

Ganahl picked up the trash near the sign and returned to his car. Your morning routine is complete for today.

Krystina Crowley, a Coastside resident and board member of Coastside Feral Cat, became involved as a volunteer with the group about a year ago.

Crowley believes one of the reasons there are so many feral cats is that potential pet owners need more access to low-cost spaying and neutering services.

In every Bay Area city I’ve lived in, there have always been feral cats,” Crowley said. “The reason is because access to low-cost spay and neutering is non-existent.”

In addition to managing the group’s social networks, Crowley participates in feeding the cats. She believes that as long as the cats are fed and TNRed, they will not hunt birds or have kittens.

Other sources of feral cats, Ganahl said, are pets that get lost and survive in the wild, and cat owners who abandon their pets, which is cruel and illegal.

Ganahl and Crowley said San Mateo County lacks a countywide program to help with the feral cat problem. San Francisco and Los Angeles counties, for example, offer free or low-cost spay and neuter services.

“It’s difficult for Coastsiders to opt for low-cost spay and neuter options up the hill because of the drive and long wait times at a facility,” Crowley said.

Ganahl hopes that if Coastsiders see a homeless cat, they will be compassionate and feed it, but also aim to spay or neuter it. Feeding them without that goal will cause them to multiply, Ganahl said.

Coastside Feral Cat is raising funds for spay and neuter costs and to develop a pantry for Coastside cat owners who cannot afford cat food. Ganahl hopes this will help reduce the feral cat population in the area.