File:Ginger Cayo from The Frederick News Post.jpg: Difference between revisions

From the Frederick News Post Feral cats have friends in Brunswick By Patti Borda Mullins

BRUNSWICK — Ginger Cayo has embraced the title of cat lady, though she is not letting her compassion lead to hordes of rescue cats in her own house. Just a few felines at a time might be found in her Brunswick garage, she said. She visited a Brunswick City Council meeting last month to spread the word about the wild cat population and the people who tend to it. She and several other residents dedicate themselves to putting food out for, and getting medical attention to, untamed cats in as many as 30 colonies, around the city. Each of those colonies may have five to 30 cats, Cayo said. “If you drive to downtown Brunswick, you’ll see cats ... in the street,” she said in a telephone interview. “They are all over Brunswick, not just downtown.” Once or twice a month, she captures cats and gets them spayed or neutered through the Tip Me Frederick organization. One day in November, 55 cats from around the county, eight or nine of them from Brunswick, got loaded up in a van at Francis Scott Key Mall for a ride to the Spay Spa and Neuter Nook near Annapolis. The clinic sterilizes and vaccinates the animals for Tip Me Frederick at reduced cost. Tip Me Frederick helps people who take care of cat colonies pay for the spaying and neutering. A few years ago, two grants paid for Brunswick to capture, spay/neuter and release about 450 feral cats, said Babs Wratten, president of Tip Me Frederick. The cats come back from the vet with the small tip of the left ear cut off, so that they are recognizable as having been caught and vaccinated for rabies. “A lot of people in Brunswick just want to do the right thing,” Cayo said, adding that the $300-$500 cost of veterinary care “is a deterrent to help, and so they do nothing.” Overnight after a cat returns from the vet, Cayo and others like her will keep the patient to make sure recovery goes well. Then the cat will be released back into its colony. Truly feral cats cannot be domesticated, but their kittens are often caught for fostering and adoption. The Animal Welfare League of Frederick County helps get some of the rescued kittens fostered and adopted. Cayo has a few kittens in foster care at home now. “I have personally gone to death row” to retrieve cats about to be euthanized, she told the council. The trapping and spaying/neuter program gives them a chance to live with decreasing chance for repopulating. Life expectancy for the average feral cat is 3 to 5 years, Wratten said. Brunswick’s feral cat population is getting smaller, Wratten said. Cayo described some cats that elude the wire traps she and others set out. In such difficult cases, Cayo said the aroma of Roy Rogers fried chicken may prove irresistible to a wily old feline. Councilman Ellis Burruss encouraged Cayo to have a meeting to invite others who have an interest in the wild cat situation. About a dozen people showed up to brainstorm ways to help maintain and minimize the feral cat population. Cayo introduced her topic at the council meeting with Gandhi’s assessment of a country’s moral fiber: that a nation’s greatness can be judged by its treatment of animals.