PORT ANGELES — A kitty colony lives on the windy, rip-rap beaches of Ediz Hook.
Nearly two dozen of the feral felines are fed about twice a day by several people, including Mary Margolis, Ruth Cones and Bill Roby of Port Angeles, they said during a recent feeding foray on the two-mile spit.
They estimate about half-dozen people feed the cats on a regular basis, although weather can halt the best of intentions.
Margolis, Cones and Roby were kept housebound by the recent snowstorm that hit the North Olympic Peninsula.
“[The cats] probably go into the rocks and kind of hunker down together,” Margolis said.
“That’s what I hope, anyway. It’s kind of hard to forget they’re out there.”
Margolis and Cones take frequent walks on the Hook while looking for rocks and sea glass and talking.
They began feeding their four-legged charges in late summer 2009 when they first noticed the critters.
Cones, a retired teacher, owns a cat. Margolis, an office assistant at WorkFirst at Peninsula College, owns three.
“It’s important as a community that we take care of our animals,” Margolis said.
“Some person started this colony. It’s not my problem. It’s not your problem. It’s our problem. These cats have every right to a good life, as people do.”
But are they feeding the problem by feeding the cats?
Margolis said they’ve been yelled at by passersby — including one man who was walking his dog — while on their mission of mercy.
They’ve been told their kitty compassion encourages people to make Ediz Hook a cat-dumping ground.
“I tell them [the cats] didn’t ask to be out there,” Margolis said in a phone interview.
“Why should they suffer more than they already are? They are not bred to be out there at the beach. They need to be protected and fed, and I feel it’s important we take care of them.
“Yes, I’m still idealistic,” she added.
Near tip of spit
On a recent trip to the Hook, Margolis and Cones drew the cats out of hiding by tapping cat food cans on shoreline boulders near the entrance to Coast Guard Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles, near the tip of the spit.
They dispensed cat food and kind words. Several empty bowls were sheltered by dock platforms placed in the parking area for winter.
“There’s no fresh water out here unless it rains,” Cones said.
Roby held out a spoon clumped with food while a cat, perched on a boulder, daintily licked the utensil.
“That one I call Garfield,” the Port Angeles resident said. “He’s a pig.”
An amateur photographer, Roby started feeding the cats so they would stop bugging him.
He wouldn’t call himself a cat person, he said, but feeding them works to his benefit.
Bribing the cats
“If I didn’t bribe the cats, they would attack the tripod,” Roby said.
Margolis and Cones, who feed the cats about three or four times a week, don’t like to name the felines for fear of becoming too attached to the critters.
Some cats get run over. Others have been poisoned. Others simply vanish, they said.
“A number of kittens have died or been killed in the last six months,” Margolis said.
“What happens is that people get pets and maybe they can’t afford to get them spayed,” she said.
“Maybe they have babies and can’t afford to give them to anybody.”
These cats have it better than some house cats as far as getting fixed: Safe Haven, operated by Peninsula Friends of Animals, traps the cats, spays and neuters them, then returns them to the Hook.
Friends of Animals board member Sharon Palmer, also the spay and neuter coordinator for low-income families, said Wednesday the organization charges $55 to low-income dog and cat owners for spay-neuter procedures that otherwise range from about $125 to $325 for owners who cover the expense on their own.
Margolis, Cones and Palmer said Coast Guard personnel also help keep the cats alive by feeding them.
“Some of the boys are very good about this,” Palmer said, adding that a feral cat’s lifespan is about two years.
Don’t take them home
It might be tempting, but Olympic Peninsula Humane Society Shelter Manager Suzy Zustiak, a veterinarian, does not recommend picking up any feral cats and trying to take them home.
“I would never say it’s a good idea to pick up a wild cat,” she said.
Better to trap the feline — though don’t leave an empty trap out there — see if it’s friendly, and take it to a veterinarian for rabies shots and other medical care before deciding to keep it, Zustiak said.
But for the nameless inhabitants of the Ediz Hook kitty colony, spaying and neutering amounts to a timeout in the warm confines of Safe Haven.
They are taken back to windswept Ediz Hook to wait for their next meal from within the crevices and cracks of the rip-rap.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-417-3536 or at paul.gottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
