Westside : No Mousing Around

The financially strapped city of Malibu has taken to using free labor at City Hall, adopting two homeless cats to combat the rat problem in the municipal offices.

The cats, City Kitty and Nala, live in the basement and are on the lookout for rats, though it was unclear if they had actually caught any yet.

City Kitty was the first official Malibu kitten, brought in by a staff member who got the 2-month-old feline for his wife, and then discovered she was allergic to it. Last week, city staff conducted a formal vote to give the albino kitten its moniker.

But the name does not matter much since the kitten is deaf, said City Manager David Carmany.

The second cat was contributed by Assistant City Manager Mark Lorimer, who rescued the 2-year-old Nala from a friend who could no longer keep her.

But while city officials had hoped the felines would be a low-cost way to address the rodent problem, the cats have not proved themselves to be mousers, Carmany said. The kitten probably is just too small to catch a rat, he said, adding: “Maybe when he gets older--this is sort of long-range planning.�