Health Risks Override Cat Lovers’ Mercy Mission

Jeanne Young has spent more than a decade feeding, treating and sterilizing dozens of feral cats that roam the grounds of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

But now, some of the cats that she and other center staffers have worked so hard to save could be rounded up, taken to animal shelters and put to death.

Earlier this week, medical center executives began an aggressive program to get rid of the cats whose feces, fleas and diseases pose a health risk to staff members and patients on the Torrance campus, they said.

“Our first priority is patient safety,” said John Wallace, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, which operates the facility. “You always want to find a solution that doesn’t involve euthanizing the animals, but because they are on the campus of a busy urban medical center that cares for a lot of sick patients, this is the only prudent action.”

Given the come-and-go nature of cats, it’s hard to say how many live on the campus. Estimates range from 25 to 75. Some accept human contact, while others remain aggressively wild. They often congregate around the plates of food left out by Young and others.

Hospital administrators and county health officials acted after several staff members and patients complained about fleas in the Research and Education Institute, adjacent to the hospital. An inspection of the grounds last month by county Environmental Health Division officials identified the feral cat colony as the source of the fleas.

In a Jan. 15 staff memo, the medical center’s chief executive, Tecla A. Mickoseff, and the research institute’s president, Kenneth P. Trevett, instructed the medical center’s staff not to feed feral cats or bring abandoned or stray animals onto the campus.

The executives also ordered staff members not to damage medical center property by removing or destroying foundation vent covers that were installed to prevent cats from moving in under buildings and to report anyone who does. Staff members who do not comply with the directive could face disciplinary action.

All of this worries Young, whose rescue efforts began more than a decade ago after she spotted a tortoise shell cat -- skinny, wounded and pregnant -- foraging for food near a trash bin on the medical center campus.

Moved by its sickly appearance, the nuclear medical technologist lured the cat into a carrier, tended her swollen front leg -- caused by an abscess most likely resulting from a fight with a male cat -- and had her spayed before returning her to the campus.

Unintentionally, Young had launched what would become an informal six-member group that calls itself the Tortie Foundation, named for the now-deceased tortoise shell cat.

The loosely organized band of cat-caretakers feeds, traps, treats, sterilizes and releases the felines on campus in an effort to control their population, which at one time tallied about 200.

As evidence that the trap-sterilize-return approach works, Young said, only two kittens have been born in the last four years. She and her colleagues use their own money to sterilize the cats, a procedure that costs $45 to $55. The cost to trap, remove and euthanize a cat is about $100.

Cat advocates say sterilization programs have worked well in recent years at several California institutions wrestling with feral cat colonies, including UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk and Valley College in the southeast San Fernando Valley.

At Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, the new policy dictates that cats will be taken to animal shelters where they could be euthanized if deemed unadoptable.

Attempts to remove all outdoor cats from an area where they have established a home invariably fail, said Becky Robinson, national director of Alley Cat Allies, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit clearinghouse for information on feral and stray cats, which has offered its assistance to Harbor-UCLA.

When cats are removed from a territory, Robinson said, new cats from surrounding areas move in.

Additionally, any cats that escape the roundup will breed to reestablish the colony, she said. A healthy female cat can have a litter of four or five kittens at least three times a year, whereas a colony of sterilized cats would eventually decrease in number.

And, besides, feral cats help keep the rodent population down, Robinson said.

Young said she hopes medical center executives will follow UCLA’s successful example in controlling its cat colony.

Back in 1990, roughly 300 feral cats roamed the Westwood campus. The felines rummaged through trash bins, became trapped under buildings and frequently were hit by cars, said Taimie Bryant, a law professor and faculty sponsor of a group that oversees the campus’ feral cat population control efforts.

Through an ongoing trap-sterilize-return program, Bryant said the university reduced its feral cat population to seven animals.

“UCLA’s experience has shown that, with consistent effort, this method can work,” Bryant said. “This method is the least costly and the most stable in its outcome.”

Although she acknowledges that a sterilization program may take years to produce results, Young said the medical center would be better off in the long run and hoped that by speaking out she might change administrators’ minds.

“I am hoping that hospital administrators will work with us and give this program a real chance,” she said, “rather than spending taxpayers’ money to trap and kill cats that will have to be done again and again.”