No one expects to find kittens left in their driveway. But there they were, two curious little cats.
Dumped? Abandoned? Lost? Whatever led them here, this is coyote country, and April Hebert simply could not abide that fate. The San Marcos woman made flyers and Facebook posts and took them to a vet to check for microchips. (They had none.) The cats must be easily adoptable, she figured, so she reached out to the San Diego Humane Society, expecting the shelter would take them in.
But that was not the case. Hebert said she was told these healthy 6-month-old cats likely would become non-adoptable “community cats.” And that meant they would be sterilized, vaccinated, evaluated, have an ear-tipped then released back where they were found — in this case, her cul-de-sac along a canyon.
Experiences like hers with the San Diego Humane Society’s Community Cats Program are at the heart of a lawsuit from two pet rescue groups and two individual plaintiffs that is set to be decided this week. The suit alleges the organization routes into the program friendly strays or abandoned cats the plaintiffs argue are adoptable.
A kitten eats food that is placed in a trap in the Mountain View neighborhood on Thursday. After the kitten is trapped it will go the San Diego Humane Society where it will be spayed/neutered, vaccinated and have its right ear clipped to show that its has been fixed. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The San Diego Humane Society counters that its program is science-based, developed by professionals, and is best for cats that would otherwise suffer the stress of being trapped in a shelter cage.
The case went to trial — a bench trial with only a judge, no jury — running 12 days spread over a few months and recently wrapping up. San Diego Superior Court Judge Katherine Bacal is expected to issue her decision Friday.
‘Free-roaming, outdoor cats’
The local Humane Society’s Community Cats Program is for “free-roaming, outdoor cats with no verifiable signs of ownership,” its website says.
According to trial testimony, the two biggest objectives of the program are to ensure the health and well-being of animals, and to stabilize and reduce the cat population.
Leilani Im, veterinarian manager, left, examines a cat before it is neutered as Sydney Bergmark, vet assistant, helps at the San Diego Humane Society’s Pilar & Chuck Bahde Center for Shelter Medicine on Thursday. The cat was one of six that was a part of the “community cat” program. Most were set to be released the following morning back to where they were trapped. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
When a found cat is brought in and there is verifiable evidence of ownership, the cat is accepted into the shelter for reunification or eventual adoption, the San Diego Humane Society says. If the animal has no verifiable owner and is deemed healthy, it is sterilized, vaccinated and released as a community cat — unowned and living outdoors.
The organization says on its website that community cats can be “feral or friendly, young or old,” and reside in sites from the beaches — there’s a colony in Mission Bay — to the backcountry.
The program started as a pilot but has been fully in place since March 2021. As of Friday, the San Diego Humane Society has provided services to more than 18,000 animals dubbed community cats.
‘Slipping through the cracks’
The lawsuit contends the organization’s approach to cats found outside is too broad. There is no dispute over the practice of trapping, neutering and releasing feral cats. The battle is over what the plaintiffs allege are potentially adoptable stray or abandoned cats. They argue that releasing those cat to live outdoors puts them in danger.
Josh Hirschmiller, community cat field coordinator, feeds cats in the “community cat” program. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
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Plaintiff’s attorney Bryan Pease argued at trial that too many cats “are slipping through the cracks” and are being “lumped into the same category as feral cats.” The plaintiffs want the organization to take in friendly cats, those they argue appear previously owned and not able to fend for themselves.
But who makes that call? Among the questions raised at trial is who should decide whether a cat is friendly, adoptable and suitable to be taken in by the shelter — the person who found it and has a sense of its circumstances and behavior, or shelter professionals who spend a career with cats?
Verifiable proof of ownership, Pease argued, is “an insurmountable thing for most of these cats.”
Betsy Denhart is with Pet Assistance Foundation, one of the plaintiffs in the case. She said last week that as it stands, the “burden of proof is on the cat to show that it has an owner.” And once it is designated a community cat, “you are denigrating it to a lower status.”
Pease wants the Humane Society to loosen its requirement of verifiable proof that the cat had been owned — such as having a microchip or collar — to instead requiring just a reasonable belief that it is stray or abandoned, including giving more weight on what the finder of the cat says about why they believe it was previously owned.
A kitten stares at food that is placed in a trap in the Mountain View neighborhood. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Hebert is not among the plaintiffs but testified at trial about her September 2021 experience. She told the Union-Tribune last week the kittens already understood how to use a litter box and came running to the sound of a can of tuna being opened. “I felt very strongly they had been owned by someone,” said Hebert, who kept the cats.
Attorneys for the local Humane Society note that the organization was not taking in healthy cats during that stretch of the pandemic and argue that Hebert had wanted to keep them all along. The organization says that a microchip or a collar is not the only way it verifies proof of ownership.
Part of the dispute is over the determination of whether the cat is doing OK outside. If the animal has an acceptable body weight, then the assumption may be that it’s finding enough food and can be released to live outdoors. But, Pease argued, cats who have been stray or abandoned for several weeks should not be denied shelter and adoption services “simply because SDHS assumes the cat must be doing fine on its own outside.”
‘We stand firmly behind the science’
In closing arguments, attorneys for the San Diego Humane Society argued that the plaintiffs failed to show it violated any laws but are asking the court “to mandate sweeping changes to SDHS’s policy and micromanage its animal-welfare operations.”
They argued that what the plaintiffs are asking for “is based on several profoundly-unscientific, unsupported, naïve, and mistaken ideas” discredited at trial. The program, they argued, was designed by “actual experts in shelter medicine and community cat programs.” Their witnesses at trial included veterinarians board-certified in shelter medicine.
Josh Hirschmiller, community cat field coordinator, baits a trap to lure “community cats” on Thursday. He said the “community cat” program focuses on trapping cats in the 92113 zip code because that is where most of the intake kittens have come from over the last year. (Ana Ramirez / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
The plaintiffs’ requests, the attorneys said, would roll back the benefits of the program, do nothing to stabilize or reduce the free-roaming cat population and could mean more cats suffer from living in a shelter, where they are exposed to stress and illness. They argue that cats are “hard-wired to roam freely” and community cats fare better than those confined to shelters.
“That is why SDHS implemented the CCP in the first place — to avoid the detrimental effects of overcrowding, confining animals in restrictivecages who are used to roaming freely, and the inevitably-high rates of (humane) euthanasia that accompany these conditions,” the attorneys argued.
In court documents, the attorneys argue that some cats are feral, others are friendly and many fall in between — “cat temperaments are neither binary nor consistent in all contexts.” Friendliness, the defense argued they showed at trial, is not correlated with ownership, but rather just indicates prior positive interactions with humans.
Asked for comment on the case, San Diego Humane Society provided a statement last week from President and CEO Gary Weitzman, who said the organization is “deeply committed to the welfare of animals and our community, and we stand firmly behind the science and the expertise of animal welfare professionals that demonstrate the value, effectiveness, and legality of our Community Cat Program.”
The agency has information about the program on its website, include a page with frequently asked questions and a flowchart for people who find a cat.
According to trial testimony, the local Humane Society has a new portion of the program, in which they trap, neuter and release cats in neighborhoods where they get the highest number of cats and kittens.
