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PAWS looking for a handout or two

In May this year the 18-year-old cat Wilma Donaldson had started feeding as a kitten, died. “She was the last of those cats I started feeding at Maple Beach,” she remembered.

More than 20 years ago Donaldson started doing more than feeding the wild cats that came to her Maple Beach home. Working with Tsawwassen Animal Hospital vet Andrew Hilts, the Vancouver Humane Society and some neighbors, she succeeded in trapping all the feral cats they could find in her neighborhood and taking them to be vaccinated, treated for illness and spayed or neutered, then released back where they came from.

“We hope the residents of this area will treat them as they would their own pets, feeding them from time to time when they are hungry and letting them live their lives in Maple Beach,” she wrote in a 1990 letter to neighbors. The letter ended with a plea: If you bring an animal with you to the Point, please don’t just leave it when you leave.

Donaldson found she couldn’t stop at her own neighborhood. “I started getting phone calls, going up the hill,” she said. In 1994 Dr. Tina Gemeinhardt joined the Tsaw-wassen Animal Hospital. “I inherited Wilma,” she said. Since then she estimates they have spayed or neutered, treated and released 500 or more cats.

“There’s good evidence with feral cat populations that if you spay/neuter and then re-release that population controls the area and keeps other cats away,” Gemeinhardt said. The alternative of trapping and euthanizing feral populations doesn’t work as well, she said. “Other cats just move right in.”

Other residents became involved in Donaldson’s efforts and this year her work with feral cats and other concerns about local animals have merged to form the Point Roberts Animal Wellbeing Society, or PAWS.

“I got involved to help Wilma but saw a greater need – a need for public awareness and a need to raise funds, especially for the vets who donate their work,” said Carol Fuegi who is the executive director of the organization.

Today they are working with feral cat populations at five sites, she said, re-releasing the cats that are not adoptable but finding home for a steady supply of kittens and cats who fit in the stray rather than feral category.
Fuegi said controlling the feral cat population – which helps the cats themselves but also the songbirds they prey on is the group’s primary focus, though they will work to help any animals in need. She pointed to recent fundraising to help the miniature horse Maxi stay in a safe home as one way PAWS hopes to help the community. “We’re not just about cats but about all animals in need,” she said.

PAWS is a registered non-profit organization and has set up a bank account at Banner Bank to receive donations. They will kick off fundraising and educational efforts with a table at the December 1 Christmas Craft Fair at the community center and Fuegi hopes to develop a web site early in 2008. On December 8 the group is partnering with the Greater Vancouver Street Cat Society, which has also been involved with cat rescue in Point Roberts, for a fundraiser at South Beach House. To donate to the organization or to buy fundraiser tickets Fuegi can be reached at 945-2330.