I was running through my neighborhood the other day when I stopped to say hello to a cat I had never met before. It was a wonderfully striped orange tabby, a kind of cat I do not have (I have four cats. Four is the perfect number of cats. Unless of course, there were to be a fifth). I will always stop for cats, to allow them to sniff my finger, and for the pleasure of touching their coats. I will greet cats that belong to friends. Cats that belong to neighbors. Cats that belong to, apparently, no one. Cats capture my attention.
I want to talk about cats and past events and recent developments at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline as a way to talk about love.
In 2020, the East Bay Regional Park District staff lethally removed—shot and killed—12 cats from the shoreline. The shoreline is home to endangered birds—the Ridgway’s rail, the least tern, the burrowing owl. And it is unquestionable fact that outdoor cats kill birds. Wild bird populations across the U.S. and Canada have decreased by nearly 30 percent in the last 50 years. Habitat loss, climate change, and collisions with our human structures (our cars, buildings, and windmills) are all to blame for many of these losses. Still, cats alone may be responsible for up to 2.4 billion bird deaths per year.
Undoubtedly, cats who are not housed can threaten these vulnerable and loved populations. The park district’s actions could be considered an effective solution to the problem of cats, who are not, by the way, at all scarce, limited, endangered, and thus precious to the habitat.
And yet, they can be precious. A friend and her partner recently built a small shelter on her porch out of an old blue insulated cooler. They sawed two holes into its short sides, sealed the raw edges with styrofoam, and folded a blanket inside. The cooler is wedged between potted onions and assorted succulents. Its windows look onto an overwintering sprawl of chard and tomatoes. A cat’s-length or so away (the porch is only a few feet across), an automatic feeder whirs once a day and dispenses a handful of kibble onto the cement steps. The shelter is for a certain “community cat”—a cat who lives outdoors, either feral or stray, and is cared for by a community of humans—my friend has befriended over several years and perhaps hundreds of Churu lickable treat tubes. The cat, Big Kitty to friends, has been under the weather for the past several months. Her solid body has shrunk; her eyes are often gunky. My friend thought she could use the extra comfort as the weather turns colder and wetter.
A community of community cats have visited this East Oakland porch for food and companionship and occasional emergency medical care over the years. A sweet orange tabby called Softpaws, for his tendency to softly bat the wet food from a proffered spoon so that he could lap it off the ground. A lap cat called Rusty for the streak of reddish fur that marked his dark brown back. And Mildew, so named for the smell of wet mildew wafting from his fur as he followed my friend back to her apartment—mewing, cold, wet—and never left.
Each cat from this community has a clipped left or right ear—the sign that they have been spayed or neutered and released, sometimes by the organization Full Circle Cats (formerly known as Feral Change), in Oakland. That is, they have been cared for by Full Circle Cats, which is funded at least partially through community donation. In 2023, Full Circle Cats spayed or neutered 1,209 cats and removed more than 200 cats from Oakland streets.
Which is to say that there is a whole ecosystem of care and action that has organized itself around cats for little reason other than that they are loved by humans.
There was understandable public condemnation of the park district’s actions. In response, its policy was formally updated in 2021 to focus on preventing cat colonies in regional parks by working with a coalition of local animal services organizations that formed to offer assistance and provide guidance in trapping and rehoming community cats living in ecologically sensitive local areas. Lethal control by euthanasia is still permitted in those areas, according to the park district. In July of this year, the park district adopted a resolution to authorize the partnership between EBRPD and regional animal services to continue for a five-year term.
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In the years since my friend has been stewarding her community of care, Softpaws disappeared and Rusty passed away. More cats than were named have visited once or twice and never returned. The point is not to save them—there are too many to save, whatever that may mean—but to know them while they are here.
It is worthwhile to care for what has not yet become scarce. Love need not be saved for the exceptional few. There is, it turns out, enough. We can build such capacious homes when we choose.
