Letter to the Editor - October 22, 2009

What a disappointment (Tuesday) morning when I read the article about the feral cats on campus.  The information was one-sided and jaded with opinion rather than truth and facts.  Facts, by the way, that were presented to you by a representative of the Feral Cat Association.  You asked a representative from Student Activities if the FCA was still active? We are not a student group and have never been affiliated with the Office of Student Activities.  You print his/her opinion rather than taking the facts from a member of the organization?  That’s not good journalism.  Why that person opted to answer a question to which he/she had no knowledge is beyond my comprehension.

You state “….cat population living on campus continues to swell..”  when in fact, you had the facts e-mailed to you.  The disposition of over 300 cats has been tracked but you still think the number of cats is “swelling.” Disappointing indeed.

I urge you to do your homework on this issue and run another story.  I gave you the URL of a resource, Alley Cat Allies, but I assume you did not take time to gather data so that your report would be factually based.

Nature abhors a vacuum and simply removing the cats from campus is not the solution.  Again, as I pointed out yesterday, there are feral colonies worldwide, and the answer is trap-neuter-release.  It’s been proven time and time again.

In closing, your non-inclusion of the information that I provided on behalf of the organization was a slap in the face of the progress we’ve made over the last eight years.  Thousands of dollars and man hours have been spent by volunteers who are working together for a solution.  Anyone can be part of a problem.  We are attempting to take care of an issue that the university, as an institution, has and will not manage.  State procurement laws preclude the university from spending state funds on ferals.
Perhaps you’ll give us an opportunity to tell campus more about what we are doing.

Our best regards,

Karen Reidenbach, Sherry Finneran, Jerry Santos and other FCA members