Hungry Kitties 

Cat People Decry Surfside Law Banning Feedings on Beach 

“We are plagued by cats that are not [friendly] to humans.”—Dr. Lawrence Levin.   

By Erik Bojnansky
Editor  

Cat lovers from Surfside and other parts of Miami-Dade County flooded Surfside Town Hall to protest the enforcement of an ordinance banning the feeding of feral cats on the beach.

Dozens of people, many of them affiliated with Friends of Surfside Cats and the Cat Network, urged the Surfside Town Council to consider amending its ordinance to allow feedings by “designated caretakers who work with us to monitor the population.”

Stray cats, meanwhile, will continue to be trapped, neutered and released in an ongoing “TNR program” in order to keep the cat population down. To forbid the feeding of cats on the beach, they argued, would be inhumane and simply make things worse.

“We believe these cats have value and deserve the best solution,” said Noel Steinfeld, treasurer of Friends of Surfside Cats.

Many of the cat supporters wore t-shirts advertising a benefit known as “Catoberfest.” (“Save a cat.  Eat a dog”) One person passed around photo print outs of cats hiding in the brush.  Another passed out cards urging people to support a license plate that will help fund spay/neuter programs in the state. On it depicts a dog and a cat holding a plate.  “Our very own license plate. Ruff! Ruff!” says the dog.  “Purrific,” replies a cat.

Also present: residents who fear that the undomesticated cats will spread disease and prey upon the few forms of natural wildlife left in the town.  Dr. Lawrence and Nancy Levin, residents of the Champagne Condominium, said there part of Surfside has become “cat town” thanks to the cat feeders. “We are plagued by cats that are not [friendly] to humans,” Lawrence Levin.  “They fear humans.”  But they aren’t afraid of drinking from the condo pool, sleeping on their lawn furniture or hiding in any shelter available when it rains, he said.  Raccoons attracted to uneaten cat food have also been trapped near the condo.

“Diseases are caused by cats,” Lawrence Levin said, adding that there were 20,000 cases of cat-scratch fever throughout the United States. 

“Any of them in Surfside?” yelled one person in the audience.

“I said in the United States,” Levin replied.

Barbara McLaughlin, a Surfside resident who appreciated the Friends of Surfside Cats, struggled to speak after Lawrence Levin’s speech.  “I think it is just a shame when someone doesn’t understand that people like us care so much…. That they can’t get into their heads how personal we take this.” Pausing, McLaughlin turned to Levin and said, “I’d like to invite you over to dinner [to explain].”

Roberta Waller, a Surfside property owner, evidentially took it so personally that she hired a lawyer, Joshua Entin of Rosen Switkes, to protect her right to feed stray cats on the Beach.  Entin thought that the Surfside ordinance is “constitutionally vague” and urged the town to compromise.  Waller thought the law was morally repugnant. “The torah said to feed the animals first, not starve them.”

“Nowhere in the sacred Torah does it say I have to have cats [congregating by my building],” said Nancy Levin, president of the Champagne Condominium Association.

But the cat population has actually fallen thanks to the trap and release program, Steinfeld said.  Since the TNR program started the feral cat population on the beach dropped from more than 100 to less than 40, she said.  Robert Latona, who traps the cats as part of the TNR program, said the cat feeders even help point out “new” wild felines in the area.

Thirteen-year-old Jordan Waggoner, an Abbot Avenue resident, said the neutering program isn’t that effective: a nearby stray cat has had four litters and the offspring enjoy using his home’s flowerbed as a toilet.

Lawrence Levin also questioned why there are any undomesticated cats in Surfside at all.  “If you all took in one cat for every two people here we wouldn’t have a problem,” he said. 

Meanwhile the cats are free to stalk and devour the rare migratory birds in violation of a 1918 law protecting them, Lawrence Levin said.  Another resident said he used to put out a bird feeder for the feathered creatures.  Then the cats discovered it and “it was like shooting ducks in a barrel.” At one point he placed the feeder higher and higher but the cats always got them.  “They can jump six or eight feet,” he said.

The loss of birds and turtles, though, have nothing to do with cats, said Sarah Schooley, a board member of Cat Network.  It has more to do with humans taking their habitat through development. 

Mayor Paul Novack insisted his town likes animals, pointing out that the municipality gives $4,000 a year to the Friends of Surfside Cats for its TNR program.  But, he said, it would be everyone’s “worst nightmare” if he legalized the public feeding of stray cats on public property.  That would send a message to people who want to abandon their pets to simply dump them at Surfside.  “It really comes down to people respecting each other and public property,” he said, adding that residents are free to feed strays on their own property.

“I can’t listen to this anymore,” Charls Senter, a Miami resident who regularly feeds the cats at Surfside’s Beach, said to her husband as Novack spoke. She scoffed at the idea that the Surfside cat colony is made up of felines from other parts of town.  Senter reminded the SunPost that the home found with 30 cats was from Surfside.  She is sure that other nearby residents left their cats in Surfside when they moved on. “No one is driving from South Miami to dump their cats,” she said.  “The 47 cats are from here all along.”