A 100-year-old cat colony is facing certain death and extinction due to urban development in the area. The cat colony is located in New York City. The Queens Willets Point project aims to revitalize the area. However, officials didn't account for the cat colony called the Shea Stadium strays.
They've been living in the area for almost 100 years. However, development forced them out of the fields they made their home and into the nearby auto body sector. However, officials plan to develop this area as well into a soccer stadium and residential area.
"They have nowhere to go but to their death. Nowhere to go," Regina Massaro, the founder of Spay Neuter Intervention Project (SNIP) NYC, told New York Post. She said the cat colony will be forced into either a polluted nearby creek or into residential areas. "No one cares. These animals have no one to speak for them but me. I get to leave this place and go home. These cats have to stay here."
For nearly 100 years, stray cats made Willets point their home. They've lived in Shea Stadium. However, with numbers growing and development continuing, many of these cats have died over the years. Massaro is trying to help the animals.
Cat Colony In New York City
"When I come into work in the morning, there's 25 cats outside," Paul Cohen, owner of Roosevelt Auto Wrecking Office,told the outlet. "She does what she can, but she can't keep up with it. There's more and more every day."
Bryan Kortis of Neighborhood Cats is hopeful that officials might step in and help the cats. Otherwise, he said the cats will leave and become an issue elsewhere.
"When you have that type of displacement, and there's no strategy, there's no management, it's just whatever happens that happens to them. They don't stick around and wait for the bulldozers to kill them; they're gonna disperse. And they're gonna disperse to wherever the closest food source and shelter that they can find," Kortis told The Post.
He recognized a lot of risks involving the cat colony.
They may have to cross a busy road. Cats are extremely territorial, so they may try to return to a situation that's dangerous. They may not find food sources. There are rabies scares with cats ... So there's a lot of risk," he said. "If they'd taken our advice back in 2008 and had the cats in those areas trapped and spayed and neutered, we wouldn't be having this problem today. There'd be a much smaller number of cats, and they'd be much easier to deal with."
Massaro presents a grim future for the cat colony.
"There are only one of two things that can happen here: they're either going to stay and get proper shelter for them, that they're going to be cared for. Or, they're going to be forced out — and that is death," she said.
