Episode 1: Transcript

One Block, Thirty-Five Cats

Montage of community voices:

It is cats everywhere. You would be so heartbroken. I am very heartbroken.

The minute I call them, they all run to me. But there’s some people in the neighborhood that know they call me the cat guy. They call me the cat guy ‘cause they see me every day greeting them. Rain, snow or shine. How they survive is beyond me.

I started making phone calls, like started calling different city agencies and city rescue organizations and I was like, “Hey, there’s a whole bunch of cats in my neighborhood. Can somebody come pick ‘em up?” And I soon learned that, hey, this is a huge New York City problem and no one’s gonna just come and pick up these cats.

Virginia Marshall: There’s a cat crisis in New York City, but it’s not visible everywhere. Depending on where you live, you might not see any street cats.

Will Zweigart: And that’s part of the problem. There are some blocks where 50 to a hundred cats are living outside, but there are also huge sections of the city where you might never see a single cat, which means that millions of cat loving New Yorkers could have no idea this is even an issue.

Montage of community voices:

Think about feeding 29 cats every morning. I don’t have the money to do it. My neighbors don’t have the money to do it.

Who’s gonna pay? Who’s gonna pay? Who’s gonna pay ‘em? We were like, don’t you take care of animals?

I don’t work for the city. This is not my job.

Virginia Marshall: The cat overpopulation crisis is caused by many of the same human issues that plague our city: affordability, housing, inequality, and issues around access. And it’s not just New York. Cities across the country are dealing with overwhelmed animal shelters and unsustainable street cat populations.

Will Zweigart: So we’re gonna start looking at the causes of cat overpopulation in order to get to solutions. Because we have to look beyond the symptoms to see the root cause.

Virginia Marshall: That’s why we created this podcast. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to help you, our listeners, understand the cat overpopulation crisis and what we can do about it.

Will Zweigart: And if you’re already tuned into this issue, you know that animal shelters have been overwhelmed for a long time.

We’re gonna help you see a path forward and be a part of the solution, so stick with us. I’m Will Zweigart, the Executive Director of Flatbush Cats.

Virginia Marshall: And I’m Virginia Marshall, audio producer and co-host with Will. You’re listening to Underfoot, a podcast about the hidden cat crisis in New York City and how we can solve it.

So Will, I wanna start this podcast with one important word, right? It’s in our tagline. We’re saying that this cat crisis is hidden, but it’s not the case for everyone, right? Street cats are a very visible part of many New Yorker’s lives.

Will Zweigart: Right? And so again, some huge parts of New York literally don’t see street cats on a day-to-day basis, and they may not visit overcrowded shelters.

But I think the bigger issue that we’re gonna be talking about is that overcrowded animal shelters and cats in the street have just been normalized. So we don’t see something because it’s always been that way.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, and it’s hidden in this way where it’s hard to conceptualize. The problem is so huge.

There are hundreds of thousands of cats living on the street. So I wonder if there’s a way to start smaller, you know, what if one small city block held the key to understanding overcrowded animal shelters across New York City?

Rosario: So here’s an abandoned house. It’s been abandoned since I’ve lived here. This basement was a breeding place for the cats.

Virginia Marshall: This past summer. We met Rosario on a block just off of Flatbush Avenue. Rosario lives nearby, and she’s been walking this block for over a decade. Over that time, she’s noticed a lot of activity at the abandoned house.

Rosario: So there was a hole. The cats would get in there, whether they were wild, whether they were abandoned, stray.

They would just go in there. Of course, they’re not neutered or spayed, and they just kept multiplying. So this ledge here at night, 35, 40 cats would line up because there would be food scraps. So the cats would come out here looking for scraps, and I live in this building and I would look out my window and I would see the cats in this empty lot roaming around. I would see them lined up in here.

Virginia Marshall: It was hard for Rosario to see so many hungry cats, especially in winter when they were freezing outside, so she decided she had to do something to help.

Rosario: I started making phone calls, like started calling different city agencies and city rescue organizations, and I was like, “Hey, there’s a whole bunch of cats in my neighborhood.

Can somebody come pick ‘em up?” And I soon learned that, hey, this is a huge New York City problem and no one’s gonna just come and pick up these cats. So I started feeding them right here.

Virginia Marshall: Rosario got to know the cats, all 35 of them.

Rosario: The first cat that I ever saw here was a giant tomcat, huge head, big cat.

And I named him George Washington ‘cause he was clearly the founder of this colony. Because at the time, it was the height of the Hamilton musical and I named all the cats after characters in the musical. There was Hamilton and then there was Burr. Burr and Jefferson were a duo that were best friends, inseparable.

Virginia Marshall: After a while, Rosario realized that feeding them wasn’t enough. The Hamilton colony just kept growing and the cats had medical issues too. A cat would get a lesion or an infection and she could see that they were suffering, so she wanted someone to help the cats. Eventually it became clear that that someone was her.

Rosario: I did have one organization that was big on TNR, Trap Neuter Return, and they said, you know, you and your husband can go get certified. There’s a program in the city that if you take a course, you can get access to the A-S-P-C-A and make appointments and trap these cats. You can get trained how to do it and you can at least help these cats from multiplying.

So we’re like, oh, okay. So my husband and I did that. On a Saturday morning, we went to Manhattan and took a course. We got certified, is what they call it, for TNR. And we got some traps and we just started trapping cats in this lot, and here at night. I would say it took us a year to trap the 35 plus cats because we have jobs and this isn’t like we weren’t doing this full time, we were just trying to like do something about helping these cats.

Virginia Marshall: So, Will, tell us a little bit more about. Rosario, right, because you two met around the same time that she started trying to help the cats on her block, right?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and I was very overwhelmed at the time. My partner and I had found ourselves caring for probably a dozen different colonies, which is like several hours a day, even if you were just feeding.

And I remember a couple blocks away kind of bumping into, oh, I see someone else is leaving food out. And I was desperate to connect with someone else that was doing this work. And I just remember feeling so relieved that I’m not the only one—and seeing Rosario was also feeling very overwhelmed.

So we just kind of started working together organically, and she is such a caring New Yorker. She’s not just someone who cares deeply about the cats. She’s always struck me as someone who cares deeply about her neighbors, and I think that’s why she’s such a successful community, cat caretaker and colony caretaker, because she goes and meets the people first.

Virginia Marshall: And you know some of the cats too, right? You’ve met them.

Will Zweigart: Yeah. The cat that stands out the most to me is King George, that she mentioned. And I remember, we had been working together for a little bit, and so by this point she had let me know, you know, if a certain cat needed help, a certain cat needed placement.

We were doing fostering and adoptions at that time. And I remember going out to meet. King George, and it was a freezing cold January day and King George, just sitting there on top of his little shelter, like a little food shelter, surveying his subjects, looks very regal and immediately was kind of warmed up to me and I was like, “Rosario, this is a former indoor cat who just hardened for the streets.” Like, feral cats don’t let you just pet them. I just wanna be triple clear on that.

And he was in need of medical care. Pretty, pretty immediately. One of his ears is kind of essentially broken or not functioning, it was flopping down.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. And so you got him medical care. What’s the ending of his story?

Will Zweigart: He has a wonderful storybook ending, um, that we want for all of these cats because again, he was not feral. So with some time with people, he was back at it indoors, you know, on some high-rise, sunny window. Rolling in catnip and just getting generally spoiled, which is what we aim for.

And it’s a great reminder that every single one of these cats is special. Every single one of them, you know, they’re not numbers just because they’re outside. They all still deserve love and care, and he really brings all that home.

Virginia Marshall: And tell me a little bit more about Flatbush, right? ‘cause we’re gonna be focusing in on that area during the podcast.

And I was curious because, you know, you moved from a different area of Brooklyn to Flatbush and you were seeing a lot more cats on the street kind of for the first time. So, what was the difference there between where you were before and Flatbush?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, absolutely. Flatbush and East Flatbush are two huge neighborhoods right in the middle of Brooklyn, like I mean the absolute center of Brooklyn on a map.

It’s about a 30 minute subway ride from Manhattan, and it’s one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York City, which is saying quite a lot. We have really, really deep Caribbean, African American, Jewish, and Latino roots. It’s the largest Caribbean hub in North America, so it’s where you go for your patties and your doubles.

And around 40% of our community here was born outside of the U.S. so you might hear several different languages just walking a few blocks down Flatbush Avenue. And so, in this area though, this is a systemically under-resourced area going back several decades.

Economic data shows that poverty rates here are higher than average. Household incomes are slightly lower than average. Somewhere between a quarter and a half of all households here are under some form of economic distress, and my partner and I had relocated from Fort Greene, which is a more expensive area. We moved to Flatbush looking for more affordable housing ourselves.

And I just remember being struck by this jarring difference. Having never seen a cat on the street in Fort Green and then just now colonies on every block. Sick kittens, skinny cats, some were well cared for with parents looking after them, or community members looking after them, but many others were existing in the margins and I just couldn’t believe how widespread the issue was to my new eyes.

But when we talked to longtime residents, it had always been that way.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So tell me, where are these cats coming from?

Will Zweigart: So that is the question. We learned that as long as the neighbors on any given block do not have access to veterinary care for their indoor pets: indoor/outdoor cats, dogs.

As long as they don’t have access to veterinary care, you will continue to see this issue because those cats could be displaced if someone’s moving. Maybe they get out because cats who are not spayed or neutered have a strong biological drive. They will literally break out of your house to get outside.

Maybe it’s a hundred degrees outside and your windows and doors are open because air conditioning is expensive. There’s a million reasons why this kind of ends up being the root issue, but it took us a couple years to realize that we actually have to start knocking on doors and connecting with our neighbors and connecting them with resources if we really want to prevent more cats from showing up and more kittens from being born in Brooklyn backyards.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. And I think some listeners might be imagining as you’re describing this issue, like, oh, I grew up with a cat and they were sort of outside. Isn’t that okay? But it’s not, right like, can you talk a little bit about why it’s not good for the cats to be on the streets of New York?

What are some of the problems that they face?

Will Zweigart: Yeah. Picture New York City. What are you picturing? Loud cars, buses, you know, tons of activity on the street. It’s just literally incredibly dangerous for a cat to be outside, and I’m gonna keep things light right now, but let me say, we see our fair share of cats who have been hit by cars, cats who were unfortunately indirectly consumed poison that was left out for rats, which is a terrible way to go.

So just for their own safety, I could give you 10 reasons why they shouldn’t be outside. There’s a misconception that cats are great at keeping the rat population down. Cats are smarter than that. They don’t mess with rats.

Virginia Marshall: Right. Not New York City rats.

Will Zweigart: Yeah. You need to look at a picture of a mouse and look at a picture of a New York City rat. They’re 10 times larger. They don’t wanna mess with that. But I do have to mention also, cats are an invasive species. So we think about them as just being everywhere. And they are not native to our environment or ecosystem. Cats are a major threat to birds because they are natural predators, extremely efficient hunters. Even when well fed at home, because they’re hunting for sport and the figures here vary. I could easily say that outdoor cats kill so many birds in the U.S. each year, that they are contributing to population declines, like meaningful population declines, and birds have enough challenges already, right?

New York City is also on a migration path, which is you know, not convenient given how many cats are outside and that predation from cats adds significant additional pressure that can push vulnerable species closer to extinction.

Virginia Marshall: So I just wanna get back to Rosario’s story because she mentioned she was doing this thing called Trap Neuter Return or TNR in order to help the cats. So can you explain what is TNR and how does it help the cats that are living on the street?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, so Trap Neuter Return is essentially how you get feral cats spayed or neutered. And the definition of “feral” is “wild” or “unsocialized.”

So when a cat is born outside, if they are not exposed to people within the first two to three months, then they become unsocialized and it becomes much more challenging for them to ever live in a home or sort of engage with people. So Trap Neuter Return is a humane way of getting those cats sterilized, without stressing them out any more than is necessary.

We basically get them on a feeding schedule. Get them to literally go into the trap with food. Care for them before and after a spay neuter appointment. Probably like the only time they’re gonna see a vet, ‘cause they’re feral, so they get their vaccines. They get any additional care they may need.

And then after recovery, they’re returned back to their home, which is where they’re most comfortable.

Virginia Marshall: Got it. And so, that trapping is actually like a really important part of the process, and it sounds a little complicated. So Rosario mentioned it took her one year to trap 35 cats. What does that actually look like?

Will Zweigart: In short, it is a ton of project management. And to trap even one cat in New York City requires a lot of logistical wrangling. Because think about it, we don’t have cars, we have small spaces. So where do these cats stay? After you trap them? They need to recover after surgery.

How are you getting these cats to the clinic. You can’t put them in a Lyft. They’re smelly and they might, you know, ruin that person’s SUV. So, everything about Trap Neuter Return is challenging in general, and it’s just dialed up a little bit extra in New York City.

So if you were to trap 35 cats, first of all, you couldn’t do that all at once. You need to do it over several months, given just like how challenging it is to care for a few cats at a time. And you gotta coordinate with all the neighbors, you gotta literally track where all these cats are, their movements, their patterns. Cats are very routine oriented. So you get them on a feeding schedule and then you kind of earn their trust just enough to be able to trap them and betray their trust temporarily.

And you apologize and you say, “Hey, this is for your own good.” We don’t need more, more little kittens running around. And so just a tremendous amount of dedication and problem solving.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And actually, we’re gonna, for listeners, give them a little bit of a closer look at what it feels like or sounds like to trap a cat.

So our field reporter, Sarah Gabrielli, went on a trapping mission recently with Ryan Tarpey, the TNR and Outreach Specialist at Flatbush Cats, who was training some new volunteers on how to do TNR. Sarah and Ryan went to an apartment where a group of volunteers were waiting to trap a mama cat and a litter of kittens.

Ryan Tarpey: They call this a box trap or a pressure trap. Pressure because it has that pressure plate. It has two doors.

Virginia Marshall: Ryan arrived with a collection of traps, all with slightly different uses. First he showed the group how to trap the mama cat.

Ryan Tarpey: This door is for putting your bait in, transferring a cat. It has many, many, many uses. Right? And so then we’re gonna put the bait back here. She’s gonna walk in, she’s gonna step on this plate.

And the door falls and then, and then it can’t open.

Virginia Marshall: For the kittens, the job was a bit more delicate. Ryan showed how to use a drop trap, which is a bigger trap used for a larger group of kittens.

Ryan Tarpey: So it’s important with the drop trap that the food gets centered. Especially for like these size cats, that when they’re all in there eating, nobody’s tail’s sticking out. Nobody’s got a leg out because it falls pretty hard and fast. Alright? I think we go in and wait.

Virginia Marshall: With the trap set up in the basement and the food inside. It was only a matter of time before the kittens came out. They were hungry after all.

Ryan Tarpey: Is that five cats?

Flatbush Cats Volunteers: That’s four cats. No, five.

Ryan Tarpey: Oh oh. There he is, baby. Alright. The most important thing here especially is if you have that many cats underneath there, you wanna wait until all heads are down before you pull the string, because their reaction time is so fast that they catch something out of the corner of their eye and their little heads are up.

Sarah Gabrielli: Heads are down.

Ryan Tarpey: Heads are down, heads are down. We going? Green light?

Sarah Gabrielli: We got them. Oh my God. We got all of them, this is amazing! Oh my God.

Ryan Tarpey: Now bring me that big sheet. The gray one, the gray queen sized sheet.

Virginia Marshall: Max brought over the sheet and Ryan threw it over the trap.

Ryan Tarpey: Watch happens when we cover it all the way.

Flatbush Cats Volunteer: They’ll calm down?

Ryan Tarpey: Yeah. If they can’t see out. They’re not trying to get out.

Flatbush Cats Volunteer: Gotcha, buddy. Don’t worry. You’re fine.

Virginia Marshall: Then the kittens had to be moved into portable traps, which took some time, but by the end of the evening, all five kittens and their mama were secure. And Ryan loaded the traps into the van.

Ryan Tarpey: Right now we’re headed over to the clinic where we have our holding space and we’re gonna get all these guys checked in. File your forms, line their cages, feed ‘em.

(kittens meowing)

Virginia Marshall: All right, so we’ve heard now the process of trapping a cat. You’ve told us a little bit after they’re trapped, they’re either spayed or neutered, and they might get some basic healthcare, vaccines, and other things. And then what happens?

Will Zweigart: So while a cat is with us either before or after they’re getting spayed or neutered, we are also evaluating: is this a friendly cat or is this a feral cat?

Shockingly, a very high percentage of the cats that we’ve trapped, who we assumed were feral, are actually not feral. They are friendly cats. They’ve been outside for several years and they sort of hardened, you know, to the outdoor life. But feral cats are returned.

That is the R in TNR, Trap Neuter Return, and it’s an imperfect solution because ultimately we still have cats outside. At least they’re not reproducing. So, that’s the way that we can contribute. But, we would love to work towards a scenario where there are no cats outside, both for their own benefit, for their own wellbeing, and also so that they’re not, you know, decimating the bird population, for example.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. And so when they’re living then back out on the street, someone cares for them, right?

Will Zweigart: Yeah. So very important terminology here. We would call it a colony caretaker. And a colony caretaker is not just feeding, they’re looking after the overall wellbeing of that cat. So that includes seeing to any veterinary care needs they may have. They’re also providing shelter. So does this cat have a place to go when it’s like, you know, 20 degrees outside. So we build winter shelters every winter and give them out to caretakers.

Another key term here is “community cat.” If you see a cat outside and you’re not sure whether it’s friendly or feral, just call it a community cat, and that sort of encompasses any cats that live outside. And it also helps us to broaden our definition and understanding of the relationship we may have with that cat because in Flatbush for example, there are communal care models where multiple people are caring for a single cat.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. And I wanna go back to Rosario’s story because after she trapped and neutered or spayed those 35 cats, many of them ended up back on the street and she was caring for them. So let’s hear what she has to say.

Rosario: There’s Mulligan. You see her up on the fence. Hi Mulligan. Hi Bonnie. And you see she heard my voice.

This one is one of the originals, 2017, and I’m still taking care of her, but my colony has shrunk, which is good news, right? There’s only three cats left here because they’re fixed. So they’re not having kittens. Some got adopted because they were friendly and they went into the foster program. The wild ones, or the ones that are feral, they have remained, and I’ve taken care of them since 2017.

And because of that, they’ve lived this long. I mean, they live out here in the blizzards, extreme cold, hot summers. But because I’m feeding them and providing them little shelters, I guess they’ve lived this long. So we control the problem.

Virginia Marshall: It takes a lot of dedication to care for a colony of cats for over a decade. But Rosario has been a consistent support for these cats.

Rosario: And I have a job and I’m busy and I don’t have all the time to take care of all these cats, but I now view it as just my daily walk. It’s either in the morning or in the evening, I just go and make my rounds and I feed them. But during the pandemic and the world was shut down, I would just sit here, I’d bring a chair, bring my glass of wine, and the cats would just hang around me, and I spent time with them and they love me and I love them.

Virginia Marshall: Rosario’s colony is now mostly stable, but every so often someone spots a new cat and then the TNR process starts all over again. And that’s actually what happened on one day when we were out with Rosario.

Rosario: Did you see a cat? (gasps) Are you kidding me? Somebody probably dumped him. Okay, can, can I come to you in a minute?

Virginia Marshall: Rosario walked over to the shipping container to see if she could help the new cats.

Rosario: This is the storage place and they have like these big shipping containers in the back, and I have had a number of cats that just turn up there, whether they just walk and find a place, or sometimes it could be that someone released cats that they don’t want no more. So he’s telling me there’s four new cats back there that I didn’t even know about.

Virginia Marshall: At this point, Rosario knows the drill. She’s been doing TNR work for a long time, but it’s not always easy.

Rosario: Hey. So what’s the story? What’s going on?

Amos: There’s one over here.

Rosario: Yes, I saw him, but his ear is clipped.

Amos: Then, for a few months I fed this one more, and last week there’s two more. So it’s four now.

Rosario: So Amos, you know, the, the protocol, I’ve gotta feed them, get used to them, and then I gotta come set the traps to get them.

Amos: That’s fine. When you ready to go?

Rosario: When someone tells me, “Hey, I just saw cats,” my heart sinks. But if you’re just the person, you know, a normal, regular person trying to help cats, it starts with one cat and before you know it is another one and another one, and then one is really sick and it can be overwhelming.

Virginia Marshall: So just a quick update, since we took that walk with Rosario, she actually went back and trapped that shipping container cat. The cat, who is now named Darla Dynamite, which is a wonderful name, was placed in the Flatbush Cat’s foster program and adopted into her forever home. But just to go back to that feeling, you know, at the end there and the tape of Rosario being completely overwhelmed, you know, she was describing that.

Will, can you tell us a little bit more about what people are up against when they take on caring for a colony like this?

Will Zweigart: It is a Sisyphean task to maintain a colony when you don’t have the ability to control some of the things that contribute to new cats showing up. And you have these hardworking people who will give everything towards a problem.

And so it’s hard for them to accept that this situation is outside of their control. When you hear from rescuers, and we’re gonna hear from a lot during this show, they are dysregulated. Right? Like they are suffering as people because they’re giving everything they have.

Virginia Marshall: So Rosario’s not the only colony caretaker in Flatbush or in Brooklyn, right? There are a lot of people working to take care of cats.

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and I want everyone listening to challenge your preexisting notions about how many people care about these cats. A lot of times when we talk about how many cats there are outside, and we talk about how, these are in typically under-resourced communities, there is a implicit assumption that a lot of New Yorkers don’t care for these cats. And I can tell you firsthand the opposite is true.

People care for cats in a lot of different ways. New York City is a melting pot, and part of this work is learning that there are different values and belief systems around the role that pets play. And communal care for cats is very common in Flatbush, and that looks like a lot of different people chipping in to make sure that a friendly cat living on their block has food, has shelter.

Virginia Marshall: So let’s hear from one more caretaker. Her name is Sabbie and she also lives in Flatbush.

Sabbie: So then we go back. So this is the routine. So I’ve been doing this now since the pandemic.

Virginia Marshall: Every morning, Sabbie wakes up at 5:00 AM to walk her dog Coco, and along the way she sees dozens of cats in need.

(cat meowing)

Virginia Marshall: Sabbie can’t just walk by those cats. It’s in her nature to help. It’s something she learned as a kid growing up in Jamaica.

Sabbie: Jamaica’s a tropical Caribbean island, so there are a lot of animals. And in Jamaica, the system is that we don’t look at animals as strays. They’re part of the community. But up here, if there’s a stray animal or cat, it’s not like a community. It’s like everybody’s individual.

Virginia Marshall: In 2020, Sabbie started caring for a litter of kittens she found on her block, and eventually that turned into 29 cats, which she feeds on her morning walk around the neighborhood. Some of that original litter is still around, and one in particular has taken a liking to Sabbie.

Sabbie: This is Wander. Okay, so her name was Wander because when she was young, in the litter, she was the one that was wandering around. And she was independent and didn’t want to be bothered. But I’ve grown to love her because she’s attached to me, I’m attached to her. Every day we have this bond where we, you know, we sit on the step and we connect.

Virginia Marshall: Over time, Sabbie started trying to get more involved with caretaking work. She heard about TNR and started working with Ryan Tarpey, who we just heard from earlier, to make sure the cats in her colony could get the healthcare they needed.

Sabbie: And so when I see a stray cat, a homeless cat, a hurt cat, I take a pic and I send it to Ryan. I’m like, okay, this is the situation. Boom, boom, boom. There’s a mom. Whatever the situation, I explain to him. And then he’s like, okay, let’s make a date to come and get them or solve the situations.

And he did that too with over 130 cats in this neighborhood. Getting them TNR, getting them adopted, getting them stuff to eat.

Virginia Marshall: Sabbie can see the real impact she has on these cats and that keeps her going.

Sabbie: These cats would not be here. You know how much, how long since the pandemic now? Some are adopted, if they’re injured, they get healthcare or they get stuff to eat. You know what I’m saying?

Like, there’s 29 cats in this neighborhood that because of Flatbush cats, I get up every morning and I give them something to eat. When I’m walking down the road, and they see me, they run to me. I feel like it’s my purpose. Now, I feel like if I see a homeless cat or whatever situation, I feel like it’s my destiny to try to help.

Virginia Marshall: Over time, Sabbie says she’s seen her neighborhood change. Her corner of New York City is becoming a little bit more like the supportive community she knew in Jamaica.

Sabbie: You know, I’ve made the neighborhood more compassionate. I’ve had my neighbors who are strangers who just move to the neighborhood, a totally different race from me, Jewish, that wouldn’t, you wouldn’t even think would come knocking on my door, come knocking on my door for me to help him with the cat. And now, we are cool. So to me, it’s bringing cultures together.

Virginia Marshall: So, Will, I feel like we’re getting to the end of this episode, right? And the whole point of this series is to figure out how we can solve the cat crisis. And I’m wondering, have we reached the solution, here? Do we just Trap, Neuter, Return and that’s it?

Will Zweigart: I wish. Trap Neuter return is an essential, but incomplete, part of the solution. If you were to just do Trap Neuter Return, think about it as almost like, preventing further harm. But Trap Neuter Return starts with cats that are already outside, that are already feral. We’ve already failed them by that point. Right?

If a cat is like, trying to survive in New York City outside, yes, there are people that will pitch in and feed them, but don’t they deserve a better life? Shouldn’t they be napping indoors on a couch somewhere while we work to feed them? I mean, that’s really the role that cats have established for themselves is they’re the only species to have domesticated people. And I wanna see them in that role. I wanna see them being very comfortable indoors.

So, uh, we have to move further upstream. And when I say upstream, I mean preventing situations before they happen.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. Yeah, ‘cause we haven’t yet told our listeners what Flatbush Cats is. So tell us how you founded it and, and what it does.

Will Zweigart: Yeah. So my partner and I, when we moved to Flatbush in 2016, we were just like many other New Yorkers who might’ve been surprised to see so many cats struggling outside.

And I mean, dozens, like it was traumatizing. And at this time I was getting to know my neighbors and I was asking them about it. And you know, they said it’s, it’s challenging, but it’s always been this way. And I heard that from everyone: It’s always, it’s always been like this.

And these are often folks who are dealing with a lot of other issues at the same time. They’re worrying about rent, they’re worrying about healthcare, they’re worrying about putting food on the table. And this is not a generalization, but this is a lower income area that is under-resourced and has been strategically deprioritized by the city in so many different ways.

We initially started just volunteering the same way anyone else might. Figuring out how to rescue a single friendly cat, learning about Trap Neuter Return. I was like Googling, you know, maybe there’s a city agency. I was very naive. I was like, oh, surely someone will come and take care of this. And it took several months to realize that we were the help. We would need to, to deal with this locally. And so I signed up for a Trap Neuter Return class, and it took months to get to a class and then took several more months to get spay neuter appointments and borrow traps.

By the time we had followed all of those steps and we had had everything we needed to do TNR for a colony, I remember there were like nine kittens born from a single litter, and they had aged during this process. So by the time we were able to trap them and we had Spay Neuter appointments, they were feral. If we had known what I know now, all of those kittens could have gone into homes because we could have rescued them earlier when they were kittens and could have socialized them.

And so I had to kind of like carry that and sit with that. I feed these cats to this day, almost 10 years later.

Virginia Marshall: Wow.

Will Zweigart: There’s only two left. I have to like see every day that we love them, we’re doing our best by them, but we also failed them as a society.

And so, collective action, systemic level action is needed. And I had to go through that firsthand to realize. So when I say we can’t adopt our way out of this problem, and when I say we can’t rescue our way out of this problem, it’s because I tried.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. Yeah. And when you hit that point and sort of that realization that you couldn’t adopt or Trap Neuter Return your way out of the problem, what did you do?

Will Zweigart: We hit a breaking point. We hit full burnout. And anyone listening who’s been involved in rescue and adoption and shelter work knows exactly what that’s like. And we were spending thousands of dollars a month at the vet, essentially, trying to get all these cats care.

And I remember, my like lowest point was we had just dropped off 10 cats. It’s the maximum number of cats you can drop off at any given time. It’s a maximum that would fit in a van and the most number of appointments. So we were doing literally everything we could. And I was like, well, I’m just gonna go scout this, this new colony. Like I’ve seen some cats on this other block a couple blocks away, so I’m just gonna bring my camera.

This is so naive. ‘Cause now any, any, everyone in rescue knows, like if you go looking at a colony, you’re gonna come home with a sick kitten. But I go out here and I’ve just got a camera, no other equipment, nothing, no food, nothing. And I see this little tiny gray kitten. She’s drastically underweight, so she’s probably older than she looks.

It was a Saturday morning, August, just blazing hot by like nine o’clock, you know? That kind of day. And she had just plopped herself on the sidewalk, in the middle of the sidewalk, in the sun. And there’s like shade, you know, 20 feet away. But she was in the sun, and there was like a couple flies on her just circling. And her eyes were crusted shut.

And I just sat there for a minute. My mind was racing because we didn’t have anywhere to put another cat. We were already fostering like way beyond our max, and I had just literally dropped off like every trap, every carrier that I had.

And I remember thinking, if I can just get this cat home and if I can just get her healthy, I promise we’re going to, we’re gonna do something different. Like I was so angry at like seeing her suffering, and she was so sick that she just let me pick her up and she just let me carry her home in my hands.

And I made her a promise. Her name is Mani, M-A-N-I. I promised her that we would not just help her, that we would prevent more cats like her from suffering. And that is really the origin of Flatbush Cats.

And so Flatbush Cats was founded as a 501(c)(3) in 2018. We built a community cat program so more volunteers could get engaged, so we wouldn’t be burning ourselves out. We could work together. We could share the responsibility of these larger projects, and then later building a veterinary clinic in Flatbush.

Everything that we’ve done up until this point and everything that we will do in the future, is an attempt to keep that promise: to prevent more cats like her from ever suffering on the street.

Virginia Marshall: So one note we wanna end on here for this episode is that real solutions are happening.

Will Zweigart: Absolutely. And we’re gonna spend some time going deep and understanding the problem because I do believe that is the most important step to getting to a solution. Is really making sure we understand this from a variety of different angles.

But we’re also gonna be laying out a vision for what a better world can look like when we work together and when we direct our resources in the right place. We can solve big problems like this.

Virginia Marshall: So listeners, you’re in the right place if you care about cats and you care about solving this problem and, understanding too that, you know, we start with blocks like Rosario’s or Sabbie’s because they’re microcosms of what’s going on everywhere across the city.

So that’s what we’re going to tackle in our next episode. We’re gonna zoom out, and try to wrap our minds around the scale of this cat crisis and the role that the city plays. That’s next time on Underfoot

Will Zweigart: Underfoot is brought to you by Flatbush Cats and is made possible by our generous donors and supporters who want to get to the root of this problem. If that sounds like you subscribe to our newsletter, and become a supporter. You can learn more at flatbushcats.org.

Virginia Marshall: And if you wanna see the full story of King George and so many other cats like him, go check out the YouTube page of Flatbush Cats. We’ll also link to it in our show notes.

Underfoot is hosted by Will Zweigart, and me, Virginia Marshall. Our field reporter is Sarah Gabrieli. Episodes were recorded at Good Studio in Brooklyn, and mixed and mastered by Will Whatley. Podcast art was created by Lazy Chief and the series was Executive Produced by None Other.

Cat Sounds in this episode were performed by Bunny and Wander. Purrs by Ignatia and kitten meows by Tad, Dab, Dollop, Speck, Smidge, and Pinch.