Episode 2: Transcript

A City on the Brink

News Clip Montage:

Animal shelters here in the city are so overcrowded, they just can’t take in any more animals.

They have basically run out of room at the animal care centers of New York City. The agency says it has over 1000 animals in its shelters.

The animal shelters in New York City are practically bursting at the seams filled with cats, dogs, rabbits, and other critters.

Virginia Marshall: You may have heard the news over the summer that New York City’s animal shelters are once again at capacity. They were having to turn away cats and dogs that needed help.

Will Zweigart: And every time this happens, people talk about it like it’s a new problem. They blame pet owners or even the shelters themselves.

Virginia Marshall: And that blame game doesn’t help solve the problem, and it’s not even true. The news headlines don’t capture the scope of the issue, and they certainly don’t help us move towards solutions.

Will Zweigart: In our last episode, we looked at New York City’s cat overpopulation crisis through the lens of a single block. Today we zoom out. We’re gonna try to answer one broader question. How did we arrive at a place where New York City’s animal shelters are constantly overwhelmed? I’m Will Zweigart, executive Director of Flatbush Cats.

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

Mike: There’s some people in the neighborhood that know they call me the cat guy ‘cause they see me every day feeding ‘em. The minute I call them, they all run to me. Rain, snow, or shine, rain, snow or shine.

Virginia Marshall: Mike is a volunteer with Flatbush Cats. He takes care of a cat colony near Kings County Hospital, but he’s only been a cat guy for the past six years or so. Before that, he was more of a dog person.

Mike: I had a Maltese and a Pomeranian. I raised those little guys. Ella Bella was the Pomeranian, and Fatima was the Maltese. Those guys, they were my heart. Everywhere I went, I mean, people loved them. People would see them, they pull out their cameras, they start taking pictures like crazy.

Virginia Marshall: Then Mike lost his housing. He was dealing with a lot of stressors, one of which was what he would do with his beloved dogs.

Mike: I was living in a hallway in the projects. There were a lot of things going on in the hallways. And if I fell asleep, anything could have happened between drug dealing, this and that.

I struggled like that for a long time. So, you know, what am I gonna do? I didn’t have nothing to protect myself, whatever. And, you know, they would’ve tried to stole from me. Or else, if I would’ve fell asleep. Bingo. I had to give them up because I had no other place to go.

Virginia Marshall: So Mike took Ella, Bella, and Fatima to the Humane Society in Manhattan.

Mike: Boom, I signed the papers and they took ‘em like it was nothing. They had ‘em on TV especially too. The newscasters, they said that we have these two pups, Ella Bella and Fatima, and the guy couldn’t take care of ‘em anymore.

Virginia Marshall: Seeing those stories on the news, it’s easy to make assumptions about the situation, but in reality, almost every time a person has to surrender their pet, it’s heartbreaking.

Sometimes it’s financial stress. Other times it’s homelessness or domestic violence. But in his case, Mike wanted nothing more than to be with his dogs, and he was trying to do what was best for them. He says he still feels sad about the decision.

Mike: It killed me. I had to live with it. There’s nothing I can do. It hurt me, but it is what it is. And then I began to see all these cats that were hanging out over there.

Virginia Marshall: Around this time, Mike was in and out of Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn for doctor’s appointments, and when he saw all the cats living outside the hospital, he realized there was something he could do about his grief.

Mike: I went to take care of them and this and that. Then all of a sudden it became a situation, for the past six, seven years, I’ve been doing it. Every day, seven days a week, rain, snow, or shine.

Virginia Marshall: Mike lives in Manhattan and Flatbush is pretty much in the middle of Brooklyn, which means that he takes the subway quite a distance to feed and take care of these cats. And that act of service; it’s a way for Mike to make up for the loss of Ella Bella and Fatima. He’s doing it for them, he says.

Mike: I always keep them in my mind and my prayers. I always do.

Virginia Marshall: The experience Mike went through isn’t unique to dog owners. Landlord policies in New York City are such that many renters struggle to keep their pets with them when they have to move.

Mike: Today, it’s very hard to get an apartment. You have to really go through the motion to try to find a place where the landlords accept animals, puppies, dogs, birds, whatever the case may be. You gotta go through the motions. It’s very hard, and it happens with the people with cats too and everything. It happens with them too.

Virginia Marshall: So Will, the first time I heard Mike’s story, I felt really emotional. You know, it’s tough to hear about what people go through. Everyday people who love their pets as much as I do.

Will Zweigart: Yeah and that compassion that we’re feeling for others, for Mike and for everyone else, that’s actually the key. When you hear of folks like Mike, traveling 45 minutes or an hour each way, our hearts just double in size, and that is what we’re trying to uncover with this entire series. We’re not just highlighting the problems and the solutions from a policy perspective. We’re highlighting the way that we need to be around, and with, each other to solve problems like this.

Virginia Marshall: And it’s like, these are just everyday New Yorkers. It’s speaking to a portrait of New York as well, right?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, they represent all of us. Something like this could happen to you. It could happen to your neighbor. And hearing these stories helps us realize that it actually is within our means to do something about it. And that is also the story of New Yorkers.

We may have a tough exterior, but people also have a heart of gold, and I want us to all think about: how do we wanna show up for each other here, in this type of situation?

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. And another thing I wanted to point out about Mike’s story is that he lives in Manhattan, but as you said, he cares for this colony in Flatbush.

First of all, that just goes to show the dedication that a lot of volunteers have to their cats, but also the cat crisis really isn’t visible where he is in Manhattan. So I wonder, Will, what do we know about where cat colonies are distributed around the city?

Will Zweigart: So generally, you’re more likely to see cats outside in areas that face socioeconomic challenges.

But when we first got started planning out broader solutions for the city, we did a foil request, like an information request from ACC, and they provided us with all of the intake, all of the shelter surrenders across the city over several year period, broken down by address, by zip, et cetera.

And it almost overheated my computer, but I dropped all of this into a spreadsheet and then a map, and we were able to basically map out like, where are surrenders coming from. It’s important to note that, that is just one piece of the data because not everyone surrenders a pet to a shelter. There’s a lot of fear around surrendering your pet to a shelter, both for the blame and the stigma that is associated with it, but also the fear that your pet may be euthanized.

So I just wanna highlight that that is an incomplete piece of data, but it is a very compelling picture that a lot of these intakes and surrenders are happening in the outer boroughs, where household income is below the median level for the city.

Virginia Marshall: Just how connected is the cat crisis to larger city problems like housing instability?

Will Zweigart: This is all deeply connected to some of the same root issues that make New York City such a challenging place to live. When folks surrender their pets to a shelter, which is the worst day of their life in many cases, the team there at the shelter does a survey. They ask people, why are you surrendering your pet? What might help you keep your pet, et cetera.

And the number one reason why people are surrendering their pet are financial barriers. “I can no longer afford to care for my pet.” We know that veterinary care is the number one cost, kind of tucked in that.

But the second reason is housing, and that’s very simple. People are moving constantly to find affordable places to live. And not every landlord, not every building, allows pets, particularly multiple pets or certain types of breeds. So costs and housing are far and away the number one and two reasons why people may need to surrender.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, and Flatbush Cats sees that firsthand.

I spoke with Maxwell Branch, who’s the Director of Community Programs for Flatbush Cats. And one of the many things he does in his role is answer the help email at Flatbush Cats.

Max: That is folks who have heard about us for some reason and are looking for help with cats. And just based on that, the volume of folks that we see that are saying things like, “I’m losing my housing; I’m entering the shelter system; I don’t know what to do with my pets; I don’t have any family members that can take them. Or, I am moving out of town. I can’t figure out a way to get the papers that I need for my animal to move back overseas.”

For example, if someone is self deporting or planning to be deported in the next little bit, that’s a very cumbersome and an expensive process and folks aren’t able to navigate that. And they end up with no recourse and truly no good options. We had an adopter even reach out to us yesterday who said, “Hey, landlord figured out that I have cats, I’m not here on a real lease. I am facing other liabilities that mean that I can’t, stay and fight it. So I need to return the cats.”

Virginia Marshall: Stories like this aren’t rare. Housing instability is one of the biggest reasons people are forced to give up their pets. Our field reporter, Sarah Gabrielli, spoke with one cat owner whose landlord found out about her pet. At first, it looked like she might lose her cat for good.

Angelica: I got her two weeks ago. I fell in love with her. She’s been my child since then. She sleeps with me. She crawls with me. We go on adventures together.

Virginia Marshall: This is Angelica. Her child, Simbi, is a tiny gray kitten that’s perched on her shoulder. How Simbi came into her life was pretty fortuitous.

Angelica: I always go to this deli in the college that I go to, and then out of nowhere the owner was like, “Hey, I have a gift for you.”

And he just gave me the cat. And then when I ask him why, he was like, “I’m giving cats away, and she was the last one.” He said that if they didn’t give her away, they were probably gonna put her on the street ‘cause they didn’t have any way to keep her in the deli.

Virginia Marshall: Angelica had to be careful. She wasn’t technically allowed to have a cat in her apartment.

Angelica: I had to hide her because I was not permitted to have any pets.

Virginia Marshall: Angelica has been in this position before when she and her mom first moved to the city, months before.

Angelica: I sadly had to give away my first ever dog. And we tried to talk with the landlord, see if they could make an exception, but sadly they couldn’t.

Virginia Marshall: So when Simbi fell into her lap, Angelica felt something click into place.

Angelica: It was amazing. I was like, no, I gotta take her. So I took her with me and it was the funniest thing, having to hide her when the landlord was coming to do repairs or something. I would have to make sure that the cat was not there. Then the landlord will go inside the kitchen and I will have to run.

She got out of my room, I don’t know how. I was in the bedroom, and then out of nowhere I just see the landlord carrying Simbi. And then he was like, “So, what’s this?”

I was like, “No!” I was like, “Oh, well I will have to give her away.” I was so sad. I just started begging to the guy not to take her away. He saw my cat and then he fell in love with her. And the guy was like, “You know what? I had just a cat just like her. You can keep her.”

Virginia Marshall: Angelica’s story isn’t unique. In a city where housing is tight and people are often moving around from one place to the next, finding an apartment in your price range that allows pets can be really hard. Many apartments require the tenant pay extra fees or fill out more paperwork, and that can be a real barrier.

Angelica says she’s looking into ways to make sure her four-legged family member can stay with her even if she has to move again.

Angelica: I’m trying to get an emotional support letter for her so she can stay with me and be with me forever, so this doesn’t happen ever again.

Will Zweigart: Hearing Angelica’s story and Mike’s story really just highlights how common it is for pet owners in New York City and across the country to go through so much stress, to jump through so many hurdles, trying to keep their pets with them. And that’s really important for us to sit with because it challenges this predominant narrative that when people have to give up their pets, it’s because they don’t care.

And that is just not true. We all love our pets. There is no reason to believe that anyone else doesn’t love their pet just as much as you love yours. And that bias is keeping us from being able to extend a hand to help our neighbors, who frankly would love nothing more than to keep their pets.

Virginia Marshall: Right. I mean, no one should have to give up a family member, right? It’s happening every day though. And that kind of feeling was actually what made me wonder: has it always been this hard to own and care for a pet in New York City? It seems uniquely hard. And that question actually led me down an interesting rabbit hole. I actually think it might be useful for our listeners if we laid out a little bit of New York City’s history with pets. That might help us understand where we are now.

Will Zweigart: Let’s go for it.

Virginia Marshall: Okay, going back to the 1800s here, when New York City was more rural, though still the most densely populated place in the country, people used to keep livestock here. even in Manhattan. I read a bit from a book called Taming Manhattan, where the author Catherine McNeur catalogs instances of people bumping into goats on their walks and cows upsetting grocery carts, and there were a ton of stray dogs.

So biting and rabies was a big issue and there were a lot of pigs. Did you know, Will, that in the 1820s there were 20,000 pigs on the streets of New York?

Will Zweigart: I did not.

Virginia Marshall: Okay, me neither. I think it just really goes to show that New Yorkers have always had to live next to animals. But our approach to animals really started to change in the late 19th century.

So, pigs were banned from the streets of New York City for public health reasons, and then stray gogs started to be euthanized because they were a danger to people. But it was ultimately the mistreatment of carriage and cart horses that prompted the founding of the A-S-P-C-A or the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866. That’s a national organization that’s actually still based here in New York City.

And along with its founding in 1866, New York State became the first state to pass anti animal cruelty laws. A few years after its founding, in 1894, the A-S-P-C-A decided to do something about all the animals on the street, and they opened New York City’s first animal shelter for stray cats and dogs.

And then following that, in 1897, we in New York City became the first municipality to pass laws about licensing pets. So that means like, putting tags on the collars of your pet dogs and cats. And, Will, I’m saying all this to kind of lead us to this idea that this turn of the century moment is really when we see a shift in public attitude when dogs and cats in the city go from just animals on the street to creatures that we have a responsibility to care for.

Will Zweigart: Yeah, it was a long shift over several decades as our views and our relationship with animals has changed. But essentially it went from, animals stay outside, don’t come in the house at all. To now, cats and dogs are family and they sleep in the bed. We can track this through a lot of different lenses, like for example, litter boxes being invented in the mid 19 hundreds.

Different types of food being available, and an economy being formed around pet care, which is obviously massive now. Also, something that’s struck me as you were talking through the history is that New York City used to be a leader in animal welfare.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, we did. What happened?

Will Zweigart: Yeah. At some point, yes.

Virginia Marshall: So, we’re now at this moment where we have 8 million people here in the city of New York, and I read a stat that there’s over 1 million pets here. So I’m just wondering, Will, what kinds of institutions were created over time to manage all of these people and pets?

Will Zweigart: It’s really interesting going through that history because you can see that we have basically not evolved our approach to this issue. Our relationship with pets has changed dramatically, particularly over the last 50 years, but our institutions have not.

We’ve set up resources to protect people from animals. Again, like, protecting people from rabid dogs. Not an issue anymore in New York City, but we have not shifted our resources to keep people and their pets together.

You mentioned that the first New York City animal shelter set up by the A-S-P-C-A was in 1894, and exactly 100 years later, 1994, A-S-P-C-A announced that it would no longer handle the municipal animal control or sheltering function for the city for a variety of reasons. And I actually think that is the appropriate call. I don’t think a nonprofit of any size should be handling these critical utilities and municipal functions for a city. That led to the founding of what is now called Animal Care Centers of New York City, or A-C-C, that was created and funded by the city a few years later.

And we’re now in a position where the only thing the city funds essentially, in a meaningful way, is just the sheltering of animals, and even that is not funded at the correct level. But the broader trend that we’re seeing is an evolution from animal control to animal welfare. From animals being threats, to being pets, to ultimately being family. Which is something that we all agree on now.

This is not up for debate. I think it’s like 97% of Americans across the board believe that pets are family. So now that our beliefs and our attitudes and our values around pets have changed, it’s time for the systems to keep up too.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, and I’m wondering too: if not the ACC, who are the people and institutions taking care of animals on the street now? You know, you’re saying that the ACC can’t take care of all of them. It wasn’t designed to take care of all of these animals and solve the issue. So what’s happening now?

Will Zweigart: It is a patchwork of essentially volunteers and individuals. We talked about what it’s like to be a rescuer or a colony caretaker when we met Sabbie and Rosario, and there’s so many folks out there doing everything they can and yet still not able to keep up.

And that is work that is very isolating, very difficult, very challenging, financially burdensome. And this is work that the city should be doing and should be funding, but instead they have shifted that burden to individuals. So you have a couple thousand Trap Neuter Return certified volunteers who all are deeply, deeply passionate about this work.

And it’s actually, they care so much that they’ve been propping up, we’ve been propping up, this inadequate system.

Virginia Marshall: And the city is aware of this problem, right? You talked with council member Justin Brannan, who’s been a big advocate for animal welfare in New York City.

Will Zweigart: That’s right, and we talked about why this keeps happening.

Justin Brannan: I think the city government is taking advantage of, if not exploiting, the compassion of animal lovers who are not gonna wait for their leaders to take action, right? In a city of eight and a half million people, where you have eight and a half million things you have to deal with every day, if City Hall is worried about a million other things and there’s these pockets of super compassionate, empathetic, well-meaning animal lovers who are just gonna take care of something for them, then it’s one less thing for them to worry about.

And I think that has a lot to do with it. For them, it’s sort of outta sight, outta mind. But that intrinsically is the problem.

Virginia Marshall: We’re going to hear more from the council member later on in this series. But that’s striking, isn’t it? It seems to me that the animal welfare system in this city is broken.

Will Zweigart: It feels broken, right? I say it’s a failed system. I say it’s a broken system in my head all the time. I’m gonna challenge that for all of us, though.

We’re gonna zoom out even further and argue that any system is designed to produce the results that it is producing. Which means that this system isn’t broken, so we can’t fix it, but we can build something better,

Virginia Marshall: Right, and having this system that wasn’t designed to take care of all these animals in the first place, and then we also have this problem that’s really massive.

I wanna focus in a little bit on the scale of this cat overpopulation crisis. We’ve heard this number thrown out there that there are 500,000 cats on the streets of New York. Do you know, is that accurate at all?

Will Zweigart: So I get this question a lot, particularly from media who are just now discovering the issue. And I give the same answer every time, which is, the city doesn’t care to know. If the city actually knew how many cats there were, they might be compelled to do something about it. So, ignorance is bliss. There are no accurate counts. It is also notoriously difficult to count cats. Cats are notoriously not cooperative with broad-based research studies, so we have to use kind of back of napkin estimates based on number of people who have pets, number of people who are surrendering in a certain area, number of cats spotted by our volunteers.

And so we’ve mapped out our service area and we know where there are more cats and where there’s more help needed. But there really has been no thoughtful attempt to document or size up this issue .

Virginia Marshall: Yeah and another part of counting right, is this idea of “cat math” where cats multiply really quickly.

We visited Roxanne, a neighbor in Flatbush who saw this happen right in her own backyard.

Roxanne: I have four cats that live in our backyard. It originally started with a mother who had her kittens.

Virginia Marshall: Roxanne lives in East Flatbush with her family and about a year ago, they noticed four cats living behind their house. They got to know the cats, and they seemed friendly and interested in their human neighbors.

Roxanne: They would follow my husband into the house. So my husband just started buying canned food from the Dollar Store. They were getting three meals a day, and so they had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it went from canned food from the Dollar Store to bulk food from BJ’s.

Virginia Marshall: But then, the four original cats had kittens, and those kittens had kittens, all in less than a year. And then it wasn’t just food Roxanne was worried about.

Roxanne: So, at one point we probably had 12 to 13 cats, three generations, in the backyard. So we started to panic. I couldn’t afford to vaccinate all of them. They’re not even my cats, they just live in the backyard.

I have no idea what birds, whatever they’re killing. We can’t just let them come into the house like that, you know, I have elderly parents. I have no idea what they have. And I kept thinking, okay, I need to do something.

Virginia Marshall: Roxanne looked into costs for getting the cats vaccinated.

Roxanne: I called the vet and they’re telling me the prices for each cat, and I’m like, that’s a lot of money. Told me it was like $75 to start and then another one told me a hundred dollars. And I’m like, okay, so if we kept the original four, that might be 400. But then, I don’t know if anything is wrong with them, if we’d have to spend more money on each one.

And then, what about the babies? What do I do with the babies? It was a little overwhelming. And then I’m also thinking, okay, I know how much I’m putting out of my budget to feed four cats. You wanna add eight more? How much more money am I gonna have? And I don’t wanna be called the crazy cat lady or the crazy cat house or anything like that.

Virginia Marshall: At this point, Roxanne started looking around for help and it just so happened that her husband came across Flatbush Cats. And through that they met Ryan, who you heard in the last episode showing new volunteers how to trap cats.

Roxanne: And I texted and I spoke to Ryan. And Ryan and his team came and they assessed the cats. One of them actually had gotten hurt and they were able to take him to the vet, told me what was going on with him, gave him medication, and they were able to find adoptive families for the kittens.

I just felt like, relief. Because I just kept worrying, you know like, what are we gonna do with all of these cats? We weren’t even a cat family.

Virginia Marshall: But Roxanne, like so many others in this story, had cats thrust upon her. In some neighborhoods in New York City, you can’t help but encounter cats who need care, and it’s especially hard to turn away when they’re in your backyard.

Roxanne: How do you tell a cat, okay, don’t come. And even if you didn’t feed them, they would still come.

Virginia Marshall: Her advice for anyone who finds themselves doing the impossible cat math?

Roxanne: Just be kind. It’s an animal. It’s not its fault that it’s living in your backyard. It’s not a house cat, but just be kind.

Will Zweigart: Hearing Roxanne’s story is, frankly, very emotional for me. What stuck out is not just that she represents so many New Yorkers who are like, “This isn’t even my cat, like, these aren’t my cats! I’m just trying to do the right thing. I’m trying to do what feels right.” But also that she found help from a flyer. And I just wanna explain how significant that is.

It is not common to see a flyer saying, “Do you need help with cats?” And the reason for that is because everyone’s drowning. Everyone’s underwater. People cannot even handle the cats that they have, that they know about, and so it’s unthinkable to go out and say, “Who else needs some help? Who else needs some support?”

And I want us to imagine a world where those fires and that type of support exists everywhere in Brooklyn. Across all five boroughs, across the city, across the country. Imagine everyone who is struggling with a rapidly growing cat colony with that sick kitten that just showed up last night and is not eating.

Imagine everyone having someone that they can call to get the help and the resources that they need. That is within our grasp. That is something that we can build together if we choose to do so.

Virginia Marshall: And it’s an exciting prospect, right? The idea that we can have a well-functioning system in any regard, but let’s just focus on cats. You know, where people have time to support each other and distribute labor more equitably.

That’s a beautiful goal. So we can get to a place where someone like Roxanne is not feeling as overwhelmed when cats start showing up in her backyard.

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and I think we can do multiple things at once. We can provide the support systems that people need to get help right now.

So, if your colony is rapidly growing, you need triage, essentially. You need someone to help with all those sick cats. Someone to place all those friendly cats. Someone to get every cat out there spayed or neutered. You maybe need food to keep that colony healthy, maybe need winter shelters. We can do all of those things, and we also have to be working upstream at the same time.

We also have to be ensuring that we can prevent more of those situations from even happening next year, next spring. We talk a lot about how preventing cats from suffering on the street is not just doing TNR, it’s not just rescuing the sick cats. It’s actually going door to door and making sure that all of our neighbors and pet owners have access to veterinary care for their indoor pets, cats and dogs who could be having these preventable litters.

Virginia Marshall: Right, and so that’s actually going to be the subject of our next episode, The Real Price of Pet Ownership. So listeners, stay tuned. That’s next 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: We’d love to hear from you, listeners. What are you seeing in your own neighborhood? Do you have a rescue story, a question, or something you’ve noticed about the cats underfoot in your community? Share your thoughts at FlatbushCats.org/Underfoot and your voice may appear in a future episode or newsletter. Because understanding this crisis starts with listening to the people living it.

Underfoot is hosted by Will Zweigart, and me, Virginia Marshall. Our field reporter is Sarah Gabrielli. Additional reporting by Priscilla Alabi. 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.

The cats you heard from in this episode were Simbi, Esmeralda, and a rescued colony cat in Flatbush.