Episode 6: Transcript
Vision for Tomorrow
Rosario: This is one of the colonies I still look after. Do you wanna meet some of them?
Virginia Marshall: This is Rosario. You may remember her from our very first episode. She had the colony of cats named after characters from Hamilton the musical, and over the summer she showed our field reporter, Sarah, the sweet setup for her cat colony.
Rosario: They have this covered area, so the food doesn’t get wet. They have access to the basement in the winter and they have little shelters in some of these backyards. So these cats have it good.
Virginia Marshall: It’s a bit of a cat paradise on Rosario’s block, but it wasn’t always this way.
Rosario: So on this block, it used to be at night you would just see cats roaming and hiding under cars. I don’t see that anymore. Not on my block, not on Will’s block. Now I have neighbors that have actually said to me, where are the cats? Have you taken all the cats?
I’m like, I don’t take the cats. I help them.
Virginia Marshall: The reason her neighbors are no longer seeing any cats is thanks to Rosario’s efforts to trap the cats on this block, all 35 of them, and get them spayed or neutered.
Rosario: TNR works. They didn’t multiply. The ones that were friendly, we were able to get them homes. It took years to be able to do that, and some just passed away from old age. But they’re not breeding. It stopped and that just goes to show that it works.
Virginia Marshall: A crucial part of Rosario’s work is that she’s not just trapping the cats, she’s been able to trace the cats back to their source.
Rosario: Do you see that fence there? That wooden fence? They would jump over. And they show up, and I fix them, and then they show up again. And I’m like, where are these cats coming from?
Virginia Marshall: When Rosario followed the trail, she found that it led to one particular house.
Rosario: That house there is an old lady. I went and knocked on her door and I said, Hey, are there cats in your backyard?
And she’s like, yeah, why? I said, are they yours? And she’s like, well, I had two cats inside. And then I put ‘em in the basement. Well, the basement has a hole and they come and go. And then I got two more little kittens.
And then I’m like, oh my goodness. She’s the one that’s been bringing all the cats and she doesn’t fix them. And then they go outside, and that’s who I’m feeding back here, and that’s why I keep fixing them. So that’s how this colony came about.
Virginia Marshall: What happened next was a moment of change. Instead of blaming the woman for the cat problem on her block, Rosario was able to talk to her. She really listened, and then she was able to share information about things like spaying and neutering.
Rosario: She’s a sweetheart. But it’s a typical, she didn’t have money, and then they put them outside, and then they’re not fixed, and then they start multiplying. So I fixed a few of her cats and I said, please stop getting cats. I cannot fix all of your cats.
So far, I haven’t had any new cats. Every now and then a new cat shows up. It’s not from there. And then as soon as we spot, we try to trap.
Virginia Marshall: Building relationships with her neighbors is something Rosario does all the time, and it’s a big part of the reason her cat colony is under control. She’s not just trapping cats, she’s educating her neighbors and building community.
Rosario: Everybody cares. Everybody wants to do what’s best for them. I have found cats that are tipped around here and I’m like, who tipped you? It wasn’t me. I know all the cats. Where did you come from? And it just makes me so happy to know that there are people out here, I don’t know who it was, but somebody trapped it and fixed it and put it out.
Virginia Marshall: As we were wrapping up production on this episode, Rosario let us know that she would be moving out of Brooklyn for work. Before, she would’ve been overly stressed and worried about leaving these cats behind. But now thanks to the community she helped build, she feels the opposite. She knows that someone else will pick up where she left off.
Rosario: I don’t worry like I used to anymore. It’s not just one or two people now in the neighborhood. We’ve got so many eyes out there, so many boots on the ground. So there’s relief now. At least for me.
Will Zweigart: We started this podcast series by talking about how the cat crisis in New York City is hidden. Because for many people in the outer boroughs, cats have just always been there living on the street in unsustainable numbers. The problem itself remains hidden if we keep looking past it.
Virginia Marshall: And that’s what makes this cat overpopulation problem so hard to talk about. For so long, New Yorkers have been overlooking something that can actually be fixed.
Will Zweigart: And it’s possible to imagine the future that, Rosario and other TNR volunteers, they’re already starting to see when you walk down a block in Flatbush or Astoria or Mott Haven and know that every community cat on that block is being looked after.
Virginia Marshall: But to get to that future, it’s going to take, not only a massive effort on the part of the city to fund TNR and affordable vet care, it’s also going to take a mindset shift. We’re gonna need to transform the way we talk about pet owners and cat caretakers and the entire animal welfare system.
Will Zweigart: That’s what we’re going to dig into in our last episode of the series. I’m Will Zweigart, Executive Director of Flatbush Cats.
Virginia Marshall: And I’m Virginia Marshall, Audio Producer. You are listening to Underfoot, a podcast about the hidden cat crisis in New York City and how we can solve it.
So Will, now that we’re rounding out the series, I thought we could start with a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far. Each episode was designed to shine a light on a different part of the cat crisis so we can develop a deeper understanding of what’s going on. So for any new listeners just joining us now, I definitely recommend starting at the beginning so you can get the full picture.
But a quick summary to ground us for today’s discussion. In episode one, we asked, what if one small city block held the key to understanding overcrowded animal shelters across New York City? We met rescuers, neighbors and caretakers that are doing their best to support community cats every day.
Will Zweigart: And in the next episode, we zoomed all the way out to understand how we arrived at a place where our animal shelters are constantly overwhelmed.
In episode three, we looked at the rapidly rising cost of pet ownership to examine why the average New York City household can no longer afford a basic vet visit.
Virginia Marshall: And next, we looked at the huge burden that the cat crisis places on rescue volunteers, who are essentially doing the city’s job for free.
And then just last week, we explored why the city is dragging their feet on addressing this crisis, and what role they could play to solve it and to better support shelters.
Will Zweigart: So that brings us to today. We all agree pets are family. That’s a given. But even though our relationship to animals has changed drastically over the last century, the systems we’ve created to support them have not. So what new systems of collective animal care can we build instead?
Virginia Marshall: Someone I wanna bring in here is a person who spends a lot of her time thinking about those things you just mentioned, Will, how to build better pet care systems. Her name is Hanna Lentz and she’s the executive director of SPARC, which stands for Supporting People and Animal Relationships for Change. And Hanna says that change really starts with acknowledging what we all have in common.
Hanna: Most people really love their pets and wanna do what’s best for them and will do what’s best when given real options and opportunity and access. I think so often we live up in the space of disagreeing about ideas and we have forgotten how much we share in terms of loving and caring about and wanting what’s best for animals.
Virginia Marshall: Hanna says that if we lose sight of that idea, that we all care about our pets and want to do right by the animals in our lives, then we can quickly get into a situation where bias gets in the way of doing the work. And as part of her job at SPARC, Hanna talks to people in the animal welfare sector all across the country, and she heard this story from the Wisconsin Humane Society that really illustrates the dangers of that bias.
Hanna: They had a person come into their shelter with their cat and they said, I can’t afford to feed my cat. I have to surrender it. And often these interactions can go one of two ways.
One where it’s just transactional, right? We’re like, okay, you can’t feed your cat. We’ll take your cat. Or the other option, which is the direction they went, is really being like a conversation.
And so instead of just taking this cat in, they heard more of the story and they found out that this person had been trying to feed their cat, was cooking food at home for their cat and felt like, this isn’t sustainable. This might not even be what’s best and healthiest for our cat.
So through having this conversation, instead of taking the cat in, they said, hey, would you like a bag of cat food? And also here’s information about our pet food pantry so you can come and get more food when you need it.
And they said the owner burst into tears and called their partner and said, I’m coming home with our cat. And it was a really beautiful, happy ending for everybody.
Virginia Marshall: Hanna says that when the blame lands on the individual, that’s doing a lot of harm to the person seeking help, but it’s also distracting from the real root of the problem, which is a systemic affordability crisis. And housing insecurity is a big part of that.
Will Zweigart: And it reminds me of some of the people we’ve met in previous episodes, people like Mike and Angelica, who were both in situations where they had to surrender pets. They didn’t get support for their animals and unfortunately, they weren’t able to get them back when they got more stable housing.
Virginia Marshall: Right. Also, thinking about the folks who are really struggling to care for community cats because of the cost of cat food. Remember we heard from Miss Pam, who sometimes uses her food stamps on tuna fish for the cats. Or Sassee and Roxanne, who were both buying cat food in bulk to feed the cats that kept showing up in their neighborhoods and backyards.
We are surrounded by people who care so much about their cats, and the series really proves that. But what is missing is the systems and structures to help those caring individuals make real change. And if we don’t start from that place of acknowledging that the love that so many of us share for animals is a common thing, then things like bias and things like racism seep into the work. And Hanna says that she hears this when she listens to the way that some people talk about the cat overpopulation crisis in certain neighborhoods.
Hanna: People will say, well, folks in that neighborhood don’t care, or folks in that neighborhood don’t like cats. And so I’ve even seen that impact whether or not people think TNVR is even a viable option because they’re like, but people there don’t like cats and we can’t put cats back there because they don’t like them. They won’t treat them well.
What can look like people not caring is really an access to care issue. We have families, loving amazing pet families, that are living in neighborhoods where certain resources just don’t exist. You may actually see more animals coming from a certain neighborhood because of issues around access to care, and then people end up tying that to race or ethnicity or other demographic factors or even socioeconomics. And forgetting like, oh, we’ve intentionally built neighborhoods this way.
Virginia Marshall: What Hanna mentioned there is something that a lot of New Yorkers will have familiarity with, which is this practice of redlining prevalent here in the 1930s and 1940s. Redlining was an intentional move on the part of banks and real estate companies to disinvest from certain neighborhoods with higher populations of people of color. So it’s a systemic inequality that we’re seeing play out in so many ways today. Only one of which is the lack of infrastructure, like veterinary care, in certain neighborhoods and the resulting overpopulation of street cats in those areas.
So Will, we’re talking about complex systemic problems that really don’t have easy solutions like redlining, unaffordability, housing crisis, and it can feel like it’s impossible to make change if our goal is reducing the number of cats on the street. But there are some smaller things that we can do to move towards something better.
Will Zweigart: Absolutely. There was a clue for addressing this particular issue in the first episode. As long as our neighbors lack access to affordable veterinary care, including spay/neuter, we will always have new cats needing help outside. And that is, from a strategy standpoint, that is the crux of the problem.
From our work at Flatbush Vet over the past two years, it is clear to us that access to veterinary care is the highest leverage investment we can make right here. And it’s common sense, right? If you wanted fewer cats fighting to survive outside or in overcrowded shelters, give people the support and resources they need to get their pets fixed.
Virginia Marshall: So what would that look like here in New York City? Is it just more clinics like Flatbush Vet across the whole city?
Will Zweigart: That would be one of the biggest steps forward we could possibly take. And building a clinic like that is definitely expensive upfront, I wanna be clear. But if we really zoom out and we’re committed to solving this, that cost is far cheaper than doing nothing.
And over time, we can reduce our total expenditures on a per animal basis because it turns out it actually costs less to just keep pets healthy and with their families. It’s the exact same analogy as making preventative and wellness care accessible for people, so that we can reduce emergency room utilization.
Virginia Marshall: Yeah, affordable healthcare makes total sense for pets and people. Once we actually have that path, as you’re saying, towards more affordable veterinary care across the city, we can surround that with other types of support. Right?
Will Zweigart: Yeah, because of course, there’s no single intervention that can solve a complex problem that’s been building up for decades. And I just wanna highlight, you used a very important term in upstream work, surrounding the problem. If we want to be able to provide everyone with resources, that includes information, that includes cross sector collaboration among health and social service sectors, seeing this as a public health issue and addressing it at the scale that it requires.
Virginia Marshall: Yeah, and actually it’s something that Rosario brought up at the beginning of the episode when she mentioned that lovely older neighbor whose basement cats weren’t fixed. They were getting out and contributing to the overpopulation of cats on Rosario’s block. It wasn’t that that older neighbor didn’t care about spay/neuter, it was actually an access to information issue. And Hanna from SPARC, she made that point as well.
Hanna: We sometimes get really frustrated with well-meaning folks who we feel like are doing it wrong or responding the wrong way to a situation. Like, picking up a cat and trying to bring it into the shelter, or finding a litter of kittens and not being sure what to do. People often don’t know what to do, right? It’s not, I know what to do, and I have decided I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to do the wrong thing to intentionally be bad. Oftentimes, that information just isn’t getting to folks.
Virginia Marshall: And, Hanna says, that information can sometimes be confusing depending on who’s controlling the narrative.
Hanna: If you’re an individual rescuer, if you’re a shelter, if you’re a veterinarian, if someone calls any of those folks, you’re gonna get different information and different stories and different realities. And we’re not providing people with one consistent, accurate message about what to do.
Virginia Marshall: So a way to fix or align that messaging might actually be more collaboration. And that’s something you mentioned, Will, this idea that all these different animal welfare organizations can work collaboratively to align on a mission and even bring in organizations from outside the animal welfare sector. Here’s Hanna again.
Hanna: There’s a great organization in the Chicago area called Treehouse Humane Society, and one of the things that I think is really amazing is how they are thinking beyond just working with animal organizations. They connect with human services organizations and are finding all the different opportunities there are to build these larger coalitions because our work with cats is so connected to so many issues. So there are so many opportunities that we could find to work with other people and organizations in our community that aren’t always obvious. Because we’re like, well, they’re not a cat organization, or they don’t do cat things. But what’s happening with cats is also connected to what’s happening with people.
Virginia Marshall: So Will, this is a really exciting idea to me, thinking about how all of these disparate organizations, maybe ones focused on housing insecurity or the affordability crisis, can collaborate with animal welfare initiatives.
Will Zweigart: Yeah, absolutely. That is the direction that we should be heading in New York City, and frankly, that we will be heading. If pets are family, then it makes sense for us to look holistically at what families need to thrive.
Virginia Marshall: And we’ve been talking throughout the series about how the animal welfare system is part of the broader economic system in the United States. So as rent, healthcare, groceries, and even veterinary care becomes more expensive, that means that the average person has no safety net when something goes wrong or their pets need care. So people are being forced to choose between feeding themselves and feeding their pets.
Will Zweigart: And that system is reinforced and sustained by a hyper-individualized mindset, which teaches us from an early age that we are solely responsible for our own success or failure. If you’re wealthy, it’s because you worked hard, and if you’re struggling to afford medical care for yourself or your pet, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough.
Virginia Marshall: And that’s what Hanna, from SPARC, was saying about moving past blame and bias and tapping into our shared values. Remembering that we all want what’s best for our pets.
Will Zweigart: Exactly. We’ve been stuck in this competitive, scarcity-based mindset. It keeps us separated from each other by design. Because those in power know that we could quickly build a more equitable system if we all work together.
Virginia Marshall: And I do think there is a kind of inertia that happens when systems feel so large, as we’ve been talking about, and impossible to change, and we’re convinced that we’re here on our own.
Will Zweigart: Yeah, you’ve probably heard the analogy that big ships can’t change course quickly. And in nonprofits, we also have donor inertia. That is, that we tend to support the same things for decades. Even if new innovations come about, even if there’s a higher leverage solution on the table now, people and systems will naturally just keep moving in the same direction, right? Unless something very powerful comes along to force a shift.
Virginia Marshall: And so in this scenario, what do you think will be that big thing that comes along to make change?
Will Zweigart: Us. It’s us. When we discover that collective power and our ability to harness it. When the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the discomfort of change. When we refuse to let pets and their people suffer in the wealthiest country in the world. We can be that force.
Virginia Marshall: And I’ve learned so much through this podcast series, Will, and I’ve seen and heard that change along with our listeners. I’ve heard the people who are caring for cats on the street talk about how they feel more supported now that they know there is a clinic for them to go to. That there are other volunteers helping them Trap, Neuter and Return all of these cats. And so, we’re already making change. We’re already seeing it, and I think that it is possible to move towards an even more widespread change, at a city level, within our lifetimes.
Will Zweigart: Yeah, absolutely. The world is undoubtedly a better place whenever a local nonprofit, community-based clinic, like Flatbush Vet opens their doors. And in our case, that happened because our supporters truly believed it was necessary and they brought it into being. And now it’s not just a clinic, it’s a model.
And so, I wanna ask us to all turn on our imagination a little bit. I want to look into the future together, and see what is possible.
Virginia Marshall: All right, I’m ready. And listeners, totally optional, we’re inviting you at this moment to close your eyes if you’d like, unless you’re driving or operating heavy machinery. All right, ready?
Will Zweigart: Ready.
It is December, 2035. In the last decade, New York City has made huge strides towards becoming a more humane and affordable city. There are now nine low cost veterinary clinics around New York City, all five boroughs with three more under construction. These clinics offer affordable access to wellness and sick visits, spay/neuter, and other critical services. Which means that collectively, citywide, we’re now performing around 100,000 affordable spay/neuter appointments per year, for both pet owners and rescuers. Several of those clinics are built into, or next to, our city shelters. So every shelter facility now has all the veterinary services they need in-house, and we’ve reduced annual kitten intake by over 60%.
Each clinic also has pet food pantries, where caregivers can pick up food and supplies at no cost. Each clinic has several full-time community resource managers, who are focused on helping families keep their pets, and can manage high volume TNR projects in the few remaining areas where that is needed.
Paid trappers and case managers to take the burden off of rescue and TNR volunteers. Folks like Ryan, all across the city, helping our neighbors. In this imagined future, New York City is also building two new full service nonprofit animal hospitals in the outer boroughs to provide urgent and emergency care, and two new specialty centers that can perform high quality dental procedures and other surgeries at an affordable rate.
And critically, by taking the burden off of shelters, they now have year-round capacity to take in, and care for, pets that need help. A true safety net, even during kitten season. And if we’re lucky, in December 2035, our baby Mani, the tiny gray kitten we found outside on that hot sidewalk, will still be relaxing at home with us. She’ll be 18, and I hope that she knows together, we kept our promise to prevent cats like her from ever suffering outside.
Virginia Marshall: That sort of vision that you laid out, when you were saying it, I was filled with a sense of calm and safety and I can only imagine what the cat rescuers, the TNR folks, the people feeding cat colonies, what they would feel if that were a reality. That they have so much support across the city. So I’m wondering, you know, that’s a beautiful vision. How do we get there?
Will Zweigart: We start by all of us, and I mean everyone who’s listening to this series, everyone who’s passionate about helping pets and their people, we start by shifting and elevating the conversation. Right now. That means we stop just talking about rescue and adoptions and overcrowded shelters.
All that stuff’s important, but those are the symptoms. We need to spend more time talking about root cause solutions, like spay/neuter, so that others understand what solving this looks like. And slowly, as this conversation evolves, the funding landscape, which powers all this work, will of course, need to shift as well. That starts with individual donors. Again, many listening to this right now, followed by private family foundations, large animal welfare organizations, and ultimately our city and state governments.
Virginia Marshall: We’ve been talking this whole series about how the city needs to play a critical role if we have a hope of solving the cat crisis. So what are the next steps our elected officials should take to help make this vision of the future a reality?
Will Zweigart: We are going to need new legislation requiring affordable veterinary clinics in every borough. This would be mirrored off an existing law that already requires city run animal shelters in each borough.
Second, our leaders should amend the city charter to create and fund a new department of animal welfare to manage the animal shelters, community outreach and support, and those new clinics we’re talking about.
Lastly, New York State should pass a tax on pet food manufacturers, bringing pet food into the state, to fund spay/neuter efforts. Might sound incredibly ambitious. I’m excited to tell you this tax is already successfully in place in several states, including Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, and West Virginia.
Virginia Marshall: That’s amazing, and it just goes to show that we can imagine a better future for these cats because innovative solutions like that are already in place elsewhere. So this visioning you’re getting us to do, Will, I think it’s not only really exciting to imagine, it’s also essential for change.
I think that sometimes we get stuck thinking that nothing will ever change, and that’s how the New York City cat crisis sort of became hidden. We started feeling like, there’s nothing we can do. Then we were overlooking the cats on the street. So now it’s up to us to see the root causes of that problem, to believe in a solution and then to work toward it.
Will Zweigart: Absolutely. And listeners, you are now on this journey with us towards a better future. So I just wanna thank all of you for believing in this vision. The next step is for us to make it happen. Together.
Virginia Marshall: Yeah, so let’s talk about that work. How can listeners start making change today?
Will Zweigart: If this reporting and these stories resonated with you, the next step is to share this series with other animal lovers in your life. So that we can shift the conversation, not only in New York, but around the country.
Also, make sure you are subscribed to our newsletter, and make sure to check out the amazing stories about this work on our YouTube and other social channels. And if you believe that change here is not only possible, it is necessary, then I invite you to join us as a supporter. You can learn more about us and make a donation at flatbushcats.org/donate. And if you’d like to discuss a larger investment with our philanthropy team to bring this vision to life, you can reach us at development@flatbushcats.org.
Virginia Marshall: And 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. Cat sounds in this episode were performed by Bunny, Mulligan, and Mani.