Cats, as the saying goes, have nine lives. But Anne Macleod knows all too well the gap separating myth from reality -- at least for feral cats.
Macleod, 42, heads a group of Burbank Animal Shelter volunteers and does what most shelters won't: taming and placing young feral cats in loving homes.
"I saw so many animals being killed," she said. "I wanted that to stop."
Resembling battlefield maps, numerous red scratches on Macleod's arms attest to the hazards of turning feral animals into adoptable pets.
"Feral cats are either no use to humans or had a bad experience with a human," she said. "They are wild animals."
Labels attached to feral cats -- felines abandoned by people or born in the wild -- range from "free-roaming" and "unowned" to the more common "stray."
Just as hard to pin down as the animals themselves are their numbers. In the absence of official figures, the Feral Cat Alliance, a Los Angeles-based advocacy group, estimates between 200,000 and 500,000 live in the county.
Most shelters in Los Angeles lack systematic care programs for hard-to-place feral cats, resulting in a death sentence for thousands.
"We think that of the 80,000 cats killed each year in city and county shelters, between 50% and 60% of them are stray," said Feral Cat Alliance director Christie Metropole.
In neighborhoods with stray-cat problems, discussions about what to do frequently trigger clashes between parties with conflicting interests.
Public health agencies fear that feral cats, as potential carriers of disease, could become a hazard if left unchecked. Residents often consider feral cats unsightly nuisances and complain about noise and waste, while some biologists worry about their effect on wildlife.
"You have all these neighborhood disputes over cats," said Madeline Bernstein, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "The extreme position on one side is 'you trap 'em, you kill 'em.' The other extreme is you feed them. Somewhere in the middle is a healthful multilevel plan."
Although most feral cats are impossible to domesticate, Macleod believes kittens can be tamed and has persuaded the Burbank Animal Shelter to allow volunteers to provide foster care for feral cats under 4 months old.
"Normally, they would have been put to sleep," she said, "but I think they're young enough that they deserve a chance."
