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The job of cleaning up the feral feline population in Wellsford has fallen to an 81-year-old pensioner, who now has 35 stray cats in a ‘kitty city’ built in her backyard.
Jan Robertson has been busy capturing nearly all the stray and feral cats in Wellsford and having them desexed.
Jan says she decided to rescue the cats after being warned that the Rodney Local Board would soon be “beautifying Wellsford” and the cats were going to be caught and put down.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of that many animals being killed. It’s like we’re living in a totalitarian state,” Jan says.
Board member Colin Smith says the capturing of the cats has been a good outcome for the town and Jan has done a great job.
“She’s a good lady with a heart of gold. It wasn’t good when the cats were running across the road and getting squished,” he says. “The Board would have been happy to back her, but we gave her a timeline to do it her way and she has done really well.”
Jan says support from people in the community, dropping cans of cat food in her collection box, has been a major help. The ‘Cans for Jan’ box is at the Four Square on Rodney Street.
“It gets very full on pension week,” Jan says.
Over the last three years, Jan was feeding four colonies of feral cats in Wellsford to keep them from attacking the birds and making a nuisance of themselves.
The cats were living behind the Wellsford Veterinary Clinic, the Caltex petrol station and PGG Wrightson.
Jan says as a society we need to rethink how we treat cats, even if they are unwanted.
“Don’t dump animals outside the vet – take them to an animal refuge,” she says. “In the places where we know they are being dumped, there needs to be some kind of monitoring. If these cats had been caught and desexed earlier, I wouldn’t have 35 cats in my yard.”
Jan’s son built a large enclosure for the kitty city in Jan’s backyard. It has a low security section for stray, domesticated cats and a high security section for feral toms.
“There are also nine feral kittens locked in a bedroom right now, destroying it,” Jan says. “People say feral cats need to be put down, but I just can’t do that. Kittens can be rehabilitated.”
