MOULTRIE — Helene Gomulka traps cats.

Gomulka, who moved to Moultrie from California earlier this year, is appalled by the number of feral cats in her new hometown — but then again, her town in California was no different.

“It’s everywhere,” she said.

Feral animals were once domesticated, but they’ve returned to a wild state because they’ve either escaped or been abandoned by their owners. With cats and dogs, most often they’ve been dumped by owners who don’t want them any more.

It’s a problem seen by communities throughout the SunLight Project coverage area of Moultrie, Thomasville, Valdosta and Tifton.

Russell Gay, director of the Tift County Animal Shelter, said people from all over the county, both rural and urban areas, call the shelter for help with feral cats all the time.

“This is the calls that’s holding because we don’t have enough traps to set to catch them,” Gay said, holding up a stack of approximately 30 forms. “All these people have called wanting traps. We have so many feral cats and so few traps, it maxes out our manpower and resources. You have to go set it (the trap), then when one gets in it, you have to go get it, bring it back, reset it. It’s a steady flow.”

Gay said Tift County doesn’t have a problem with feral dogs.

“Maybe three or four a year,” he said. “And I wouldn’t really call a lot of those feral, just neglected.”

Animal control officials in Colquitt, Lowndes and Thomas counties reported a similar situation: many feral cats, not many feral dogs.

And those communities are working on a solution.

Sterilization

The first line of defense is conscientious pet owners having their animals sterilized — spayed for females, neutered for males — so they can’t produce more offspring, said Paige Dukes, Lowndes County public information officer.

“At the end of the day, there is one simple answer to any community’s challenges related to its pet population: spay/neuter,” Dukes said.

Pets that are injured by vehicles and those that are lost to their owners are usually traveling due to heat cycles. Unaltered male dogs are most often the aggressors in bite cases.

According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, intact males are also involved in 70-76 percent of reported dog bite incidents. Almost half of all dog bite victims are children younger than 12 years old.

Strays, bites/attacks, health issues and overpopulation are all reasons Lowndes County must maintain an animal shelter, Dukes said.

“Volunteers across our community give of their time and money in an effort to decrease euthanasia rates,” she said. “However, until our community chooses to embrace the role spay/neuter plays in responsible pet ownership, those trying to make a difference will continue to fight a battle that expands with every litter born.”

Trap, Neuter, Release

Sterilization is also key to dealing with cats that have already gone feral, through a program called Trap, Neuter, Release.

Feral cats tend to form colonies where there are sources of food — restaurants and grocery stores, for instance, where they can rummage through the garbage. They can become a nuisance, and the problem only grows when the feral cats have offspring.

Trap, Neuter, Release helps prevent feral cats from reproducing and therefore limits the size of the colonies, said Dr. Beckey Malphus, a Thomasville veterinarian and Thomasville-Thomas County Humane Society board member and volunteer for two decades.

“Pet animals are often abandoned or dumped in a remote location, and they have no choice but to become wild and distrustful of people,” she said. “These animals will reproduce in the wild and increase the problem. It is critical that all pets that are not for breeding purposes be spayed and neutered.”

She said feral animals are now referred to as community animals.

“The reasoning behind this is we need to take ownership of the problem that was created by the community,” Malphus said. “Someone needs to be responsible for these dogs and cats.”

Several community programs sponsored by the Humane Society, Miss Kitty Feline Sanctuary & Adoption Center and others tackle the problem. Community cats are trapped, vaccinated for rabies, sterilized, a tip of their left ear is removed to identify them as sterilized, and they are released.

The cats are then much less likely to fight, spray or spread disease, but most importantly, they will not reproduce, Malphus said.

“This type of project has greatly lessened the number of cats entering our Humane Society and therefore increased our save rate,” she said. “It is a proven method of decreasing the community cats population in many cities.”

The South Georgia Low-Cost Spay & Neuter Clinic in Thomasville deals with individual trappers and multiple rescue groups whose mission it is to trap, neuter and release feral cats in Southwest Georgia and Northwest Florida, said Carol Jones, clinic executive director and Humane Society board member emeritus.

Jones said TNR is a humane way to reduce the number of community cats by preventing births of unwanted kittens, which leads to the eventual elimination of a colony.

“In the past, these cats were euthanized by the droves,” Jones said, “but the problem never resolved, because new cats replaced the euthanized cats each year. The sterilized cats become better citizens and eventually fade away from a variety of reasons, including predation, accidents and old age.”

Thomasville ThomCats is a group of local women that traps cats in Thomas County and offers care and food to some established colonies in the area. The group works exclusively with the South Georgia Low-Cost Spay & Neuter Clinic.

As with any welfare operation, TNR is a time-consuming effort that requires a small degree of expertise.

“The techniques for trapping require patience,” Jones said. “However, they are not beyond the scope of the average citizen when the directions, which are available at the clinic, are followed. Traps are available for a deposit, which is refundable when traps are returned in working order.”

Traps are lined with an absorbent material, usually newspaper. A smelly treat, such as canned mackerel, is suggested as bait. Cat feeding should cease 24 hours in advance of trapping to ensure that the target cats are hungry for the bait.

Traps should be placed in an area flush against a wall or row of bushes so as not to be too obviously out of place. Once a cat is trapped, a sheet or large towel is placed over the trap to calm the feline, and the trap should be moved to a protected area until the cat can be delivered to the clinic.

Jones said it is important to keep a watchful eye for the duration of the operation, as unfortunately it is not unknown for passersby to steal or damage traps, or release cats, or worse, harm them.

The clinic has a 2019 budget of $800,000 and operates by charging fees for services. Tax-deductible donations account for a large part of budgetary needs, since fees are purposely kept low to make the sterilization surgeries affordable for a larger segment of the population. 

Donations come from individuals, foundations and a grant based on community need.

The no-kill Feline Sanctuary — adjacent to the clinic at 425 Covington Ave. — found homes for 82 cats in 2018. The sanctuary is privately funded. Jones is the chair of its board of directors.

Similar programs are in place in Lowndes and Tift counties.

Colquitt County

At one point, the Humane Society of Moultrie-Colquitt County cooperated with the South Georgia Low Cost Spay & Neuter Clinic to sterilize shelter animals and provide transportation for local residents who wanted to get their pets spayed or neutered there. 

That project was eventually abandoned in favor of using local veterinarians, said Alicia Land, interim president of the society’s board of directors.

Since then, a low-cost spay and neuter program as well as a Trap, Neuter, Release program have been on the Humane Society’s wish list, but they’ve been hampered by frequent turnover in leadership, both with the board of directors and in the executive director position.

Officials hope an ongoing reorganization will stabilize those positions, which in turn will make the society eligible for grants that could help fund some of its operations.

The City of Moultrie and Colquitt County governments are currently advertising for volunteers to serve on a seven-member board of directors that will take over governance of the Humane Society July 1. 

Three members will be named by the city, three by the county and one on an alternating basis, starting with the county this year.

The city and county contract with the Humane Society to pick up nuisance animals. The city pays $100,000 per year, and the county plans to increase its funding to that level this year. 

Land approached county commissioners for an additional $20,000 per year and said she intends to make the same pitch to Moultrie city councilmen. The additional money will help pay for more staffing, she said.

“With a full staff, we can go into the school system, we can go into different places and educate the public,” Land said during an interview following the presentation to commission members. “(Not) spaying and neutering is such a big problem. It’s the most serious problem.”

In addition to Kevin C. Hall, SunLight Project reporters Tom Lynn, Patti Dozier, Eve Copeland-Brechbiel and Alan Mauldin contributed to this report.