Eighty-year-old CharleAnne Sher has been feeding 20 TNR (trap, neuter, return) cats at Estuary Apartments near Henderson Mill Road for 12 years as part of Lifeline Animal Project’s Community Cat Program.
That is, until apartment managers told her to stop, leaving the unadoptable cats in a real-life Catch 22.
“I feel like I’ve been stabbed in the heart,” Sher said. “These cats will die very cruel deaths because of this situation.”
Sher said she has been diagnosed with severe depression, and her mission to care for the 20 Estuary cats has been “the joy of my life.”
The Estuary cats are in an untenable position, said Catharine Tipton of Kirk Cats, a volunteer group that was started in 2014 by neighbors concerned about the plight of free-roaming cats in the Kirkwood neighborhood. The group has grown to include 2,700 trappers in DeKalb County and beyond.
“Estuary Apartments has a long history of tenants moving out of the apartments and leaving their cats behind,” Tipton said. “We have trapped at least 20 cats there over the years as part of the program, but as community cats, many are not suitable for adoption.”
Community cats defined
Community cats, according to DeKalb Lifeline website, “are free-roaming cats who can be feral from lack of human interaction. Before LifeLine brought TNR to Atlanta, community cats were routinely picked up, taken to county shelters, and euthanized.”
Now, thanks to TNR, cats are trapped, neutered, vaccinated, ear-tipped (to identify them as neutered), and returned back to their neighborhoods,” the narrative continued.
More than 55,000 cats have been funneled through the TNR program, which serves 35 counties in Georgia, according to DeKalb Lifeline’s website. It receives 700 requests a month through the program.
Feeder says she was ‘followed and harassed’
Sher, who uses her own money to feed and care for the cats, said she was “followed and harassed” by management during one of her routine trips to the complex in January.
“A person, who had no identification and didn’t give his name, was standing near my car,” Sher said. “He said, ‘You know you can’t feed these cats anymore.'”
On a subsequent feeding trip in February, Sher said two men in golf carts followed her, and again reiterated that she was not allowed to tend to the animals, whose feeding station is located in a remote area on the 55-acre property.
“I said I needed to speak to someone in management, and wrote down my name and number, and asked them to call me,” Sher said. “Nobody called me, and now, I’m afraid to go back.”
Kirk Cats representatives have pleaded with DeKalb County officials to no avail for help in negotiating the continuation of the Community Cats program at Estuary, which claims, on its website, is a pet-friendly community.
Attempts at compromise rebuffed
“On January 27, Sonali Saindane, chair of the DeKalb County Animal Advisory Board, wrote to Animal Enforcement Services Director Natasha Wallen regarding a situation at the Estuary Apartments concerning a managed colony of approximately 20 cats and its dedicated caregiver of 12 years, who has recently been harassed by new management,” said the email to DeKalb County CEO Lorraine Cochran-Johnson and the county’s board of commissioners. “Ms. Saindane requested assistance from AE [animal enforcement] so the caretaker could continue to provide food for the cats and monitor the colony.”
“Ms. Wallen responded by saying she called Estuary Apartments and that ‘management advised that there has been a noticeable increase in coyote activity in the area . . . ; the decision to restrict feeding on the property was made by apartment management in the interest of overall safety’ and that her phone conversation had ‘addressed the concern to the extent of our authority,'” the email continued.
The matter escalated to DeKalb Director of Public Safety Darnell Fullum, who said in a follow-up email that he had personally visited the apartments and spoken with Estuary management.
“Management shared the concerns outlined in Director Wallen’s response and expressed a desire to continue restricting feeding on the property,” the email said. “I found the complex and its buildings well-maintained; they have a strong commitment to maintaining their property.”
Rough Draft contacted the apartment management via email and has not received any return communication, aside from standard offers to tour the facility as a potential renter. When a reporter drove around the property on March 5 in a failed attempt to locate the cats, a security vehicle followed closely behind.
Catch-22 situation
Tipton, Sher, and Saindane said there is no solution to the situation, as DeKalb Lifeline will not trap the TNR cats for possible inclusion in its adoption program.
“We are being punished [by the apartment] for being kind,” Tipton said. “The cats are managed colonies that are in discreet locations that are not a nuisance. We are trying to help, but we are being labeled as ‘crazy cat ladies,’ which annoys me to no end.”
The Kirk Cats group is hoping to set up a meeting between county officials to work out a compromise solution, not only for Estuary Apartment cats, but also for other communities with TNR cats.
“This is a larger problem than just this one community,” Tipton said. “We need systematic help – that means between animal control, us, and the shelter. This is not a problem that you can kill your way out of.”
