Cats, Cats Everywhere and All to Be Adopted

Byline: MATT COOPER The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - The stench of urine and feces hits you first, overwhelming, and you instantly start breathing through your mouth. Imagine the odor from the world's most pungent cheese, spoiling.

You step inside and, from around the empty beer bottles, clothes and piles of soiled newspapers, they start appearing - tabbies, tortoiseshells and browns.

Grays, black-and-whites, straight blacks.

Shorthairs, tiger-stripes, Persian mixes.

Cats, cats, cats, 23 in all. Cats on the counter, cats under the couch, cats sneezing in the corner or scratching up furniture. Adults cautiously circling, kittens squinting against the sudden daylight.

When the tenants of Unit 16 at the Park Place Townhouses near downtown were evicted this week, they left behind more than their debt from nonpayment of rent.

About two dozen cats were found, mostly strays plucked from outside only to wallow in an attempt at humane treatment gone unquestionably awry.

Cunningham and 24-year-old Beth Alvey, a fellow cat lover and tenant, were out of answers by then.

They'd tried without success to unload the cats on the police department, city animal control and Lane County Animal Regulation Authority.

What should they do with them? More than once, they said, the response came back, "Open the door."

While the city contracts with the animal regulation authority for stray-cat services, the agency only accepts animals that are delivered to it, Program Manager Mike Wellington said. And the city would have to pay $35 per hour for an authority officer to make the house call.

The long-term solution is licensing cats, Wellington said, and he has put just such a proposal before both Springfield and Eugene city officials. Licensing would entice owners to neuter their animals, reducing overpopulation and strays, he said.

As for Thursday's dilemma, it's the apartment owner's responsibility to restrict animals in the units, Wellington said, or, in this case, to bring them in, a dicey proposition considering a scratch from a cat is far worse than a dog's bite. …