KJCT8.com - Grand Junction, Montrose - Weather, News, Sports | Woman moves out... leaves 30 cats behind
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BY SARA GOLDENBERG
SGOLDENBERG@KJCT8.COM
GRAND JUNCTION (KJCT)- When you move out of town, you usually take your pets with you. One Grand Junction woman didn't, and she left about 30 cats behind.
Now they've become the neighborhood's problem.
Rudy Nailor says it's been more than a year since the woman moved, and cats are tearing his property apart. They've been crawling under his fence and getting into his shed. He says something must be done.
"The cats have had numerous amounts of litters under my shed, and i just worry about how many dead cats are under there," he said.
Sometimes the cats even get into his house, and his son Hasan is allergic to them. He says the cats are also bothering his neighbors and getting into their yards.
"Her yard and my yard has become the litter box for all these cats," Nailor said.
Nailor says he's contacted animal control several times, and they haven't helped.
"I've been fighting for years to get these cats removed from here," he said.
Penny McCarty, Director of Mesa County Animal Services, says it has to be a cooperative effort between them and the people.
"That's something where we have to work with that particular person, maybe even the entire neighborhood to determine the status of those cats," she said.
McCarty says they can't just pick up cats like they can with dogs. She says someone must be feeding them if they've been there for more than a year. She says animal control doesn't set out the cat traps-- people have to do that themselves.
"He can actually take ownership of those animals, by feeding them and providing care for them. Then once he has ownership after 10 days, he can bring them to us and there's no charge, we will accept them," McCarty said.
Nailor says that's ridiculous.
"If you have a problem with animals that's not yours on your property, you should be able to call animal control and they pick them up," he said.
He says his next step is to trap the cats, and if animal control won't accept them, then he'll try to find them a home.
McCarty says this is a tricky situation. They don't want to take cats away if they may be someone's pets.
