Judy McGuire

My husband and I had just moved into the first apartment we’d ever owned—a somewhat dismal first-floor unit in a Queens co-op building,  when the super asked if the small black cat lurking outside was mine. After a moment of panic spent locating my own small black cat, I said no.

Eventually, it became clear that the cat lived behind my apartment with an ever-growing bunch of pals. At first it was cute—my neighbor and I both fed them but if we got too close they’d freak out and sprint away. Soon, the kittens started showing up. Seven became eleven. Something had to be done.

Moving into a co-op had been a big adjustment. I’d lived in rentals for close to twenty years and my slumlord/landlady was mostly hands-off, which was fine by me. Co-op boards are a whole other ball of wax. They were up in your business about everything from recycling nuances to who you hired to paint your walls. I knew that if I went to them about this, there would be meetings upon meetings, committees, signs on the wall, and the “solution” would either be stupid or cruel. So I bypassed them and called my friend Eva, who runs Whiskers A GoGo, the rescue organization where I’d gotten both my cats.

I’ve always loved animals—from field mice to reptiles to deer, and OMG, horses. I loved them all. My entire family (except for my parents) did too, in their own maladjusted way. My great grandfather had a pet monkey he kept in his bathroom. This monkey was a monster, always picking his nose and throwing things at visitors. But who could blame him? He was a wild animal, confined to a Philadelphia row house crapper.

My grandfather had ponies and like most little girls, I loved ponies. But instead of housing them on a horsey estate, my grandfather  boarded his horses in a crappy garage down a garbage-strewn alley in South Philly. He was a sweet man and loved his animals, but this was not ideal, to say the least.

Growing up, we always had pets. Unfortunately, five kids precluded much in the way of discretionary income to spend at the vet, so our animals inevitably had more animals. But instead of fixing our cats and dogs, litters would disappear while we were at school. I remember witnessing my parents loading the car with a bunch of kittens and screaming as they drove off to dump them in the woods. After a while, they even stopped with the pretense of that mythical welcoming farm.

We had a furry little dog that we were too broke and ignorant to take to the groomer so he was always matted and miserable. My mom was constantly letting housecats out the front door and she’d simply shrug when they’d wind up flattened on the road. She appreciated our love for pets, but she’d grown up poor and then had five kids in six years, very little money, and a husband who didn’t help out at all around the house. She had priorities and furry things were just another responsibility that she hadn’t signed on for.

After a transient twenties, I finally settled into my most long-term apartment when I was 30. It was cheap, bright, and rent stabilized. I was determined to make it my home, so I asked my landlady about getting a cat. She agreed, on the condition I take one of the kittens her sister was trying to unload. I said yes, sight unseen.

Mabel—named after this Goldfinger song—changed my life. She was a tiny gray purr machine who was more loyal than any man had ever been and more affectionate than any family member. She would sleep with her little head on the pillow next to mine and shoot me a doleful glare when I dragged home yet another Mr. Wrong. Cats get a rep for being standoffish, but Mabel was happiest riding around on my shoulder and still loved me even though I subjected her to far too many drunk uncles.

Unlike most hearing humans, Mabel loved my singing voice. Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All” was our song and, yes, I customized the lyrics for her. “Because the greaaatest kitty of all, is tiny little Mabes,” and so on. It was our thing and if I couldn’t find her, all I had to do was start belting it out and she’d come running. Sometimes she’d be so drunk on my dulcet tones she’d try to push her little head into my mouth and no, I don’t think she was trying to shut me up.

When I met my now-husband, Mabel loosened up and let him love her too. Though whenever we argued, she would run over to my side, meeping at him. It was two against one and we always won.

We lost Mabel one New Year’s Eve, after a quick decline. My husband and I walked out of the vet ER sobbing so loudly that we scared a little kid walking down the street with his mom.

By the time we’d moved into our co-op, we had acquired two cats, trying to make up for the love that Mabel gave us. On top of that I was then dealing with seven cats in the backyard and an ever-repopulating supply of kittens. I was overwhelmed, but Eva knew we should TNR them. You have to Trap/Neuter/Release them because feral cats can’t be adopted past a certain age. They’re just too wild. I’d been grabbing the kittens when I could, but cats often kept their litters hidden until the kittens were too old to socialize. We had to stop the cycle.

Eva and our other friend, Lisa, came over with a few traps that we set up outside my back door. We could stand inside, drink wine, and pull the trap lever from there. It was winter and I’d already found a couple dead kittens who didn’t make it through the freeze, so we wanted to get all of them fixed asap.

I learned that male cats are the easiest to catch. They will walk straight into anything , if there’s food. Female cats—like the little black one who had started me on this journey—are the toughest. They’re wary, clever, and not always motivated by the smelly snacks. Soon we had trapped all the male cats, but it took me two years to nab Little Mama, my sleek black friend. By the time we caught her, I had catnapped about 12 of her kittens from various litters, socializing and rehoming them. I didn’t outsmart her, I think she was just tired of giving birth and was ready for fixing by then.

Meanwhile, my coop board had figured  out there were cats behind our building. One neighbor complained that the cats looked in his window. Another whined about the occasional poop—a valid complaint that I solved by cleaning up after them. The building’s super had “handled” our building’s pigeon problem by covering windowsills with some sort of sticky substance and forcing the porter to rip the birds off, leaving their feet and legs behind. I didn’t have high hopes for how humanely they’d handle a dwindling cat colony.

Outdoor cats have brief, brutal lives. One of my favorite ferals, the charismatic Tab Hunter, was on the verge of being tame enough to rehome when he showed up on the patio with his intestines trailing behind him. I don’t know what happened to him, but it was horrifying and I wanted to take him to the ER.

I went outside with a cat carrier to try and coax him inside but he ran and I never saw him again. As horrible as Mabel’s death had been, I was able to hold her as the vet ended her life. Tab Hunter had been sitting with me on the patio for four years, gradually trusting me a little more each day. I was honored that he stopped by to say goodbye, but thinking of him dying alone and in pain continues to break my heart.

With the help of guidance from Eva and the NYC Feral Cat Alliance, I prepared talking points for my board. By now all the cats were fixed and we were down to four. Little Mama, Sparkle, Cross-eyed Charlie, and Chicken Little. An interloper named Wally came around occasionally and we’d also fixed him. I told the board what I’d been up to, explaining how I had gone to great trouble and expense to get these cats spayed, vetted and vaccinated. They thanked me for my service but said the cats had to go.

I explained that when you get rid of a colony, it creates a vacuum and another swoops in to take its place. They were unswayed, but they were also without a plan.

One day , I looked up from my desk to see the super and some other guy standing on my patio, talking about how I was “trouble” and they were going to train a camera on my patio to catch me caring for the cats. I thought about all the cats and kittens my family had basically killed and while the guilt was crushing, I could still save these little cats.

So I flipped a switch. Instead of being cowed by their threats, I shot off a note to the board, reminding them of what our super had done to the pigeons and that animal cruelty was now a felony in New York. I told them threatening me was not to happen again and if I saw a camera trained on my apartment , I’d take them to court.

I don’t know what’s going to happen with these little guys. The board has backed off for now, and there’s nothing really to complain about—there’s no poop to clean up and I’ve given them a stern talking to about watching the neighbors.

So maybe this makes me a crazy cat lady, which is fine. Or maybe I’m just working off generations of bad animal karma. Either way, I’m going to continue to stick up for my little buddies and fight for their right to be happy and healthy.