Wendy Erskine cuddles Benny, one of 130 cats waiting to be adopted at her rescue house in Colonial Beach. smc View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

'We don't do cats'

Westmoreland's refusal to accept cats at shelter creating problems across the county

By FRANK DELANO

Date published: 12/8/2003

Westmoreland shelter shuns feral felines

Kathy Arllen, Louis Tierney, Wendy Erskine and Pat Fitzgerald all agree: Westmoreland County doesn't do cats.

Arllen found out the hard way in October in a hospital emergency room after a feral cat bit her arm as she was feeding strays at her home on Seventh Street in Colonial Beach.

She said emergency-room workers called the county and asked an animal-control officer to trap the cat to find out if it was infected with the deadly rabies bacterium.

The reply, she said, was, "We don't do cats."

Arllen decided to take no chances, and began a painful series of four rabies inoculations that day. The county later offered to loan her a trap to catch the cat, but by then it was too late, she said.

Ten miles from Colonial Beach, Louis Tierney, 68, lives in a motor home beside a rundown house on a 60-acre farm on Winter Harbor Road. He says his cat problem started when a man who lived a quarter-mile away went to jail and left two cats.

"Them two cats had two female kittens, and one had three kittens, and one cat come up with five and another one had two. When I figured it out, I had 18 or 19 cats," Tierney said.

Scientists at North Carolina State University estimate that a breeding pair of cats could cumulatively foster 420,000 offspring in seven years.

When Tierney took four or five cats to the Westmoreland County Animal Shelter, he quickly found out "the only thing Westmoreland County does anything with is dogs," he recalled.

Animal shelters in most other Fredericksburg-area localities accept cats.

"There were three stray dogs around here, and a woman did come in and set traps and took them all away. As far as cats go, you can't get nobody from the county to help you," Tierney said.

"It's too hard on me fooling with all these cats and what it costs to feed 'em. It takes 60 pounds of dry food every month, costs me $20 a month at the dollar store."

Follow us on

Read more stories about Westmoreland
Date published: 12/8/2003