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THEY LIVE in junk cars and abandoned buildings. They eat out of Dumpsters and drink from sewer pipes. They are scorned, shot at and exposed to the ravages of disease.
But they are not the victims of terrorist attacks or tsunamis. Stray cats are the victims of humans, who adopt and breed them as pets, then turn them out into the streets to die.
Thousands of feral cats struggle to survive each day in the Fredericksburg area. For them, there is no refuge camp, no army of rescue workers and no worldwide collection of life-saving funds. Only a handful of steadfast volunteers like Thea Verdak and Meghan Parker.
"A lot of people call to report stray cats, but they don't want to sponsor them," said Verdak, 56, president and founder of the Rappahannock Humane Society, an organization that has rescued hundreds of feral cats and relocated them to homes and farms.
"Many people feed the cats, but they don't want to spay and neuter them," she said.
Verdak and her 21-year-old assistant, Meghan Parker, begin and end each day with a feeding schedule. They drive from restaurants to schools, and from colleges to landfills--all common dumping grounds for unwanted pets. Fancy Feast and Cat Chow fill the dishes. Warm water splashes into the bowls.
The noise brings a scurry of activity. Tails pop up from behind boxes. Noses twitch from around corners. And when hunger finally overtakes fear, a dozen or more felines race for the food and chow down--one eye on their meal and one eye on their feeders.
Yet providing dinner is not the primary objective of the Rappahannock Humane Society. Its goal is to spay, neuter and relocate stray cats to safety.
"Lots of people see us trapping and feeding the cats and they want us to go away," said Verdak, whose long days often end after dark. "They don't understand what we are doing. They think trapping the cats is cruel."
Henri, however, would have died a gruesome death without trapping. His unspayed mother was dumped behind a restaurant on State Route 3 in Spotsylvania County, where he was born. Although she nursed Henri's tiny body and groomed his snow-white fur, his mother had no control over the bacteria and viruses crawling inside the Dumpster where she fed.
By the time he was 7 weeks old, Henri's baby blue eyes burned constantly with pain from the bacteria. A large abscess erupted over his right eye. Without medical treatment, he would go blind and slowly starve to death.
"Stray cats get these abscesses all the time," Verdak said. "It's hard for them to fight it off. They get weak and often a secondary infection sets in."
Henri's case was so severe he was trapped and taken to an eye center for animals in Springfield. The abscess was lanced and a shunt installed to drain toxic secretions. Eyedrops and antibiotics were administered around the clock. The rescue had saved his life.
"He was just so loving, like he knew we were trying to help him," said Parker, who assisted with Henri's medical needs between classes at Northern Virginia Community College.
Given a second chance, Henri found a new home and a new name. Last summer, he moved indoors with the Wong family on a Louisa County farm, where he is known as Stewie.
"He has beautiful eyes now and a fluffy white tail," said Dena Wong, a nurse who adopted Henri. "He's doing great living in the house with our three dogs. He's in charge of all of them."
In fact, the Wongs were impressed enough with RHS to adopt three additional ferals as barn cats, which control the mouse population.
"It's not like they just hand you the cat and that's it," Wong said. "Thea follows up with you. She wants to make sure everyone is happy and doing well."
Seven years ago, however, Thea Verdak was not interested in making everyone happy. She enjoyed animals and people, but her small world revolved around a husband, two sons and a coveted position with Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. in Washington. Life was comfortable in her Spotsylvania home. Then came the epiphany.
"I was sent to a specialist for health reasons and I sat in a room full of people," Verdak said. "There was a young woman there, only 28 years old, with breast cancer. And I remember I thought, oh God, I hope I don't have breast cancer."
Verdak's crisis turned out to be benign, but the message changed her life. She quit her job and set out to rescue unwanted pets.
"When you have a health scare, everything is different," she said. "You think about how often you see your family and what you are doing with your life. Is it really important?"
Meghan Parker was only 15 at the time, but she had many of the same thoughts. She and her mother had just moved from the city life of Alexandria to the suburbs of Spotsylvania. She wanted to find out what really mattered in her life.
"After we moved out of the city, I wanted every animal I saw," Parker said. "I wanted to adopt animals and to help animals. I called several places, but no one would take me because I was too young to volunteer."
Just a few miles away, Verdak was forming the Rappahannock Humane Society. Operating on a shoestring and scraping for volunteers, she eagerly took Parker under her wing as the organization took flight in 1998.
At first, training was everything. Verdak began by volunteering at the old Spotsylvania Animal Shelter.
"Years ago, [the shelter] was a pretty awful place. So many of the animals were traumatized. They would slink to the back of the cage," Verdak said. "I would take out as many as I could and find them foster homes. I found out they would flourish."
Parker took her cues as an apprentice to Verdak. Both studied a home-education program offered by Alley Cat Allies. Based in Bethesda, Md., Alley Cat Allies promotes non-lethal control of feral and stray cats. Its videos and educational materials train volunteers how to trap, provide sterilization and conduct safe releases for homeless cats.
Once Verdak and Parker learned the ropes, they established feeding schedules for unmanaged feral colonies in the Fredericksburg area. They monitored the health of each group and gained the confidence of the cats before setting up traps.
"You have to take it slow," Parker said. "You don't want them to freeze up."
Trapping the cats is a painstaking process. It entails withholding one meal so the colony is very hungry when the traps are baited with food.
RHS utilizes two types of traps. Drop traps are woven nets similar to small soccer goals. When a cat enters the trap, a string is pulled and the trap drops.
Cage traps are metal and are triggered shut when the cat tugs on the food. Both traps require patience.
"You must never leave a trap. It's inhumane," said Verdak, who spends hours in her car waiting to snare a feral kitty.
All the traps have doors where the cat can exit into a pet carrier. An occupied carrier is covered with a towel to reduce trauma and the cat is immediately taken to a veterinarian for a checkup, flea treatment, shots and sterilization. Sick animals are taken to White Oak Animal Hospital. Those that appear healthier go to the Virginia Kincheloe Spay and Neuter Clinic. The average bill for medical care for an RHS cat is $78.
"We work with the public and with several rescue groups," said Kim Kincheloe, director of the 5-year-old clinic in Spotsylvania County. "The only way we can offer these prices is through donations. We have some very gracious donors."
After seeking veterinary treatment, RHS locates a temporary foster home for the feline until a permanent adoption is arranged. Cats refusing domestication are released as barn cats or shed kitties. A notch in the left ear, performed by a veterinarian, indicates sterilization. Storm was one such kitty.
Captured during a brief but raging December blizzard, Storm was almost an icicle. His gray-striped fur was frozen to his back and his paws were icy cold. His feral colony on U.S. 17 in south Stafford struggled to survive without food and shelter.
Coinciding with Storm's capture was a call to RHS from Georgia Strentz. With her children grown, the former teacher and single mom lived with her horse, dog and a few house cats on a Spotsylvania farm. The problem was a growing collection of feral cats congregating in her barns.
"The feral population came to me and I didn't know how to capture them," Strentz said. "Every time I looked out, there were more cats. It was a nightmare."
So, Strentz answered an RHS classified ad in The Free Lance-Star publicizing the availability of sterilized farm cats.
"I thought, I have a farm and I have lots of cats. Maybe they can help me," she said.
The solution was obvious. Verdak and Parker would capture and sterilize Strentz's feral cats. In return, Strentz would open her barns to a few homeless kitties, including Storm. But like most diehard ferals, the 2-year-old feline didn't take immediately to his new lifestyle.
After his neutering, Storm recuperated for two weeks in a large metal crate at Verdak's home. While his new bed was comfortable, his cage was too incarcerating. Only the Fancy Feast tempted him to stay.
"He was upset and he stopped grooming," Verdak said, "but he did learn to use the litter box."
Then on a warm January afternoon, Storm was moved to a straw-filled crate in the barn on Strentz's farm. The rustic surroundings were reassuring, but it would be a few more days before he could wander about.
"He needed to watch the other cats eating and drinking," Verdak said. "When he's first released, he might scurry away, but he'll come back for the food."
Curiously, Storm watched from his bed, which was lined with a few cedar chips to absorb the mild odor he developed from the lack of grooming.
"I used the cedar so the other cats don't think, "Oh, a new cat--he stinks!'" Verdak laughed.
Hours turned into days as Storm sat quietly in confinement, listening to human voices on a radio for comfort and eating his meals alone. From his crate, he observed the other kitties dining as a group in the barn. By the time his release date rolled around, he recognized the hand that would feed him. Storm had found a new home.
Georgia Strentz watched as Storm and the other ferals explored her back yard. Her barn and RHS were the lifeline that had saved these cats.
"There is a hole in our system and the cats are dropping through it," Strentz said. "Thea and Meghan help fill the hole. They are out at 8:30 in the morning and sometimes go until 9 at night. They are selfless--running on a shoestring."
At present, all the money used to assist unwanted ferals flows in from private donors like Summit Recycling of Fredericksburg. RHS formed a partnership with Summit last summer to rescue several homeless cats that spent their days living in junk cars.
"We'd like to find a way to match up [homeless] cats with farms," said Ed Nimeth, owner of Summit Recycling. "This is not a safe place for the cats. People drive though here and they speed up."
Finding temporary foster homes, permanent adoptive homes and country farms for stray cats has been RHS' biggest hurdle. Volunteers are needed to help feed and trap ferals. And funding is an endless challenge.
"We can only help when we have incoming funds," Verdak said. "We can turn this around. Cats don't have to live in a stinky sewer."
Much of Verdak's optimism comes from her life in England, where she grew up. Strict English laws protect pets and prevent animal abuse. Even declawing, which surgically removes the tip of each finger on a paw, is illegal, Verdak said. Offenders receive stiff fines.
"If there was a stray dog or cat in England, people would be appalled. They would try to find out who did it," Verdak said.
She recounts one story of a well-to-do family that placed a diamond-studded earring in the family cat's ear.
"They were fined 1,000 pounds for animal abuse," she said.
In America, however, the surplus of unwanted pets is more evident. Yet Verdak is determined to chip away at the problem, even if success comes slowly--as it did in the case of Motley.
Ten years ago, the pregnant young calico was left at the Fredericksburg train station to fend for herself. She struggled on the streets as her offspring multiplied, roaming the tracks and scrounging for food.
When RHS finally trapped Motley last fall, a veterinarian discovered she was already spayed. Verdak contacted the SPCA and learned a retired schoolteacher, Patti Wallace, had snared and spayed the calico, plus most of her descendants.
"It's unbelievable that people will throw out cats--just open up their car doors and throw out kittens," Wallace said.
For a decade, Wallace continued to spay, neuter and feed the colony of train-station strays in her downtown back yard. That is, all except the calico she had named Motley, who was chased away by a more dominant cat.
Wallace quietly mourned for the mama cat--the street beggar who bore so many young, while scrapping by on so little.
"I didn't see Motley for about five years. I thought she was dead until Thea called me," Wallace said. "I met Thea at the train station and Motley walked right up to me and let me pick her up. I was so surprised."
The calico had returned. Her life had come full circle.
Content to be indoors, Motley now spends her days with the Wallace family--stretched out on a chair, grooming her patchwork of fur. She's finally found a home.
"Motley is indoors and loving life," Wallace said. "She has survived 10 long years on the streets. She deserves to come inside."
CAROL THOMAS HORTON of Caroline County is a local journalist and a teacher at The King's Academy.
