Bill Summers is retired from working on his Fowler farm, but he has another job that was literally dumped on him: cat wrangling.
People driving past his property may see him trying to coax a cat into a pet carrier with food. When the cats take the bait, he pushes them in and shuts the door behind them.
"I tried wearing welding gloves (to catch them). I got all clawed up once," he said.
Summers is trying to deal with a problem the most humane way he can: by catching the animals and getting them neutered. Nearly 50 felines run all over his property. He says that since he owns a farm, people looking to dump their unwanted pets drive past, see his barn and assume his property would make a good home.
Really, what these people are doing is turning his property into what Wilma Crawford of Trap Neuter and Release calls a "cat colony." The strays cause messes and become more numerous every month.
Summers, who is on a pension, says it's a hardship buying the three or four bags of food they eat. But no one will take them off his hands and he said ignoring the problem or killing the cats would be inhumane. He said he doesn't want to be as cruel as the person who left a six-week old kitten outside his house on a night when the temperature dropped to -10 F. The kitten would have frozen to death had he not heard it meowing while he was fixing something in his basement.
He spoke with a little bit of frustration because if it wasn't for the help of Crawford's group and his veterinarian, he wouldn't be able to control the situation at all.
Dealing with Trumbull County's stray cat population is becoming more difficult for group's like Crawford's and the Animal Welfare League of Trumbull County. The welfare league is lowering its adoption rates through the end of the month to reduce the number of cats it houses. As for Crawford, whose group catches, neuters, vaccinates and releases cats into a safe area, the money has simply dried up. Each cat the Warren nonprofit takes in costs about $100 to fix and treat for disease. In the last two years, the group has taken care of 186 cats, but that's barely a dent, some of the colonies can have as many as 80 cats, she said.
"We can't do this. We have one vet, eight volunteers and no money. Because the economy is bad the first thing people stop doing is donating," Crawford said.
This also contributed to the stray cat problem, she said. People are not spaying and neutering their pets and are leaving them behind as they move.
"They're just throwing the cat outside saying 'it can fend for itself.' They're becoming a nuisance. This is not a cat problem, it is a people problem," she said.
Municipalities are starting to notice more strays as well.
Recently a group of citizens complained about a colony of about a dozen cats in Newton Falls. Crawford said she was contacted by a city resident who demanded that she take the animals away.
"They want us to be their knights in shining armor, and we're not," Crawford said.
Paula Humphrey, a humane worker with the welfare league, said she believed every community the county was having at least a few stray problems. League president Barb Busko said they haven't noticed any more cats coming into their shelter, but the number of adoptions isn't there to pick up the slack.
"A lot of people's answer is to drop them on a farm. No. No. No. All that does is move the problem," she said.
The league cannot go out and pick up cats running at large, Busko said. And she said a problem facing animal control officers is the lack of funding. Dogs can have licenses, but there are no cat licenses in this area.
Licensing was tried in Niles about three years ago, but the proposal was killed in committee after people, including Crawford, spoke out against it. Crawford said many people would simply refuse, and people's pets could hang themselves if forced to wear a collar. She said there need to be more low-cost spaying and neutering clinics. Busko said she is opposed to the idea of feline licenses as well.
