New Haven Independent

But they discovered, when they brought their request Wednesday night before the Board of Aldermen’s Finance Committee, that while every politician professes love for cats, even $5,500 is a painful sum to extract from this year’s city budget. DeFilippo and Antos made the pitch on behalf of the Greater New Haven Cat Project (GNHCP)for an annual $5,500 line item.

West River Alderman Yusuf Shah, chair of the Finance Committee, is an admitted cat lover. But his committee’s response was — not to let the cat completely out of the bag — guarded.

DeFelippo said that while the New Haven Animal Shelter responds to calls for stray dogs, it does not do so for cats. It often refers callers to the GNHCP. DeFilippo and Antos run the organization.

DeFilippo said her office, on State Street, receives about 40 calls for assistance a week.

Controlling the overpopulation of cats, DeFelippo told the alders, is a contribution to public health and safety, and long overdue. “Anyway, it’s a human-caused problem,” she said. Lots of New Haven’s transient students, for example, take cats in, and then leave them and move on.

Feral cats, said DeFelippo, tend to congregate near universities and depressed areas. “We do a lot of work,” she said, “also in Westville, on Howard Avenue and on Quinnipiac Avenue.”

GNHCP over the past two years spayed and neutered about 133 cats. Feral cats — defined as those born outside and whose behavior makes them non-adoptable — can have up to six kittens beginning at age four months. The gestation period is only two months. Therefore, GNHCP’s work kept the feral population down by, she estimated, about 4,788.

Citing a trend among Connecticut municipalities such as Mansfield and Branford, which have recently or are about to have what she called spray/neuter ordinances for cats on the books, DeFelippo said it is time “for New Haven as a community to show humane values in this regard both to its citizens and cats.”

“I Don’t Want To Be Catty”

Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks took exception. “With all that the city does for the homeless and not just in the city but the region, I don’t want to be catty, but it’s not a fair characterization to say we’re not humane.”

Click here for cat rescue stories of the past, and present.

The public, represented by budget watchdog (night watch-cat?) Ken Joyner, also pointed out that the city has a humane commission functioning under the police commission, and the feral cat situation should be referred to them. “In a year as tight as this one, the budget cannot afford to take this on,” Joyner argued.

The alders (Shah on the left with Westville’s Ina Silverman) tended to agree. Everyone expressed regard for GNHCP and acknowledged the all-volunteer nature of the group and even the past one-time grant support by the city for feral cat clean-up in the Wooster Square area. But they balked at the request to consider an annual item, especially one for which there was no source of funding.

The vote was nine to one to reject the request. The sole vote for the budget request came from …. yes, Chairman Shah.

“I was just expressing,” he said, “my love for cats.”

He said he was going to be in touch with DeFilippo on how she could make a better approach for funding in the future.