Why Street Cats Are Taking Over Urban Neighborhoods
Jane and her husband loved the house they bought in central Los Angeles in 2022, until they noticed the cats. Lots and lots of cats. At any given time, more than a dozen would be lounging in their yard, peeing on their packages, leaving dead birds in the grass and fleas on their outdoor furniture. “The amount of cat feces we’re exposed to is truly insane,” says Jane, who asked that her real name or the name of her neighborhood not be used because of the ensuing battle over feeding the cats.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]A family in the neighborhood had left their pet cat behind when they moved, neighbors told her. That cat had multiplied into two, then four, then more. Now, a cat colony rules the neighborhood. Jane tried planting lavender bushes, which are supposed to repel cats, only to find the cats sleeping under the plants. She tried adding sprinklers to scare them away, but they nimbly dodged the water. She tried to capture a few to bring them to a vet to be spayed and neutered, but inevitably ended up capturing the few cats that had already been fixed.
When she asked neighbors who left food out for the cats to stop, tensions rose. Though many people in the community complain about the cat problem, some are still leaving out cat food for the animals. Jane learned the situation wasn’t unusual. In cities like Los Angeles and New York, the population of street cats is booming. “It’s something people have come to expect in L.A.,” she says. “Cats are in everybody’s yards.”
Los Angeles is home to an estimated 1 to 3 million “community cats” that don’t have owners, according to the city. Some animal advocates believe the population is nearing 4 million, which is about how many people live in the city of Los Angeles. New York City’s community cat population could be as high as one million, says Will Zweigart, the executive director of Flatbush Cats, a nonprofit formed to reduce the outdoor cat population in Brooklyn.
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These aren’t just feral cats that have never been exposed to humans, says Zweigart. Many of these cats are “friendly cats,” who once lived in a home before being put out on the streets. A few years ago, around 80% of the cats Zweigart’s organization encountered were feral. Now around 50% are friendly. “We’re seeing more people unable to care for their pets,” he says.
It’s not just cats. As the costs of pet ownership increases because of inflation and veterinary care gets more expensive, people are surrendering animals to shelters or leaving them on the street. Around 32% of all pets that ended up in shelters in 2024 were owner surrenders, up from 30.5% in 2019, according to Shelter Animals Count, a national database for animal rescues and shelters. People are also surrendering their pets because they are downsizing to new housing that doesn’t allow pets or can’t afford basic supplies like pet food.
“With inflation and the downturn in the economy, people are having to make very tough choices about whether to feed their families or feed their pets,” says Lauree Simmons, the founder and CEO at Big Dog Ranch Rescue, the largest no-kill dog rescue in the country. Owner surrenders are at an all-time high at her organization, which is based in Florida. The organization screens people who want to surrender their dogs, and the number one reason is that owners can’t afford them, Simmons says. The second most common reason is that they can’t find affordable housing that allows dogs, and the third is that they can’t afford veterinary care.
As would-be pet owners look at the costs and responsibilities of pet ownership, adoptions have fallen. In the first half of 2024, there were 82,000 fewer dog and cat adoptions than in 2023, a 4% drop from 2023, according to Shelter Animals Count. Nearly 700,000 dogs and cats were euthanized last year at shelters, according to the organization.
“This is the worst it’s been in the decade I’ve been in animal welfare,” says Katy Hansen, director of marketing and communications for Animal Care Centers of NYC, the city’s largest shelter. ACC is an open door shelter, which means it accepts any animal that people bring in, and Hansen says many people dropping off their pets say they just can’t afford to have animals anymore. Others say they’re moving for financial reasons and aren’t allowed to have a pet in their new place, or that the cost of a pet deposit is prohibitive. The shelter is at double capacity.
“It’s a combination of people surrendering their pets and people not adopting because they’re not sure they can take on the financial commitment,” she says.
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Historically, veterinarians in America focused on horses and farm animals; only in the last few decades has there been more of a focus on pets like cats and dogs. As pet owners became more willing to spend money on their animals, companies obliged, opening fancy veterinary hospitals and services like oncology. The private equity industry has taken notice, seeing how much money some pet owners are willing to fork over. As big corporations took over veterinary practices, prices rose. The cost of veterinary care is up 38% since 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
At Veterinary Care Group, a private equity-owned practice in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat has soared to $850 per animal. By contrast, at the nonprofit veterinary clinic Zweigart recently founded in Brooklyn, the cost of spaying or neutering a cat is $225 and a mid-sized dog is $300. “Pet ownership,” says Zweigart, is now “out of reach for the average American.”.
Porsche Jones, who lives in Flatbush and takes animals to Zweigart’s clinic, says she tries to help neighbors who feel forced to abandon their pets for financial reasons. She encourages them to spay and neuter their pets, but the cost makes some owners balk, she says. “Two people on my block put their cats outside because they couldn’t afford to spay and neuter them,” she says. “Even $80 is a lot for people who don’t have the money for their electric bill.” Some pet owners are turning to sites like Waggle, which helps people raise money for veterinary care, but not everyone is successful at raising funds.“We’ve really skyrocketed in listings this year,” says Steven Mornelli, the founder of Waggle.
Meanwhile, some overwhelmed cities are turning animals back to the streets. The San Diego Humane Society started a program in 2021 to sterilize and vaccinate cats brought to the shelter, and then return them back to the streets if staff determine they can successfully live outdoors. The practice is currently being challenged in a lawsuit filed in San Diego Superior Court by the Pet Assistance Foundation, which argues the shelter should make more of an effort to find owners for cats that it would otherwise release into the wild.
Jane, the Los Angeles resident, is sick of waiting for the city to do anything about the cats that roam her yard. The city expects owners of private property to trap the cats themselves, she says, and then pay for them to be spayed and neutered. The hope is that if everyone does this, the cat population will start to shrink. Jane says that catching the cats is next to impossible, before even getting to the question of sterilizing costs.
She and her husband are now looking to move. She’s been subtly trying to discern if the new homes they’re looking to rent have cat problems by telling the real estate agent she loves cats and wonders if there are any roaming around. In some of the homes they’ve looked at, the answer has been yes.