This past week some new information about the Farmer’s Market/Williamsburg Street redevelopment project (1) emerged:
There are two versions of one plan. Both are dated October 19, 2023. The amended version reduced the scope of work. The changes are undated.
The number of trees cut at the end of May 2023 were planned to be cut. The only change on the ground is one additional leave tree was cut.
One of the trees cut was part of the city’s widespread Arboretum, a difficult to obtain Carribean Pine (Pinus elliotii var. Densa) specimen. What was an impressive complete collection of Southern U.S. pine species is now incomplete.
The lighting plan is being deferred to another future contract.
The future ownership of Farmer’s Market remains unknown.
One Plan, Two Versions
There is and was a single, October 19, 2022, Cranston Engineering Project Permit Plan. The ‘second plan” is actually an amended plan with several tasks removed (see example below) from the contract or altered. Most notable is the removal of the electrical lighting and installation plan, which itself was added to the bid package on December 13, 2022.
Additional issues include:
The date of the streetscape revisions are unknown, but probably originated prior to the February 15, 2023 bid award to Quality Plus Services. The bid award letter states there was a “revised quote of $1,483,465.55;” which was more than $400,000 over-budget.
All the documents remain buried and hard to access (2) in the City’s document repository. The original 10/19/22 plan (3) has been removed and replaced by a more user friendly version of the final “approved plan” which is still dated 10/19/22.
Cranston Engineering’s $23,000 Conceptual Design has still not been publicly disclosed.
One of the changes to the 10/19/22 Project Permit Plan.
Tree Protection Plan Unchanged
The Project Permit Plan contains a “Tree Protection Plan.” That plan remained the same in the revision. Both versions feature an ‘Existing Conditions” drawing showing thirteen trees, by species and diameter, in the redevelopment area.
Both versions of the Tree Protection Plan (below) show the same four trees to be left. No mistakes were made. The nine trees designated to be cut in the original and the amended plan were cut and removed.
One additional tree designated as a leave tree, a 14-inch diameter Red Maple was also cut and removed due to it being along a planned irrigation line, leaving a total of three remaining trees.
The end result was a loss of 80 percent of the canopy cover and shade in the area around the market itself, and a thirty three percent loss within the two-acre project area. Not including the 42-inch oak remaining in the southern half of the parkway, the loss of shade is closer to sixty percent. (4)
The other significant aspect is the loss of all young trees in very good condition.
Two Tree Protection Plans with slightly different drawings but same plan. The tree in the middle was cut, leaving the two trees to the north (right) and the tree to the south ( left).
Arboretum Specimen Removed
Among the trees removed was a fourteen inch diameter Caribbean Pine—also known as South Florida Slash Pine—(Pinus elliotii var. Densa). The tree was planted twenty years ago by Bob McCartney of Woodlanders Nursery. The tree was part of the widespread city Arboretum composed of native trees and shrubs and rare specimens from many foreign nations; all planted and cultivated over the past forty years by Woodlanders.
McCartney told WRDW-News of Augusta: “‘I was very upset that it was done because we had specimens of every pine species native to the southern United States already in our collection.’”
Unfortunately, the combination of the tree being identified merely as a “14 inch Pine” on the Existing Conditions page, and a failure to notify Woodlanders (or anyone else) of the plan to remove any trees, led to the removal of the unusual and probably irreplaceable specimen, leaving an incomplete southern pine collection. (5)
Lighting Plan Deferred
Nearly all of the lighting plan that included four-sided illumination of the remaining trees is deferred for another contract. The lighting plan (below) states “no electrical work to be included in this contract, except for conduit.” A future contract would be needed to complete the lighting plan.
Therefore the plan is still open to debate. A lightning plan that includes illumination of remaining veteran trees was made with no consideration for the effects of on wildlife. Artificial lighting has negative effects on the foraging and nesting habits of birds. The cosmetic design element is unnecessary—particularly in light of the substantial cost overruns that have already plagued the project.
Tree Illumination Plan aspect removed from contract.
The Future Ownership and Operation of Farmer’s Market
As reported in “Divesting of Parks and Open Space,” the Farmer’s Market was on a list of city park properties targeted for possible divestment.
The list is within a Parks, Recreation, and Tourism report titled “City of Aiken Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Need Assessment and Strategic Plan,”
The plan, which was adopted by a City Council resolution on August 8, 2022, recommended: “Consider divesting of some neighborhood parks and facilities.” The candidates included most of the neighborhood parks in Northeast Aiken and Farmer’s Market.
After some public outcry over the plan, in October 2022 City Council verbally committed to not closing any existing parks—but did not strike the recommendation from the report and did not address Farmer’s Market. It is still official policy that parks could still be closed and Farmer’s Market could still face “divestment.”
Farmer’s Market did not come up in the conversation. The market is currently managed by the same Parks and Recreation Department that sought to close or sell parks.
What divestment of Farmer’s Market could mean is privatization—contracting with a private entity to manage and operate the facility. City Council has been mute on this possibility.
The Farmer’s Market redevelopment plan includes construction of single family homes on private property to the west of the market; and apartments and retail space on the city-owned Jackson Petroleum property—unless it is discovered to be too contaminated for any residential development. The combined effect of a privatized Farmer’s Market with an upscale housing and retail development (see below) on existing vendors has yet to be evaluated.
The apartments and retail aspect of the concept plan from 2021 for Farmer’s Market/Willamsburg Street redevelopment. The origin of the hills in the background is unknown. Another strange aspect of the plan is that brick pavers will replace the existing grassy area north of the market, while a grassy area will replace a parking area on the south side of the market.
Footnotes
(1) An abbreviated timeline of the Farmer’s Market/Williamsburg Street Redevelopment Project
March 2021: Aiken Municipal Development Commission (AMDC) purchased three parcels for $175,000. The properties on the east side of Williamsburg Street across from Farmer’s market are collectively referred to as the Jackson Petroleum property
May 2021: AMDC released Concept Plan by Origin Landscape Architecture. The AMDC described the Concept Plan as “aspirational,” and not final. The plan envisioned apartments and retail on the Jackson Petroleum property, new single family homes on the The report was not a redevelopment plan as required by the Community Development Act.
2021-2023; Environmental investigations by Terracon; which delay pursuing the entire AMDC side of the project.
September 5, 2022. Large signs with no contact information announcing an upcoming AMDC redevelopment project are installed.
October 2022: Final Design completed by Cranston Engineering.
November 17, 2022; Pre-bid conference held.
February 12. 2023. $1.4 million contract awarded to Quality Plus Services.
May 29, 2023; Work begins.
(2) The plans are found within the procurement section of the city’s document repository. To reach them;
Find “E&U. Williamsburg Street” in a long list of ten years of archived contracts.
(3) Whether the city archived the original is unknown. A file was created prior to publication of “Four Well Lit Trees” but is 63 mb and difficult to share at this time.
(4) Listing of trees removed and left.
(5) The Caribbean Pine/South Florida Slash Pine was also misidentified in the city’s tree inventory as a Longleaf Pine.
The number is clearly documented in the photos, below, taken between May 31 and June 25.. Each tree has its own designated number from 1-10. Different street perspectives are offered to help orient the location of the stumps/chipped remains of the trees along the street. Click on photos for full-size views.
UPDATE: Article updated 6/25/23 to correct information on the two saplings and to update the identifications of the felled trees.
On Monday, June 19, 2023, a gathering of twenty or so people met at the Aiken County Farmers Market. A number of the attendees arrived in City of Aiken vehicles, their presence drawing special notice due to the recent destruction of eight-ish trees in the historic Williamsburg Street parkway. The nature of the meeting is unknown.
When the city manager was asked afterward, via email, “Who were the attendees at Monday’s meeting? What was the purpose of the meeting? What discussions to place? What decisions? How can citizens be given, at the very least, have opportunity to hear what is being discussed?” he responded, “I cannot speak to the Monday afternoon meeting as I was not in attendance.”
In the absence of information from the City on this taxpayer-funded project, a citizen can turn to one of the two sets of Permit Plans for the Williamsburg Streetscape, both dated October 19, 2022, then mine for hints. Perhaps the answer lies in the “General Notes” section of the Permit Plans.
Also this week, a semi-truck stacked with temporary fencing was spotted inside the Jackson property. The gate to the property has finally been closed. This, in the wake of weeks of citizen requests and also the discovery of a deceased homeless man inside one of the buildings, his death serving as a reminder of the absence of housing for Aiken’s burgeoning homeless population and the dearth of safe, affordable housing for poor people in Aiken, many of whom are but one doctor bill, one sick child, one car repair away from homelessness. A sturdy new lock and chain have been affixed to secure this attractive nuisance.
Two portable lighted signs were also brought to Williamsburg Street — one at the intersection of Park Avenue, the other at the intersection with Richland Avenue — giving notice of the June 25, 2023 road closure. The signs haven’t been programmed to display the entire message on the panel, so travelers need to stop long enough to read the message, which displays one word at a time, providing a twist of comic relief to anyone old enough to remember the old Burma Shave signs.
According to the phasing notes, below, the Farmers Market will be open during construction, which answers the concerns by some that the timing of this project at the height of the summer growing season could negatively affect business for farmers and growers.
According to the demolition notes, below, the contractor was to install tree protection around existing trees.
Conflicting information regarding the chain of events leading to the destruction of the trees in the parkway — as well as the exact number of trees officially designated for destruction — makes it difficult to determine which trees were intended to be “existing trees” in this next, upcoming phase of demolition.
Timeline of Explanations on the May 30 Tree Demolitions as Offered by the City Manager over the past two weeks:
June 12, 2023, in City Council meeting: “On May 30 Work began on the Farmers Market project…. Eight trees were removed, which was distressing to many residents and non residents, and I share that distress along with some indignation towards the situation. This should not have happened.”
June 12, 2023, in City Council meeting: “It is not the contractor. They followed the plans…. The plans that the city gave them should not have been given to them. It was a set of plans that should not have been given to the contractor.”
June 21, via email: “One extra tree was cut, a post oak. It is my understanding that this decision was made based on the tree’s proximity to buried utilities.”
June 24, via email: “There is only one plan. The plan was wrong because it should not have removed several of the trees.”
As of Friday afternoon, June 23, there were two wee, newly planted saplings in the parkway, each one surrounded by protective fencing. The timing of the plantings, in advance of hot drought season, rather than during the recommended autumn-winter timeframe for planting trees — and in a construction zone, no less — is curious. Perhaps this is a partial attempt to comply with the “three new trees planted for every grand tree cut” rule to which Mayor Osbon referred in the June 12th meeting.
In addition to the three post oaks that were left uncut, there are two wee saplings that were planted some time back, their planting unrelated to the current chain of events. Both saplings are listed in Aiken’s tree inventory. One is a type of locust, which was planted by Robert McCartney of Woodlanders. The other is identified on the Aiken tree inventory as a Deodora cedar This brings the official number of trees in the parkway to five: three mature trees and two tiny saplings.
The math leading up to this point is dizzying. First, we learned that the wrong plan had been given to the contractor, causing eight trees to be removed. Then we learned there was only one set of plans, which suggested there were no wrong plans. Then we learned there were two sets of plans, after all — both dated October 19, 2022 — but the tree protection plan was the same in both, which left one wondering if the contractor should have received any plans at all. We learned that only one extra tree was cut. Then we learned, once again, that there was only one plan. But that plan, we were told, was wrong and shouldn’t have removed several trees.
Once again: How many trees were destroyed?
Curiously, if you go to the Williamsburg Street parkway today and count, you’ll find that a total of ten trees, not eight, were destroyed. There are six stumps visible from the northbound lane, one stump visible in the southbound lane, two chipped stumps visible in the southbound lane, and one chipped stump at the Richland Avenue end of the park. Among the felled trees were five large post oaks, one mature Eastern red cedar, one rare pine tree from Florida, (planted by Robert McCartney of Woodlanders as part of Aiken’s arboretum), two maples, and one other tree that is difficult to identify in photos.
We can reconcile the math and the semantics later. For now, the attention is better spent focusing on the events that brought us to this place, which feels a lot like the place we were at last year at this same time, when the City, in concert with the Aiken Municipal Development Commission, was poised to demolish nearly half of the downtown’s core block and, with it, several historic buildings and numerous thriving businesses.
Certainly, the ingredients to the story are unchanged: same cast of characters; same plot; same concerns among the public over compliance with municipal law, same closed-door meetings; same refusal to include Aiken citizens in important discussions about the future of our historic and beloved places; same excesses, extravagances, and wastes of taxpayer dollars; same brand of “revitalization” that seeks to demolish and destroy what makes Aiken, Aiken; same helter-skelter, redesign-as-you-go approach to fixing bad planning; same vision to rebuild Aiken to look like a thousand other towns on the map.
Peel back the slightly transparent white tape to get a clear view of who created this latest demolition project.
The topic of animal rescue is lined with good stories and bad — from ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds; to opportunists exploiting a lucrative, underground trade in animals; to organizations that alternately do and don’t address the complex problem of unwanted and homeless cats and dogs.
I could begin anywhere on this general topic but, because my most recent experience was with a stray cat, I will start there. And because we live in the county, I will begin on a short, but pastoral stretch of dirt road in Aiken county.
Where we live was considered countryside back in the 1970s when my Dad built our house. Development has since put hundreds more houses, condos and apartments in our vicinity, with the Aiken City Limit now just a stone’s throw from our front yard. Our backyard, on the other hand, is hemmed by a dirt road and, beyond that, fields and tracts of wooded acreage that will likely soon be paved with more houses, apartments, and condominiums.
For now, the dirt road has the look of countryside and serves as a magnet for pet owners seeking a stealth spot to dump their unwanted cats — their belief being, perhaps, that some kindly soul will take them in or, worst-case scenario, their cat will spend their days as a carefree wild cat, living off the fat of the land, what with all the songbirds, lizards, mice and crickets to eat.
Enter our property
My Dad’s guiding tenet when he built this small house — planting trees and gardens for self-sufficiency and adopting a simple, frugal lifestyle — was this: “To live simply so that others may simply live.” Toward this end, he also gave generously and selflessly to people and causes.
Over time, my father’s tenet has been consciously expanded to include the native wildlife around us that is being variously displaced, poisoned, and made homeless by development and other human incursions into their homes.
Toward this effort, we are mindful of providing healthy wildlife habitat and of keeping our yard free of pesticides and other chemicals that might find their way into the food chain and potentially sicken or kill the beetle, the bird, the mouse, the fox, the owl. Of course, we recognize that our several-acre lot is not an island.
Still, we have healthy populations of caterpillars, beetles, spiders, butterflies, frogs, toads, snakes, lizards, birds, squirrels, moles, voles, field mice, bunnies and more. In other words, a smorgasbord for a scared, hungry cat who has been dumped off by its owner.
To this ample food supply, add the shelter of the undersides of our outbuildings — a survivable habitat for an abandoned cat. We’ve seen a number of sad cases over the years, including mother cats with kittens who are living lives of quiet desperation. Over the 50 years on this property, we’ve taken a few strays to the shelter. As of 2016, this option ceased to exist, as the county shelter stopped accepting stray and feral cats. More on that in a moment.
Nine Lives
Most stray and feral cats that come to our property are only glimpsed. They pass quickly in the shadows, skirting from bush to bush, sometimes darting across the yard at twilight and daybreak. Close encounters are rare. Below are a few of the more memorable ones.
I
Our most recent experience, in September 2022, involved a mystery animal whose presence was detected by the odd growling sounds coming from under our barn. When we approached to get a closer listen and try to determine what the animal might be, a large orange tabby popped out and hurried toward us, loudly meowing as it gave chase. The cat was oblivious to efforts to shoo it away. Not knowing the cat’s rabies status, we were pretty unnerved. For the next hour, the cat yowled at us from outside the back porch door.
This was the day that I learned that Aiken does not have a clear-cut system for contacting authorities about a potentially rabid animal, especially outside of normal business hours — 9:00-5:00 Monday through Friday. .Should I find myself in this position again, I won’t spin my wheels for 15 minutes trying to call DHEC and Aiken County Animal Control. I’ll just call 911 dispatch for the Sheriff’s office to contact animal control.
Long story short, this cat was not rabid. Just the opposite. He was the sweetest, goofiest, most loving and lovable cat you can imagine. We only later learned that he is an Oriental cat, his wacky personality being characteristic for the breed. He was clean and seemed very healthy. Surely his owners were looking for him! We immediately posted ads, looking high and low for his owners. We received a lot of queries from owners of similar-looking cats, but none that matched his description. Meanwhile, he made himself right at home, lounging about the property. Whenever we went outside, he ran over and tackled us with loud meowing and demands for affection.
The future Rufus Von Pouncey
As we quickly learned, he was also an aggressive hunter and had a mind to catch our resident mockingbird. My daughter — patron saint of the hungry, the lost, and the unloved — came over and collected him, then spent 6 weeks getting him hundreds of dollars of veterinary care, including neutering. The lengthiness of the process was due to the long wait times for appointments caused by the ongoing shortage of veterinarians. She paid premium price at an upscale practice across the river to avoid the six-week wait to get the neutering done in Aiken.
Simultaneous to these efforts, my daughter composed and posted a lengthy and quite wonderful write-up at the only Adopt-A-Pet “Rehome” website to find just the right home for this unique cat. Not a single person responded.
Rufus Von Pouncey, as he is now known, has become a much-loved and integral part of their family, but also a stressor at times in a household that was already at pet-capacity and had zero interest last September in adopting a cat. Were he surrendered to the County shelter, he may or may not be euthanized. Returning him to our backyard to be a de facto TNR would be an act of cruelty and would likely be the death of our resident mockingbird and more That every cat abandoned could be recipient to the soft landing Mr. Von Pouncy found in my daughter’s home.
Cat-napping with his catnip kitty.
II, III, and IV
From 2013-2015, there was a spike in the cat population on the property. It seemed every time we looked out the window, we saw a cat. The most memorable, for a number of reasons, was a lilac point Siamese. She was quite lovely in 2013, the first year we saw her. We’d first assumed she belonged to a neighbor but soon realized she was on her own. We checked all the local lost-and-found resources, hoping to locate her owner. No luck.
This was the photo I posted online in 2013, hoping to find her owner.
She spent the summer living under our shed. She was skittish and utterly unapproachable. I borrowed a cage from Aiken County Animal Control, but the effort was a failure. We did manage to catch a possum at one point (yikes) and also attracted lots of fire ants with the bait, but not the lilac-point. After a week or so, animal control came and picked up the empty cage. As the summer wore on, she grew more bedraggled. I took photos of her from time to time and reposted to online lost and found sites. At some point, she seemingly disappeared.
A photo from later that same summer. The underside of the magnolia is a favored spot for young bunnies.
One morning the following spring (2014), while drinking my morning coffee, I heard a thump at the front door. I looked out, and there was the lilac-point with two beautiful tabby kittens, who were scampering and playing on the front porch. I’ve always had a special fondness for gray tabbies, and these were especially pretty and with long hair.
One of the lilac point’s two kittens, summer of 2014.
I so hoped they might find homes, so we bought 3 cages to catch them. The experience of the previous summer was repeated and, in fact, the family seemed to disappear shortly after we put the cages out.
I did see two of them walking across the yard one evening — the mother and one of her kittens. It was really a quite lovely scene — this white cat moving across the lawn in gray twilight, her kitten walking by her side. Whenever the kitten fell behind, the mother would slow her pace, pausing from time to time to lick the kitten’s face and urge it on. As a mother, myself, I felt a certain kinship with her.
V, VI, VII
The following May of 2015, I was going into the barn and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tiny scrap of a shadow moving under a nearby bush. This was my first notice of the lilac-point’s return. Thankfully, my daughter was over visiting. She was able to grab the little kitten, who initially tried to spit and protest, but was barely strong enough to hold her head up, much less put up a fight. My daughter hurried her to the vet.
The kitten was emaciated, dehydrated, totally infested with fleas, and had an infection in one eye. She also had feline leukemia. The vet kept her overnight.
The next morning— all cleaned up and feeling better after a night of veterinary care — the kitten was able to enjoy being held and swaddled by my granddaughter, with whom she began the process of bonding with humans.
While all this was going on, I set out three traps. Right away, I caught the mother. This turned out to be as terrifying an experience for us as it was for her. She screamed and threw herself against the sides of the cage, feces flying, as her two other kittens, whose silhouettes were visible under the shed, watched from a near distance. This was a Thursday afternoon.
As it turned out, animal control was not able to pick her up and wouldn’t be able to until the following Tuesday. The other kittens did not enter the other cages, and we ended up letting the mother go at daybreak the next day, so she could tend to kittens. The three of them disappeared that morning, and we never saw any of them again. I suspect that local coyotes, sometimes heard in the fields across the street (before the arrival of a new subdivision) may have lowered the population of cats in our yard that year.
The lone, captured kitten was nursed back to health by a kindly vet tech, and a home was found for her.
VIII
In the summer of 2022, a cardinal family decided to set up house in a little ivy trellis on our front porch. Inside their next were two eggs. One midnight, I heard a kerfuffle on the front porch and looked out to see that a huge, long-haired orange tabby had halfway pulled over the trellis. I chased the cat off and uprighted the trellis. The next day, I saw that the cardinals were back and the nest intact. I collected over 100 longleaf pine cones and spread them about the perimeter of the pot. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. It took only a few nights for the cat to return and destroy the nest.
Other lives
I neglected to mention looking out the kitchen window one early morning in 2014, just in time to see the lilac point emerge from my Mother’s daylily bed. In her mouth was a large green lizard — the largest Carolina anole I’d ever seen.
The week before the killing of the anole, a mother cardinal and her nestlings in the camellia bush outside my mother’s window disappeared overnight. Poof! Just like that.
That same summer, over at my daughter’s house, both an indigo bunting and a blue grosbeak had been coming to the feeder. The well-fed neighbor’s cat was a recreational killer. Despite my daughter devising various devices and applying $40 worth of cat deterrents to protect the birds from the cat, one of the birds was killed.
Blue grosbeak on the left and, on the right, the remains of either the blue grosbeak of the indigo bunting. Neither was seen again.
In 2017, my brother had a hermit thrush that returned to his yard every year, its sweet song a treasured part of the spring landscape. That is, until the day he saw a cat running off with the bird in his mouth. It was a similar story that same summer with one of the bluebird parents raising young in my mother’s yard.
The Debate
The argument goes that there are enough baby bluebirds, cardinals, hummingbirds, lizards, tree frogs, butterflies, and bunnies to go around. As someone once said to me during a debate on the topic, “It’s called a food chain, dear.” The argument goes that dogs cannot survive in the wild, but cats can. The word “humane” is held aloft, as if anyone opposed to TNR is inhumane.
Merriam Webster defines the word, “humane” as “marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals.” The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “showing kindness, care, and sympathy towards others, especially those who are suffering.” By these definitions, I would say that TNR advocates and those opposed to TNR are a humane lot overall.
Upon closer examination of terms like “animals,” and “kindness” and “suffering,” certain questions arise such as, “Are other animals, besides cats, deserving of our humaneness?”
More to the point: Whose suffering are we concerned about? This is the question posed by some on the anti-TNR side of the debate, who argue that, by letting cats loose to kill the indigo bunting, the cardinal nestlings, the anoles, the swallowtail butterflies, we are in fact making the choice of who will live and who will die. If a bird is killed in the forest, and we don’t see it….?
Moreover, for the life of a feral cat, it’s not necessarily a question of life or death for that cat, but a question of a slow, suffering death vs. death by euthanasia.
My daughter and I, both cat lovers, have had our own missions, of sorts, over the years. In the 1980s, whenever I found a stray cat and/or litter, I took them for spaying/neutering and found them homes. At one point, we had a total of thirteen cats and kittens in the house, counting our two cats — a thankfully short-lived chaos.
In the early 2000s, my daughter would catch strays near her apartment in downtown Aiken for the trap, neuter and release program. More recently, she has handled the spaying/neutering on her own and found them homes, rather than releasing them into the wild. Before Von Pouncy, there was Inky the black cat, who took a few years to finally find a great home. Below are some of the pictures used in the long-term efforts to find Inky a home.
Two truths that TNR professionals and advocacy groups acknowledge, but don’t necessarily discuss in their promotions of TNR, are that, (1) it’s less expensive to do TNR than to euthanize, and (2) TNR cats survive an average of only two to three years in the wild.
Both of these points deserve deeper discussion, beginning with open acknowledgement of what survival looks like between the first day and the last of a cat’s existence in the wild. Turning a blind eye to this reality may ease the conscience of a humane observer, but it does nothing for the plight of a cat that has been introduced by humans into a habitat where she is assured of living a hardscrabble existence ruled by chronic starvation, parasites, sickness, human cruelty, and the treachery of cars and coyotes.
Here is a third truth that should be part of the discussion: cats don’t command the sort of prices in the rescue/adoption market that dogs command. Dogs sometimes fetch prices in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars, which has opened a black market in the rescue industry that is painful to read about. At what point does an industry that commodifies life cross the line from humaneness to … something else?
Going Forward
Wildlife faces enough hardship from deforestation, development, loss of habitat, vehicles, poisons and domesticated cats. Adding a “community” of an invasive species of diseased, flea-ridden, parasite-infested, chronically-starved cats to the mix places a cruel burden on an already struggling wildlife population. Feeding these cats is no insurance against their predation of native species.
Those among us who intentionally undertake the effort of providing healthy habitat for native species are disheartened to realize we’ve done little better than to lure these creatures to the feral cats’ smorgasbord.
Feral cats are furtive, circumspect. At best, we likely glimpse only a few that arrive to our property. Some are transients, some are more or less residents of the area. One day we’ll see a black cat slipping across the lawn from the direction of a flower bed. A week or two later, we’ll see a new cat slipping along the shadows in the hedgerow where the songbirds nest. We may look out one morning to see a familiar gray cat pooping in the vegetable garden. The next day, an orange tabby. A month may pass before we see the black cat again. They’re there.
As has happened more than once, I may look out the door and see a beautiful cat staring back at me from the porch. These are the cats I suspect have been dropped off to live the rest of their “happy” lives in the countryside. Whenever I can, I get photos, put them up online, and pull an area-wide search to see if anyone’s reported a missing cat. I’ve yet to find a single owner.
The story of the lilac-point has been repeated a number of time over the years. I’ve seen the slow motion death from parasites, disease, and the hardship of the elements. A cat’s fur grows dull and ratty, their bodies kinked and knotted, their faces swollen and scarred. Rather than slipping from bush to bush, they limp in pain. Just the other night, I heard a cat on the front porch yowling the characteristic call of the mating season. Seems awfully early this year. And so the cycle continues.
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Local services for feral and stray cats
First, some brief notes on terminology. A feral cat is a cat that has never been socialized with humans, or has become unsocialized. A stray cat is a cat that has been socialized with humans but is now homeless. A stray cat can become a feral cat. A surrendered cat is a pet that the owner turns over the the shelter. The information below was provided over the phone and in person by employees of the City and County facilities. This primarily addresses cats.
COUNTY RESIDENTS: According to the animal control officer who answered a call to our house, as well as staff spoken to on the phone, the Aiken County Animal Shelter does not accept stray or feral cats into the shelter. Period, full stop. They do, however, offer a free TNR (trap, neuter, and release/return) program for these cats. This service is for county residents and by appointment only. In other words, be sure to coordinate everything in advance with the shelter, as there are rules and limitations on (1) the number of TNR cats the shelter can accept per day, (2) the days and hours the shelter is open for intake of these cats, and (3) the assistance the county may or may not be able to offer, regarding transport, should you be unable to bring the cat to the shelter.
How does the process work? If, for instance, you have a stray or feral cat on your property, you will need to first catch or trap the cat (the county can provide traps). Next, you will need an appointment to deliver the cat. The Aiken County Animal Shelter accepts TNR cats on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, and by appointment only. Should you be unable to transport the cat, the county may or may not be able to help, and the days/hours for pick up are limited. Once the cat has been delivered to the shelter, it will be spayed or neutered for free. You are then to pick up the cat and release it where you found it. FOTAS, a privately run non-profit organization, partners with the county for the TNR prograam.
CITY RESIDENTS: For city residents, there is the Albright Center, which will accept stray and feral cats found within City limits. The City also has a TNR program. As with the county, you will want to coordinate these services in advance with the shelter, rather than just arriving with a cat.
Local services for surrendered cats
ADOPT-A-PET: An alternative to surrendering pets to a shelter is Adopt-A-Pet.com’s “Rehome” process, which offers a safe, no-cost way to rehome a pet without placing him or her in a shelter. If this option does not suit, the county and city offers services.
COUNTY RESIDENTS: Aiken County Animal Shelter will accept surrenders of pet cats (and dogs), with fees that can range from $15 for an adoptable pet to $50 for pets that have litters or are unadoptable or difficult-to-adopt, such as pets with special needs, behavioral issues, advanced age, etc. There is a possibility, not a certainty, that a surrendered cat will be euthanized. FOTAS partners with the County to provide an adoption services for surrendered cats.
CITY RESIDENTS: Surrendered cats are accepted on a limited basis as funding and space allow.
Financial Assistance for Spaying/Neutering
The county offers a voucher program to help lower income pet owners with the costs for spaying or neutering.
Lastly this
Someone reading this article may wonder, “Why don’t she get the feral and stray cats in her yard into the County’s TNR program? At least, that way, the cats wouldn’t keep breeding.” It’s because I no longer have the energy and good health to engage the level of hands-on humaneness I enjoyed in my younger years. It’s that simple.
Rufus Von Pouncey, the quintessential fat cat, has grown to be a huge cat with a huge appetite.
Editor’s note: Earlier this month, the New York Times ran an article titled, “How to Clear 500,000 Feral Cats From New York Streets” — a boldly worded challenge whose solution was not forthcoming. This brought to mind two pieces on the subject that were written for the Aiken Chronicles in March 2023. Both were shelved, due in part to the divisive nature of the topic, but primarily because the information received on local policy with feral cats and strays in Aiken County was so inconsistent as to be impossible to state with any certainty.. This is not to criticize or lay any fault whatsoever on the many caring, dedicated and hardworking people who give generously and tirelessly of their time, energies and financing to help stray and feral cats in Aiken; it’s just to state a matter of fact. In the interest of opening the conversation and bringing facts to the surface, both pieces will be published this week. Any and all corrections of fact are encouraged and welcomed.
Recently, I visited my brother in the upstate. Over coffee on the porch one morning, I noticed he had feral cats living under his back building. “Yeah,” I told him. “I have some cats living under the outbuilding in my own back yard.” After a moment’s thought, I added, “Come to think of it, so does Mom.”
This led me to give further thought to feral populations of domestic cats. Researching this subject has been saddening. I’ve owned multiple cats most of my life. When I see a feral cat, I see a cat that, under different circumstances, could have been one of my beloved pets. From a distance, I can wax idealistic on the feral cat under my brother’s shed. Taking a closer look at the situation, other realities settle in.
First, What is a Feral Cat?
When unneutered/unspayed house cats and/or their kittens are abandoned by their owners or wander off, they become strays. When these strays get together, they produce kittens. If kittens are not socialized to humans before the age of 4 months they become wild — known as feral cats. Once that four month deadline is passed, the ability to socialize them to become pets all but disappears. Former house cats can also revert to feral behaviors after a time in the wild. Although they are not native to the US, large populations of feral cats exist in all 50 states.
The Numbers
Estimates on feral cat populations in the US vary, ranging from 30-100 million and up, with general agreement centering around 70 million feral cats. With unneutered cats capable of breeding 2 to 3 times per year, one pair of cats (such as those living in my backyard) can exponentially produce 420,000 offspring in as little as seven years. Even if that number is cut in half, one must wonder why we aren’t being overrun with these felines. I did some research and learned that, sadly, it’s because they die.
Short Lives
To become an adult, a feral cat needs to survive kittenhood– and only 1 in 5 survives to five months of age. An unhealthy mother is less able to feed her kittens, causing malnourishment. The intestinal worms and parasites passed to the kittens cause further weakening; fleas and lice continue this process. Diarrhea caused by worms creates severe intestinal problems. Viruses passed on by the mother include feline AIDS, leukemia and chlamydophila. The latter is a bacterial infection that causes respiratory infections, crusts their noses shut, and causes conjunctivitis that can rupture the eyeballs and cause blindness. In addition to all of the above, dogs, foxes, coyotes and snakes take their toll on feral cats, as well as cars, angry humans, other cats and starvation. Life for a kitten is difficult.
Feral cats that survive the perils of kittenhood grow into adults who will continue to suffer the same threats and ills — most of which would be easily avoided or treated in a house cat. Crawling around in dumpsters and battling with predators, prey, and other cats inflicts injuries that can abscess and kill. Respiratory and intestinal blockage occur from swallowing bones or foreign objects. Ear mites cause intense relentless itching, scratching and pain. Add to this: urinary tract infections, dental infections, tetanus, distemper, rabies…. Life for feral adults is also difficult.
Even with all these life-shortening hazards, the numbers of feral cats continue to increase.
Cat with clipped ear to denote its status as a neutered, TNR animal.
What’s To Be Done?
The ASPCA and many other organizations advocate the TNR (trap, neuter, return) program as the humane approach to curbing the overpopulation of feral cats. Supporting these efforts are many individuals and smaller, local organizations across the country that thoughtfully put food out for colonies of stray and feral cats. Some go to great lengths and expense to set up feeding stations at centralized locations. These efforts help keep cats alive, however they also draw other cats, including unneutered feral cats, to the colony. In addition to being more aggressive and likely to fight, these unneutered ferals breed and create even more cats.
I did a very unscientific calculation of the number of feral cats in Aiken County and came up with the number of around 30,500, which is likely an underestimate. Who will trap this number of cats for TNR? Who will neuter all these cats? Who will pay for it? Even if they could somehow be caught, neutering 70 of these cats per week in Aiken County alone would take eight years to accomplish. More on this topic in a moment.
The Wildlife Society, Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy, and numerous other wildlife organizations oppose TNR programs as being both ineffective at reducing feral cats populations and for doing nothing to reduce the predation on wildlife. The Wildlife Society’s position paper on this states its opposition to “introduction or maintenance of invasive species and feral species that threaten the survival of indigenous species.” These organizations promote, among other measures, educating the public on the effects of free-ranging and feral cats on wildlife, as well as a call to keep cats indoors or, if outdoors, only in an enclosure or on a leash.
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) asserts that it is cruel to neuter a cat, then release it back to dismal conditions where it will certainly live a short life of suffering. They state that cats are the number one threat to birds in the US, killing 2.4 billion of them annually, not to mention billions of snakes, lizards, bunnies, bats, chipmunks, squirrels, etc. PETA’s position is that it’s wrong to favor the lives of cats over the lives the multiple billions of other natural wildlife that they kill annually. PETA advocates expanding the capacity of shelters to accept all cats. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the difficulty of this approach.
Other Realities
Feral cats spread viruses, bacterial infections, internal parasites, fleas, ticks and fungal infections wherever they live — playgrounds, beaches, parks, gardens, barns, agricultural fields, city streets. This occurs mostly from contamination of soil with their poop. Transmission of their pathogens (especially hookworms, roundworms, ringworm, toxoplasmosis, salmonella and tetanus) to humans occurs through contact with the soil or eating improperly washed fruits and vegetables.
In the agricultural industry, parasites spread by feral cats form cysts in the muscles of cattle, hogs and sheep which can infect humans through eating undercooked meat. Rain also splashes the parasites and bacteria, including salmonella, onto agricultural crops, causing sickness and recalls. Water supplies are contaminated. Domestic animals (cats, dogs, horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, etc.) are all impacted by the pathogens spread by feral cats.
But the greatest death toll is to our native wildlife. Rabies, parasitic worms, distemper, and other pathogens take an additional toll that is not reflected in the numbers of wildlife that these cats kill outright annually.
Disappearing Vets
Regardless of our individual positions on TNR, the ability to provide this service is evaporating across the country. The numbers of veterinarians and vet techs in the US has dropped drastically in recent years, a trend that was only exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Retirement, burn-out, suicide and low pay are but a few of the reasons. Meanwhile, cat ownership has increased 30% in the past two decades. Nowadays, an appointment for basic vet care may be weeks or even months away. Even emergency pet care can be difficult to access. In some areas, it is effectively unavailable.
An appointment for spay/neuter of an animal may take months. Spaying a female cat with a private vet can cost upward of $300-$500; neutering a male costs $150-$300. Bottom line — there are not enough vets to take care of the 58 million pet cats (not to mention the 78 million pet dogs). Who can we call on to provide needed medical service and spay/neuter for 70 million feral cats?
According to the ASPCA, 3.4 million cats are taken in by shelters each year, with 1.4 million of these cats euthanized. Shelter resources are taxed, between the higher demands and costs for services and the scarcity of vets. Increasingly, shelters are setting limits on accepting cats, with some no longer accepting feral cats at all. TNR slots are limited and quickly fill up. Some shelters no longer have the resources to provide TNR — nor even euthanasia for suffering feral cats. Some shelters have resorted, instead, to urging the public let these cats live out their “natural” lives in the wild.
