Family helps cats find homes

By Lindsay Tozer

Times-Union staff writer

To Richard Kolenda, they are displaced pets in need of compassion.

To the Navy, they are a rabies risk that swells with every new litter.

Homeless cats living at Mayport Naval Station -- most abandoned by their owners -- plus the feral offspring they produce, have long been an emotion-painted issue.

It is a case the Navy can't win, base officials say. If they don't react to the mounting health risk, they aren't looking out for their sailors.

React by rounding up the felines and handing them over to Jacksonville Animal Care and Control, however, and risk being seen as big Navy beating up on helpless kittens.

Despite reports last year that the number of homeless cats on base hovered around 200, today Mayport officials say the population is charging toward 800. And growing.

If left unchecked, Lt. Terry O'Reilly said, the cat population invites a host of health threats to Navy personnel and families living on base.

"Rabies is always a problem in Duval County," said O'Reilly, Mayport's environmental health officer. "Raccoons and other animals amplify this potential. If the control thing is being mismanaged, that shoots the risk up like crazy."

However, Kolenda, who along with his wife began collecting the cats and trying to find homes for them, says the base's policy goes too far.

Kolenda said the program equals a death sentence for helpless pets.

"It is their own people who are doing it," he said of sailors dumping their cats to fend for themselves. "The Navy is going to punish animals for the irresponsibility of their owners. It isn't right."

Under the feral cat policy, Mayport forbids people from feeding homeless cats and reinstitutes the base's old program of trapping the animals and turning them over to the city's shelter.

For more than two years, Mayport had subscribed to a program where cats were captured, sterilized and vaccinated and then let go. The plan failed to make a dent, however, because the cats reproduced faster than they could be put through the trap-neuter-return program.

The plan, to be in full effect by July 31, resembles that used by Jacksonville Naval Air Station, the city and Duval County.

Should a cat not be reunited with its owner, or adopted out within 10 days, base officials will surrender the animal to the city's shelter.

Although feral cats will not be adopted out -- the shelter's manager John Merritt said they are too dangerous -- state law mandates the animals be held for at least eight days before they are euthanized.

Kolenda, himself a retired Air Force major, acknowledges that the base has too many cats, "but we're asking for a chance to do it humanely. Don't starve them. Don't kill them."

For more than a year, he and a small squad of volunteers have made daily trips to the base to provide fresh water and food for the homeless cats at feeding stations they've designed.

Kolenda and his wife have taken their empathy a step farther in the last 18 months by taking home, cleaning up and adopting out more than 150 Mayport cats, he said.

Tending to cats with everything from a missing eye to a fishing hook caught in the mouth, the Kolendas said they are discouraged by the number of friendly, declawed cats left to fend for themselves.

"They allow themselves to be picked up," Gienia Kolenda said about the cats she and her husband bring home to adopt out. "People throw rocks at them, chase them with dogs. They're scared."

The couple have taken out newspaper ads publicizing the available animals and estimate they've spent $5,000 of their own money over the years toward veterinary visits for the strays.

The Kolendas are not alone in their plea for humane treatment.

Alley Cat Allies, a Washington advocacy group for feral cats, in May staged a protest at the gates of Jacksonville Naval Air Station to demand the base's commander revisit the station's policy on the animals.

Although the base's policy remains, Capt. Mark Boensel said the program was not developed in a vacuum.

"I want to assure you that the decision made aboard NAS Jacksonville regarding stray and feral cats was not made in an arbitrary or capricious manner," the skipper said in a statement. "The course of action chosen ... [is] the only practical and effective means of controlling the stray and feral cat population and protecting the health of the human population on the air station."

Richard Kolenda and his children, Yana and Toli (right), both 10, play with kittens rescued from Mayport Naval Station. Kolenda has been finding homes for many stray cats on the base.

-- Will Dickey/Staff