OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
COURIER LIFE, JANUARY 8-14, 2021 19
BY KEVIN DUGGAN
As Hinata Sato opens the gates to an
overgrown lot at the Columbia Street
Waterfront, dozens of cats emerge from
makeshift shelters, discarded wooden
pallets, and traffi c barrels.
A colony of more than 30 feral felines
has called the patch near the Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey
piers their home for some two decades,
drawn by the nooks and crannies
among stacked containers and idle
trucks, and locals have taken care of
the roaming furballs ever since.
“It’s like a special spell from the cats
that I’m under. I picture cats eating and
it just brings me joy,” says Sato, a local
restaurant manager who, along with
about half a dozen other volunteers, is
part of a group called Brooklyn Waterfront
Cats.
The group provides water and food to
the clowder of kitties daily and ensures
they don’t overpopulate the docklands
and adjacent residential areas with
a process called Trap-Neuter-Return
whereby licensed trappers take the cats
to a vet to be spayed or neutered, before
releasing them back into the open, according
to a veteran member.
“People say, ‘Why don’t you just let
them be wild?’ We are actually keeping
their population down by managing
them,” said Vicki Devor, a pre-school
teacher who has been taking care of the
cats there for six years.
Feral cats that have undergone TNR
are marked by having the tip of one of
their ears clipped. The Columbia Street
cats have also all had their vaccinations
such as shots for rabies.
The four-legged friends are a common
sight all along the waterfront from
the Brooklyn Bridge down to Red Hook,
where one group of cats has regularly
occupied the hay of a nativity scene
along Van Brunt Street each December
for the last few years.
Area cat lovers started noticing the
colony at the Port Authority’s piers
along Columbia Street back in 1995 and
began taking care of them in an organized
way on 2001, before the harbor
agency asked the do-gooders to move
them to a nearby city-owned lot.
They have added several small waterproof
shelters for the cats to retreat
to during rain and the cold winter
months, including a group of purr-pose
plastic “apartments” recently donated
by a local couple. They have shelters
for almost all of the cats, but the group
has also launched an online fundraiser
to help pay for more units along with
money for food and medical expenses.
Visiting the Columbia Street group
for a daily meal is the most enjoyable
part of the effort, according to Stephen
Icardi, another one of the feeders.
“Every time one of our feeders
comes into the lot, they come out of the
woodwork — it’s like the opening scene
of ‘Cats.’ They pop out of little openings
and tires,” said Icardi, who also owns
three house cats. “It’s always a nice
break for my week to be able to go down
and feed them.”
Icardi also manages the group’s Instagram
page where he posts updates
along with glamor shots of the cats basking
in sun. He says he’s gotten to know
their individual personalities and hang
out together in different groups.
While the majority of the cats are
not socialized to humans and thus not
suitable for adoption, some are “feederfriendly,”
according to Devor, a licensed
TNR trapper who works with fi ve cat
colonies across the borough.
“There are defi nitely three or four
down there that could be put in homes,”
she said.
While taking care of all the cats is a
lot of work, Devor still enjoys seeing the
fuzzy friends.
“On a beautiful day they’re doing the
cutest things and you just sit with them
and watch them,” she said. “They’ve become
like extended family.”
Love
cats!
Meet the animal
lovers taking care
of a cat colony off
Columbia Street
CARELESS WHISKERS: Cats Jeremiah (left) and Bear bask in the sun at the Columbia Street cat colony. Photo by Stephen Icardi