Although precise statistics are difficult to determine, animal advocacy organizations estimate that millions of animals are put to death in shelters across the United States each year. Because of their more prolific breeding cycle and other factors, the overwhelming majority of these animals are cats. Feral cats, homeless and largely unadoptable, are routinely euthanized, as are newborn kittens and pregnant cats that demand more care than many overcrowded, underfunded shelters can provide.
In the 1990’s the concept of feral colony management began to spread, along with the practice of trapping, neutering or spaying and releasing (known as TNR) feral cats back into the colony. Long before that method even had a name, one woman, Helen Sanders, saw this problem of homeless, stray cats, and felt they deserved care, not death. Over the years she even encountered physical threats from people who wanted these stray cats shot, not fed, but she persevered.
Born in 1935, Helen became a fixture in the small southern California beach town in which she lived out her life, pedaling her three-wheeled cycle, big basket in the back filled with bags of cat food. She used specially designed traps to capture cats and have them spayed or neutered and vaccinated, then would release them back into the colony.
In addition to her work with feral cat colonies, Helen became known as the ‘go-to’ person for all things ‘cat’, spending hours counseling people in person or on the phone about problem behavior or illnesses. Even as she battled cancer, Helen continued her life’s work up until a couple weeks before her death, riding her familiar trike through alleys, hauling bags of cat food past the beach and over rocks to her waiting “Jetty Cats”.