SULLIVAN COUNTY, NY — When people lose their homes, so do their pets.

Evictions are growing. Affordable housing is increasingly scarce. And the stray cat problem in Sullivan County keeps getting worse.

Maria Newman of Monticello scolded the county legislature recently for doing nothing as strays fill the streets. Legislators agreed to hold a “cat summit” to discuss solutions.

But the problem is not exclusive to Monticello. Carol Nelson, who owns a trailer park in Lava, in the Town of Tusten, said the stray cat population in her neighborhood is “out of control.”

“It doesn’t bode well for business,” she said. 

Newman said she’s observed landlords and residents poisoning the strays’ food, kicking them, and stepping on them.

Tamara DePaolo runs All Paws Matter Cat Rescue in Liberty. “It’s been a lot worse lately with evictions and people not being able to find housing,” she said. “I can’t even help with strays because of how high owner surrender is because of lack of housing.” 

Undersheriff Eric Chaboty told the legislature at its May public safety committee, “We’re going at a brisk pace. Our evictions are now booked out until the end of June.”

DePaolo said most of her surrender calls are associated with evictions or properties being taken off the rental market. “Owners are selling houses, or the owner is turning housing into Airbnbs because they can just make more money,” she said.

In Liberty, the demand for short-term rentals has increased 129 percent in three years—from January 2021 to April 2024—according to AirDNA (www.airdna.co), which tracks trends in the short-term rental industry. But the supply of short-term rentals to meet that demand has increased by only 72 percent.

During that same period in Monticello, the supply of short-term rentals has increased by 40 but demand has stayed flat.

After the moratorium

The pandemic-era moratorium brought a rare respite in evictions to Sullivan County. But after New York lifted the moratorium in January 2022, Sullivan’s eviction rate rose to the sixth-highest in the state. That year, 736 renters—8.3 percent of all renters in the county—were evicted, according to the Cornell ILR Eviction Filings Dashboard for New York State.

In 2023, the sheriff’s office conducted 401 evictions. During the first three months of 2024, the office conducted 147 evictions. If the rest of 2024 continues apace, evictions will increase by more than 45 percent this year over last.

High eviction rates “raise red flags about the potential for higher crime, weakened social ties and diminished democratic participation in areas where eviction filings are increasing—consequences researchers have documented in other states,” said Russell Weaver, director of research at the ILR Buffalo Co-Lab.

Cat Scott (D, 5) noted that while stray dogs are recognized as a public health and safety issue, stray cats are not. Cats are “prolific breeders,” she said, and their populations, when left unchecked, negatively affect a community’s quality of life.

Cats get into garbage, dig up gardens, contract rabies, prey on songbirds, and leave urine everywhere.

As Nelson said about the strays at her trailer park: “The feces, the pee—it’s really a public health issue.”

An impossible job

With so many strays around, the usual remedies aren’t as effective.

“We spoke with some experts and found that TNR”—trap, neuter, return—”will likely not solve the problem alone,” Scott Schulte, the county’s public safety commissioner, told the River Reporter.

Trapping all of the feral cats in a population is nearly impossible, he said. “We’ve been told that well-adjusted cats can be rehomed, but truly feral cats often cannot, and injured cats will be almost impossible to catch,” he said.

Schulte said the county is “continuing these discussions, so all hope is not lost. But, he said, there are “no permanent solutions yet.”

Nelson said she hasn’t found a solution, even after spending thousands of dollars on TNR.

“People keep dropping them off,” she said of the cats. “The problem perpetuates because people feel sorry for them and feed them.”

As long as they are being fed, she said, the cats will return.

Maria Newman is one of those people feeding the strays. She keeps doing it even though she’s been told by law enforcement to stop.

She calls the police whenever she sees people abusing the cats. “People kick and poison them,” she said. “It’s abuse.”

Newman said she’s a lifelong donor to police benevolent associations but feels that law enforcement is failing to prevent and punish animal cruelty.

“They don’t do anything,” she said of the police. “They tell me not to feed the cats. But what about the property owner?”

The police should tell property owners to take care of their animals and not kill them, she said.

Many towns have dog control officers who do not deal with stray cats, leaving the police to respond to reports of cat abuse.

Every deputy is trained to enforce animal cruelty laws, Chaboty told legislators, and they are all very proactive when it comes to animal abuse.

The sheriff’s office has a contract with Catskill Animal Rescue, and the county keeps an animal abuse registry. Chaboty said law enforcement doesn’t handle TNR. But, he said, the district attorney takes animal abuse cases seriously.

Bill Rieber, the Town of Thompson supervisor, said the problem is too big for the town to manage alone.

“They multiply like rabbits,” he said of the cats. “If there is a large comprehensive effort, it would need to be at the county level. We just do not have the resources.”

The difference a spay makes

Although cost-prohibitive, and not a complete solution, TNR does prevent the stray population from growing. The county and individual towns have previously provided residents with TNR vouchers, coupons, and clinics.

An employee at Narrowsburg Lumber said the lumberyard had “an issue with stray cats” back in 2015 to 2017. During that time, the Town of Tusten partnered with T.A.R.A. (The Animal Rights Alliance, Inc.) to offer a free spay/neuter clinic. The employee would typically see around 30 cats a day at the lumberyard before the clinic, while now he sees only about two. 

Chaboty said the sheriff’s office facilitates clinics from time to time, but that the T.A.R.A. partnership no longer exists.

Oberacker said he was more focused on getting funding for the Association for American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) shelters than on stray cats. Since 1866 the ASPCA had the authority to make arrests, issue summonses, and use force to protect animals. But the ASPCA disbanded its law enforcement division in 2013. 

“Enforcement are sometimes the ones who have to go in, unfortunately, and not always in the best conditions,” said Oberacker. He said he’s trying to get the county to budget more money for local law enforcement to cover the “cost of going out there to maintain, confiscate, and take possession of animals.” 

Oberacker believes prevention is key.

“When it comes to the cats, we really need to get serious about spaying and neutering,” he said. “I’d love to hear a little bit more about what potentially we could do. Of course, funding is there, but we also need to set up a process.”

DePaolo says all cat rescues in the area are overburdened.

“We all need some sort of county funding, a rescue, somewhere we can run out of,” she said. 

“There are just so many cats.”

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct two errors: Senator Oberacker's quote about getting funding for officers to take possession of animals in need was incorrectly attributed to Undersheriff Chaboty. Also, the article incorrectly stated that the sheriff's office no longer facilitates spay/neuter clinics. The office does facilitate clinics from time to time but no longer in partnership with T.A.R.A. The River Reporter regrets the errors.

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