Cats out in the cold at Lake Berryessa

By KERANA TODOROV
Register Staff Writer

For the past few months Tom and Bonnie Coppla have seen their neighbors from Steele Resort at Lake Berryessa move, sell and dismantle mobile homes.

The Copplas will leave later this summer, to their new home in Ione in the Sierra Foothills. They had hoped to retire at Lake Berryessa, but the Bureau of Reclamation — the federal agency that manages the lake — decided two years ago that no mobile homes could remain at the lake. All but two out of seven resorts will be closed by the end of this summer.

But as the Copplas prepare to leave Steele Park Resort in September, they face one more task: Find homes for the dozens of cats they — and other residents — have fed over the years.

Some can be tamed and become good pets, they said. Others, are feral cats — cats that have had no contact with humans and are considered wild. Those cats, they said, could live in barns.

The Copplas, who will take three cats to Ione, fear the cats left behind will starve or become prey to coyotes, foxes and other animals that roam the area.

“The worst thing I feel is (that) I’m abandoning them,” said Bonnie Coppla, of the homeless cats as she watched two of them eat dry food on the deck of her mobile home.

They note that even “Molly,” a homeless cat that likes to nap at Steele Park Resort’s entry booth, while security guards wave visitors in and out, has not found a permanent home.

The Copplas are not alone in their worry about the cats’ fate.

Margo Cassidy heads Whiskers, Tails and Ferals, a nonprofit organization that rescues cats throughout Napa County. Feral cats are trapped, spayed or neutered and released. Cats that can be tamed by patient volunteers are placed in good homes after they are  vaccinated and spayed or neutered.

Cassidy, who predicts that the cats left behind at Lake Berryessa’s resorts will starve or be killed by other animals, can only estimate the number of cats that still need to be trapped and rescued from Lake Berryessa’s resorts.

“You’re talking hundreds,” she said. “To us as an organization, it wasn’t acceptable that these cats were forgotten,” she said, adding her nonprofit needs volunteers and money to buy food and pay veterinarian bills which can run as high as $6,000 per month.

As residents move out — Spanish Flat Resort closed July 13 — her task is becoming increasingly difficult. That’s in part because she no longer can rely on volunteers at the resorts to help her trap the cats by leaving food inside drop-down traps near their homes.

Feral cats colonies are present throughout Napa County. But the situation at Lake Berryessa has put a stress on her group, Cassidy said.

“It’s going to cripple us,” said Cassidy who works with other organizations, including the Napa County Shelter, which houses feral cats in a separate room from the other animals.

Dr. David Gold, a veterinarian in St. Helena, on Saturday said true feral cats can survive on rodents and other preys, though they can become prey themselves to foxes, owls and coyotes. But those that have been fed are not truly feral cats.

Those cats will starve, he said. “Absolutely.”

Napa veterinarian Dr. Mary Whitehill, too, doubts that non-feral cats will have a harder time fending for themselves than a truly feral cat. Feral cats will have to compete for so many rodents and birds, she noted.

Whitehill, who praised the work of Cassidy’s group, said that feral cats’ kittens can be tamed.

Cats that have been abandoned can become good household pets, she added.

“It just takes time and patience and love,” she said.

In the meantime, the Copplas said the Bureau of Reclamation should do more to help the cats’ situation. Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Pete Lucero said his agency will do all it can to work with volunteers interested in saving the cats.

Information on Whiskers, Tails and Ferals is available at www.whiskerstailsandferals.org

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