As Son’s of Anarchy fans prepare for the series finale on Tuesday, everyone has a theory, idea or hope for what happens at the end of the hit television show.
However, no one in their right mind would expect the outlaw bikers to turn into cats.
The Pet and Wildlife Rescue (PAWR) group has created a SAMCRO-themed fundraiser – Cats of Anarchy – to help them with a project to re-locate a colony of 22 feral cats in Wallaceburg.
“The Municipality contacted our group asking if we could help at all with the situation in Wallaceburg,” said Dresden resident Myriam Armstrong, president and co-founder of PAWR. “There is a property that has about 22 cats on it and there is an older lady that cares for them, but she is coming to age where she can’t care for them anymore. The family is worried that if she passes away there are going to be 22 cats that are going to have to be sent to the OSPCA to be euthanized.”
The group created a special page on their website, which teams up a character from Son’s of Anarchy with one of the 22 cats in the Wallaceburg colony.
“We did some brainstorming and with the season finale being on Tuesday, it’s on everyone’s mind and by piggy backing on something that popular and successful, then maybe we could bring some positive attention to the colony,” Armstrong said.
Anyone interested in donating, can do so directly on the page through Paypal, and subsequently they get “patched in” by rescuing their favourite Son’s character – and in turn rescue one of the cats.
“With the 22 sponsorships ($50 each), we’ll be able to neuter, spay and vaccinate the entire colony and we’re also hoping to bring some attention to help find one or two locations to move the colony,” Armstrong said. “Maybe a country property, a farm, or somebody that doesn’t mind having a few cats that are fully vetted, that won’t be reproducing. We’re also willing to pay for the food for the winter for those 22 cats.”
Armstrong said the group is looking to use a TNR approach (trap, neuter, vaccinate and release/return) to fix the problem.
“We’ve been trying to just get rid of the cats in Chatham-Kent, but it doesn’t work,” Armstrong said. “Every time you remove a colony, it creates a vacuum effect. If there is a colony, that means there is food and shelter somewhere. So if you eliminate those existing cats, you’re actually sucking in new cats and then they’ll breed to capacity, until there is not enough food to feed more and the extras will die off.
Armstrong added: “The logic behind TNR is you create a healthy and safe colony that cannot re-produce and within seven to nine years, the colony dies off.”
Armstrong said Chatham-Kent in known for being really bad for feral cats
“People complain that we euthanize thousands every year because there is too many, but there is a proven solution to fix it over a few years,” she said. “People just glaze over it, I think it has been over talked about. People don’t want to hear cats and Chatham-Kent in the same sentence anymore.”
Armstrong said said PAWR likes to refer to feral cats as “community” cats.
“They were all someones pet at one point, that just get left behind,” she said. “We feel some responsibility because we’re a group of volunteers who care, but it is actually everyone’s responsibility because they were your dad’s cat, your cousins, your neighbours cat that just got left behind, it didn’t ask to be left behind. By calling them community cats it puts the ownership on everybody to do something about it.
She added: “So if people are sick of kittens dying or getting sick in their yard or cats meowing when they are breeding or spraying their yard, TNR fixes all of that.”
