Cats have been within the information fairly steadily right here within the US, given the ugly assault on “childless cat ladies” from Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance, and it feels much more well timed with Thursday being Worldwide Cat Day. However in San Juan, Puerto Rico, cats are beneath assault in a battle that has been ongoing since america Nationwide Park Service introduced plans for the removing of the cats in its Paseo del Morro historic web site.
The cats of San Juan have been a vacationer attraction for years, and many individuals in the neighborhood have cared for them and fed them. A number of the cats “are believed to be descendants of colonial-era cats, while others were brought to the capital by legendary San Juan Mayor Felisa Rincón de Gautier to kill rats in the mid-20th century.”
In some ways, the assaults on these cats mirror what number of Puerto Ricans really feel their existence is being threatened as they’re being priced out. The cats have struck an emotional chord.
Caribbean Issues is a weekly collection from Every day Kos. In case you are unfamiliar with the area, take a look at Caribbean Issues: Attending to know the international locations of the Caribbean.
This video produced by Alley Cat Allies, a nonprofit from Maryland, covers the historical past of the cats of San Juan and the group’s efforts to cease the cats from being eliminated and euthanized, a plan introduced by the NPS in late 2023. The NPS plan dismisses the longstanding Lure-Neuter-Return efforts which have been practiced by organizations like Save a Gato, a bunch has been doing such work for nearly 20 years.
Alley Cat Allies sued the NPS in March in federal courtroom to attempt to cease the cat removing plan.
The difficulty with the San Juan cats is that it will possibly make the realm unsanitary, and eliminating the cats will be a difficulty as a result of a few of them are troublesome to catch and too feral to undertake. Moreover, it’s that extra cats hold showing.
The NY Occasions reported: “In Puerto Rico, there are so many abandoned animals,” Ms. [Irma] Podestá mentioned. “It’s a never-ending story.” Podesta works with Save a Gato.
The NY Occasions additionally defined “The number of abandoned animals on the island surged after Hurricane Maria in 2017, when many Puerto Ricans lost their homes. Amid natural disasters and economic uncertainty, Puerto Rico’s population shrank by about 12 percent from 2010 to 2020; the island now has about 3.2 million people, many of whom have struggled to keep up the rising cost of housing in particular.”
And there’s additionally the problem of how invasive the cats are, as reported on this Noema article:
But to ecologists, these kitties are one of many world’s most harmful invasive species. Félix López, cultural sources program supervisor on the San Juan Nationwide Historic Web site, which incorporates the Paseo, advised me the continuing presence of greater than 100 feral cats alongside the walkway prevents the park from conserving wildlife and the pure habitat there because it’s mandated to do.
“We should not be feeding animals in any national park site,” López says. “This is not right for the animal, not right for the environment and this is not right for us.”
San Juaneros feed them. Vacationers snap their photos. However in all probability not for for much longer: The federal company that manages the fortress and the land round it desires the cats gone, saying that they’re a nuisance and may very well be carrying illness.
Puerto Rico, a United States territory affected by monetary troubles and pure disasters, has larger issues to fret about. However the plan to take away near 200 cats from Outdated San Juan — a neighborhood of San Juan that was the primary place on the island settled by the Spanish — has struck an emotional chord at a time when many Puerto Ricans really feel like they, too, are at risk of being pushed from their properties.
The explanations differ — for the folks, it’s buyers snapping up properties and pushing up rents and residential costs — but in Outdated San Juan, the 2 tales might in the end share the identical ending: a beloved neighborhood so modified that, at the very least some longtime residents worry, it’s going to have misplaced its soul.
“This town may end up like an empty shell,” mentioned Rei Segurola, 72, who wonders whether or not he ought to transfer out of Outdated San Juan. “It may end up with a lot of facades, like Disney or Epcot or Las Vegas.”
Puerto Rican poet, creator and tutorial David M. de León has written the epic poem “The Cats of Old San Juan” with the cats as a metaphor for the historical past of colonialism on the island, and the sterilization of the cats as a logo of the sterilization of ladies in Puerto Rico. Right here is just a bit little bit of it:
The cats of Outdated San Juan usually are not native although they had been born right here.
They aren’t native although being native isn’t a measure of belonging.
The cats are right here due to the rats.
The rats are right here due to the People.
The People had been right here due to the Spanish.
The Spanish had been right here as a result of fuck the Spanish.*
[…]
Save-a-Gato manages the colony of cats.
They handle the colony by a method of TNR.
TNR stands for “trap, neuter, release.”
That is thought-about humane.
It was the choice to being euthanized.
Being euthanized was additionally thought-about humane.*
“Humane” is from Latin.
It means “to act like a human.”*
[…]
Puerto Rico is managed by the US.
*
Clarence Gamble, of the Proctor and Gamble household, arrange twenty-two contraception clinics on the island within the Nineteen Thirties.
These clinics practiced sterilization.
The sterilizations had been both voluntary or not.
Clarence Gamble was a eugenicist.
Clarence Gamble wished to breed out poor folks.
Puerto Ricans are a poor folks.
I hope you’ll learn the entire poem.
Be a part of me (a cat and canine woman) within the feedback part beneath for extra and methods to guard these cats, and for the weekly Caribbean information spherical up.
