A force for felines
Volunteers trap strays and wild cats, clinic offers pets for adoption
By Angela Randazzo Special to the Acorn

BILL SPARKS/Acorn Newspapers TENDER CARE- Lori Sorapuru, left, and Carol Olson hold two 2-week-old kittens that were found without their mother under a dumpster. Using the kittens as "bait" and a special trap, they were able to reunite the mother cat with her family. The two women have been catching feral cats for more than eight years; they bring them to Valley Veterinary Clinic to be spayed or neutered and adopted.

Volunteers Lori Sorapuru and Carol Olson estimate they've humanely captured more than 1,000 feral cats since their mission to help castaway kitties began eight years ago.

"They're all God's creatures. They're entitled to have a life and to live," said Sorapuru, a Simi Valley resident for 14 years. "Just because they were born in the wild . . . they had no choice. It's not their fault."

Working as a team, the two women capture the cats and take them to Valley Veterinary Clinic. The clinic's founder, Dr. Lowell Novy, and his team spay or neuter the cats and put them up for adoption. The clinic's charitable nonprofit program pays for the operations.

"Dr. Novy comes in on Sundays or early in the morning before the clinic opens or stays late at night if there are a large number of cats to be operated on," said Olson, a Thousand Oaks resident since 1975.

Olson's daughter, Diane Bentz, works at the clinic as the head surgical technician. In fact, Olson first heard about the cat problem from her daughter.

"My daughter told me about all the stray cats. They were breeding and nobody was doing anything about it," Olson said. "We decided to catch the cats with humane traps and then bring them to the clinic."

Cheryl MacNeal, another volunteer, fields calls from people who find strays and then sends Sorapuru and Olson to the location.

"They are out there in the middle of the night waiting for the cats to walk into the cages," MacNeal said. "They're just amazing. They work so hard to catch the strays."

Sorapuru started as a volunteer when she worked in a local elementary school. The workers wanted to seal the openings so the cats couldn't go under the building.

"I said you can't just seal the building. You have to make sure all the cats are out of there," she said.

Sorapuru started making calls to find help and contacted Bentz at Valley Vet. Bentz brought humane traps and captured the cats before the workers closed the openings.

Sorapuru and Olson said they are passionate about rescuing feral cats. The women are on call whenever needed. Tipped off by concerned residents, they find cats in backyards, behind markets, at industrial sites and in the hills.

Sometimes the volunteers wait past midnight because they are unwilling to leave a captured cat unattended until morning. And it may take hours to find where a captured mother cat has hidden her kittens. Sometimes they get a surprise catch- a possum or a raccoon- instead of a cat. They release these animals to go on their way, Olson said.

Adult cats too wild to adopt are also released after being altered and no longer able to breed. The cats cut down on the rodent population, Sorapuru said.

Recently, one of their strays, an 11-month-old orange cat named Thomas, found a new home. Thomas and his brother had been living in a shopping center behind a recycling bin. A neighbor fed the cats and alerted the volunteers.

"The cats had been abandoned. Unfortunately, Thomas' brother was killed in traffic," Olson said. "We caught Thomas. He was so afraid but we were able to calm him down. He was neutered and put up for adoption."

Simi Valley resident Cindy Burkhart came into the clinic after the death of one of her beloved cats.

"Thomas seemed to say, 'Hi' and I said, 'Hi,' and we liked each other," Burkhart said.

It may take some time before Burkhart's other cat accepts Thomas into the family. There's still a little hissing and spitting while the cats get used to each other, Burkhart said.

While most people help strays, others just want them to go away.

"We can't just kill them because they're inconvenient or feral. We have no magical place to take the cats," Sorapuru said. "Euthanasia is not an option. It's unacceptable. All cats are precious. They deserve a life just as any another animal does."