Rats are always a problem around marinas, especially if the marina has a restaurant like my brother Haik’s. Forget traps and poisons. The best way to get rid of rats is to maintain a cat (or several cats) on the property. Rats are not stupid, and they will not hang around an area where there is a cat on patrol! For this reason, Haik always adopted any stray cat that came along, including one kitten which he spotted floating down the river clinging to a piece of wood. He hopped in his Boston Whaler, ran out and picked up the kitten, dried him off and named him “Moses” after his biblical predecessor. Moses happily joined the rest of the “crew.”
Both of my sons grew up with cats and dogs as part of the family. My older son, Dr. Vinnie still adopts any stray that comes along, and his brother Mike is a past president of the Space Coast Feline Rescue League down in Cocoa Beach, FL. I sent them each a copy of Pam Keene’s informative article about the “Cat Rangers” that appeared in the May 2025 issue of Lakeside News. Mike called to tell me how he enjoyed it and said that his organization had the same hurdles to cross before they got on their feet. Then he told me some stories that had occurred over the years.
When they first started out, the Kennedy Space Center had a problem with feral cats wandering around the launch areas and putting themselves in harm’s way. They asked the League to relocate these cats and even gave them a hanger to house the strays which eventually led to a permanent structure located on donated land. They also got in with local police departments, who would call them rather than Animal Control whenever they had a stray cat problem. (Animal Control would just euthanize the cats, whereas the league would spay or neuter and relocate them to a safe environment).
I asked him to share some stories for Lakeside, and he told me about the night they got rousted by the Secret Service. The Radisson Hotel in Melbourne had a feral cat colony living in the woods adjacent to the property. The cats weren’t an immediate problem, but if they weren’t spayed and neutered, they would multiply and become an issue. He and several volunteers were in the woods one night trapping cats, when suddenly they were illuminated by bright lights. Several men identifying themselves as Secret Service asked what they were doing. Mike explained who they were and about that time one of the traps went off, capturing a cat. The agents were told to “stand down” because the volunteers were obviously not a threat, and Mike asked them why they were there. The Agent explained that Presidential candidate Obama was staying in the hotel. Then Mike told them “Before you ask, I’m carrying.” The agents asked what kind of a gun he had, and he told them “A Makarov 9/18” (a Cold War Era Russian copy of the Walther PPK – the James Bond weapon). The agent asked where he got it, and he said, “From my grandfather. He took it off a dead VC.” Then the agent asked why he was carrying, Mike said “I’m off in the woods in the middle of the night with a bunch of old ladies catching cats. Wouldn’t you go armed?” The agent replied “Lock the gun in your truck. The Secret Service will handle your security for tonight.”
Another story was about a posh neighborhood adjacent to a wildlife refuge. On this refuge was a group of Gopher Tortoises, (which are an endangered species) and also a feral cat colony. The homeowners were complaining that the cats were wandering around their yards and becoming a nuisance. They were taxpayers and demanded that the county do something about it. So, the League relocated the cat colony to another location, far away from housing developments. Now, the biggest natural enemies of gopher tortoises are rats and snakes because they can go into the burrows and eat the eggs and baby tortoises. Without the cats controlling them, the rats and snakes multiplied and ran rampant over the neighborhood. So, the tortoises moved elsewhere. With the cats gone, that left the rats and snakes free to wander around the neighborhood. That taught the homeowners a lesson about upsetting the balance of nature.
Meanwhile, dedicated volunteer organizations such as SCFRL and Cat Rangers help keep that balance.
