Volunteers help cats come in from the cold

WALTHAM -- The upside is that the split-level house has a view, sitting on the bank of the Charles River near the Newton-Waltham line. The home is insulated, has fresh paint and shingles, and can accommodate up to eight. In an area where homes are topping $400,000, the asking price is only $50.

The downside? To live there, you have to be homeless. And you also have to be a cat.

The house is one of 50 owned by the Cat Connection that are spread throughout the area and offer year-round refuge to feral cats. There are about 10 "neighborhoods" (or "colonies" in catspeak), and up to 30 cats can be in one neighborhood.

Some of the houses consist of multigenerational families -- a mother and father and several offspring, according to Sandra Schawbel, cofounder of the Cat Connection. Others are sort of like a fraternity: a group of unrelated animals trying to make it on their own.

"They all have been looking for food," Schawbel said. "And they found that they all get along, so they try it out for a while."

The suburbs are bursting with feral cats, which tend to congregate where there are people and, therefore, food. Communities have long struggled with ways to contain their cat populations, and they have used various tactics to do so.

But the cat house phenomenon is relatively new. A decade ago, the general policy was for stray cats to be trapped and euthanized as a way to control the cat population, a method some organizations still follow.

But another philosophy -- and one that members of the Cat Connection subscribe to -- says that it's better to keep the cats in their natural habitat, as long as they are spayed or neutered to prevent them from having kittens. (Female cats can reproduce at the rate of three to four kittens per litter and two to three litters per year, so once cats get together, their population can increase exponentially.)

If the cats are simply removed, the thinking goes, it only opens the territory for more cats. Once the cats are neutered or spayed, they lose interest in mating and they become territorial, driving away new cats and keeping the population stable.

But while members of the group say the houses control the cat population, that downplays the real reason they're doing this: They love cats, and they don't want any of the animals to die. The houses are a means of survival, particularly during the winter months.

"If they use them, they survive," Schawbel said. "If they don't use them, they don't survive."

The Cat Connection places the houses, built by volunteers, in various spots throughout Waltham, Newton, Brighton, and Cambridge, and uses food to attract the cats. The houses are typically placed on private land, at the request of nearby residents. Once the cats become familiar with their new homes, the Cat Connection traps them, spays or neuters them, and then puts them back in the neighborhood.

The houses have mostly been built by Boy Scouts or high school students. A construction worker in Waltham has built several, as has an elderly man in New Hampshire.

A carpentry class at Newton North High School just finished building six houses, and the students are about to start on six more. The houses they've built are made of plywood and they are about 3 feet long and 2 feet deep. They are painted green or brown, to blend in with the trees.

"They're pretty simple to build. There's not like a couch for them to sit on, or a TV, or anything like that," said Steve Gross, a sophomore at Waltham High School who just finished six houses as part of an Eagle Scout project.

When asked how he liked building the houses, he said, "It was strange. But some kid in my troop built bat houses. I guess these aren't any weirder than bat houses."

Like real homes, the cat homes come in various styles, some with more amenities than others. The MetroWest Humane Society in Framingham, for example, is known for its escape doors, which are built into the houses so the cats can flee in case of an emergency (translation: a dog has just found the home). Neighborhood Cats, an organization based in New York City, provides instructions on its website for making houses out of storage bins and styrofoam coolers.

The Cat Connection modeled its design on blueprints from a national organization called Alley Cat Allies, but the group made several modifications to handle the New England weather. Each house, for example, is placed on cinder blocks or wooden crates so it is above the snow line in the winter. A piece of wood is placed inside at an angle to block the wind, and straw is spread throughout the enclosure so the cats have dry bedding.

In addition to the houses, there is a feeder with two bowls of cat food, two bowls of water, and, occasionally, several cans of tuna fish. One of the group's 60 volunteers replenishes the feeders daily. The cats usually scatter quickly once they see a human, although one named Tiger is friendly enough for petting.

Tiger lives with a female cat named Wifey, who got her name because she always tags along with Tiger.

"They're inseparable," said Dede Reade, a member of the Cat Connection.