When you visit Jim Helms at the Cabarrus Boys and Girls Club, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that he loves kids and cats.

    For decades, teens have spent many weekend evenings lounging at the Boys and Girls Club under Jim’s careful supervision.  It’s a safe haven, when it can be a dangerous world out there for kids.

     And for about the same span of time, neighborhood cats have also found a refuge with Jim.  He spends a lot of money every week to buy enough food for homeless kitties. Many are regulars at his dinner table.

    Kittens are often dumped at the Boys and Girls Club, as well as a few puppies left on the doorsteps in hopes that children can take home a pet.  Often the frightened kittens run into bushes and only hear a kind word when Jim comes out after dark to fill those big trays with food for them.

     In the rental properties nearby, many residents have moved on and left pets behind to fend for themselves.  About five years ago, one woman abandoned more than a dozen cats when she moved.

     Cats are resourceful, and they often live on snakes and mice and other unwelcomed pests in the neighborhood. Jim and a few other folks keep them healthy with a daily square meal.

    The problem arises with the ability of cats to reproduce at alarming rates.  A well-fed female can produce 20 or more kittens each year.  And at six months of age, those kitties start having their own extended families.

    Now when Jim surveys the grassy field behind his kids’ haven, he sees a lot of suspicious little eyes watching for danger, watching for attacks from predators, and watching to be sure Jim will bring them a little something to eat before the chilly autumn night sends them to seek shelter.

     During the summer a team of volunteers from Kitty City, a downtown Concord animal rescue and education center, worked to trap and relocate many of the kittens and to spay adult females.  The supply of fertile cats has reached crisis proportions; there are now hundreds of cats lurking behind Boys and Girls Club, the rental houses, and nearby businesses where a little dumpster diving can yield leftover lunch treats.

    The overproduction of cats is heartbreaking for Jim and concerned neighbors who befriend the little creatures.  When they find furry bodies who have been killed by cars in the street and parking lots, or wounded cats who have been attacked by roaming toms, often it’s like losing a friend who has visited their kitty soup kitchens for months.  Jim can describe the personalities, how long they’ve been visiting his place, and often tells who was the mother cat.

    “I had one who was neutered  the first time Kitty City had a clinic here, back in 2007,” Jim says sadly.  “She had got really friendly, would let me rub her head a little bit.  I found her run over in the parking lot during the summer.”

    Visitors to Jim’s office are familiar with one of those cats who became his personal pet.  She’s a contented little tabby, curled asleep in his desk chair, with one cropped ear to signify that the vets stopped her family tree at the spay-neuter clinic.

     Kitty City, a project of Cabarrus CARES, plans to alter a lot more of the neighborhood cats this fall.  Beginning in October, the volunteer organization will partner with the Boys and Girls Club to trap, spay-neuter, and relocate dozens of stray cats.  It’s called TNR, and it is the only way to effectively lower the numbers of strays. Fully vaccinated and altered cats will be free to new homes.

     “They make great mousers,” says Jimmie Hoffman, one of the TNR team members at Kitty City.  “Any warehouse or barn could just feed them and they’ll prevent a lot of rodent damage.”

     The cats offered to good homes in the TNR project often won’t make tamed lap cats, but once they’ve been spayed or neutered and vaccinated, they don’t require much. They’ll return a lot by keeping away snakes and even other cats.

    “Once they’re altered,” Hoffman explains, “they don’t roam and they won’t let other cats share their territory.”

    So why don’t they just destroy the cats, some ask?

    “They are a valuable asset in keeping the environment in balance,” says Natalie Barbee, operations manager of Cabarrus CARES.  “When they banned cats in Europe in the Dark Ages, rats moved in to fill the void and the result was bubonic plague from their fleas.  The same thing happened a few years ago in Arizona when the prairie mice transmitted hantavirus.”

    And besides, Barbee says, it’s a little like the guy who shot Bambi’s mother in the Walt Disney story.  It may have made sense to the hunter, but it was tragic to the kids who had watched Bambi frolic with his deer mom.

     “There’s no reason to kill them,” Hoffman says. “But we have to control the numbers.”

    The trapping teams are already developing strategies and identifying targets, and soon many of the pairs of eyes blinking slowly in the evening lights will watch from new homes.

    It won’t be solved overnight, but eventually those who care for the cats will start seeing progress in lowering the numbers of unwanted cats and kittens.

     Jim Helms will still love cats and kids.  But he can sleep better at night knowing that his friends are safe.

    If you would like to give a safe barn or warehouse or home to a feral cat, or if you would like to donate to the TNR fund to spay and neuter cats, contact Kitty City at 704-795-5219.

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For further information about this story, contact Patsy Beeker at Cabarrus CARES at 704-795-5219 or via email to pbeeker@carolina.rr.com.