Walking to and from class, students can listen to music, read, see friends, and now pet cats.
The cat population has increased in Hillsdale, and seems to peak in the neighborhood surrounding Manning Street. Students living in the area have accepted the congregation of strays as new neighbors.
“I see about eight per day, but my neighbors who feed the cats have counted 19,” junior Ainsley Ellison said.
Junior Lindsay Peirce, who lives on River Street, attributes the cats’ friendly nature to the human contact they receive.
“It doesn’t really bother me, they’re not causing problems or affecting us,” Peirce said. “The cats feel comfortable around us so they end up sitting on our porch.”
Renee Goshorn, shelter manager of the Greater Hillsdale Humane Society, correlates the abundance of cats on campus to the abundance of cats in the county.
“I call cats in this county ‘disposable creatures,’” Goshorn said. “People can’t get rid of these cats so they take them to the college and they dump them.”
Goshorn faces an overpopulation problem of her own. She is currently housing more than 200 cats in a shelter designed to hold 40 to 60. Of these 200 cats, Goshorn said she has 75 kittens, ranging from four weeks to five months old, and over 100 adult cats.
“We feel bad for the animals. But I don’t have the facilities to take in any more cats. We are chuck full,” Goshorn said.
These strays are far from feral. Instead, they are known to play follow-the-leader, shadowing students across campus. Michael Koziara and his Sigma Chi brothers experienced this firsthand.
“This kitten followed us all the way from Free Methodist back to Sig Chi,” Koziara said. The “skinny but not sickly” kitten lingered on the porch until the next morning when house mom, House Director Debra Nevins, took him into her apartment.
The brothers have fondly named him “Marty the Party Cat.” Whether Nevins will keep him as a long-term pet has not yet been decided.
Greater Hillsdale Humane Society faces an annual influx of kittens, and because of the shelter’s no-kill policy, the animals remain there until they are placed in a home or they contract a severe medical issue.
“I call it ‘putting out the fire’ each year, but the fire is never fully put out,” Goshorn said. “We take in the strays, but then we need to have as many animals being adopted as there are coming in. In this county, it never happens that way.”
Goshorn stressed that if cat owners spayed and neutered their cats this problem could be controlled, eventually.
“Everybody gets their free kitten and they never vet it. They don’t vaccinate it, they don’t test it, and they definitely don’t spay or neuter it,” Goshorn said.
According to the Oxford-Lafayette Humane Society statistics, one female cat and her offspring can theoretically produce 420,000 cats in seven years. Although this year’s kitten season is wrapping up, college students may need to get used to seeing feline faces on campus for years to come.