The cat on the East Broadway platform. (DNAinfo/Michael P. Ventura)By Suzanne Ma
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CHINATOWN — A gritty kitty living in the East Broadway subway station is playing a game of cat and mouse with people trying to rescue it to find it a new home.
Several attempts to trap the F train feline, which has apparently found itself a home behind a locked maintenance area at one end of the platform, have failed, DNAinfo has learned.
"I went down there probably five or six times to try to get her. I thought she was trapped there," said Susan Wright, a New Yorker who rescues feral cats across the city and cleans them up for adoption.
When an MTA employee opened up the maintenance gate to get to her, the feline "took off underneath the gate," Wright said. "That's when I realized she could get in and out [herself]."
Since DNAinfo first reported about the cat living in the station, some New Yorkers have expressed a desire to adopt the elusive kitty.
But domesticating the cat might not be so easy, said Sandra DeFeo, co-executive director of the Humane Society of New York.
"There are so many cats out there. You'd be surprised how many are out there," DeFeo told DNAinfo. "You might pass them every day and not know. They camouflage."
DeFeo explained that such cats may be feral, or in a "wild state," and often do not let people near them.
"That's the reason why they're alive. They see a train coming and they duck into a certain area. They see people and they hide," she said.
Even if someone succeed in trapping the cat, DeFeo said domesticating the animal may not be possible.
"Some don't flourish at all. It's not the kind of life they know," she said. "They don't want to be touched, they could bite, they could scratch, they could run away."
Emily Abrahamson, intake manager with Kittykind, a feline rescue group in the city, said it's difficult to know if the East Broadway cat is indeed feral.
"Like countless cats throughout the city, he could have been a domesticated cat that was abandoned there, and due to this, has become fearful of humans," said Abrahamson, who has regularly left food for the East Broadway kitty.
"If the cat has a chance of domestication, or re-domestication, there are tried and trusted methods on how to socialize a feral cat," she said.
Abrahamson suggested that if the cat cannot be domesticated, it could be placed in a feral colony, a sanctuary for undomesticated cats.
DeFeo said the Humane Society of New York has worked with the MTA in the past to rescue or capture stray cats. The process is difficult and often dangerous.
The MTA "can't shut down the city of New York, they can't stop the trains," DeFeo said, recalling the time when a cat escaped from her owner at the Columbus Circle subway station. The feline roamed the subway tunnels for more than a week.
"Eventually a wily MTA worker got to be as wily as the kitty," DeFeo said, "and they managed to get the cat back."
Mildred S- UWS | January 14, 2010