A ‘tsunami’ of cats and an accusation of cat theft has stymied adoptions at Oregon shelters. Lawmakers want to solve the problem

It’s been a tumultuous several years in the world of Oregon’s cat adoptions — with a booming population of cats brought on by the pandemic, tearful conversations over how to best address the problem and even a lawsuit accusing a local humane society of cat theft.

Together, those factors have crippled the cat adoption system.

The cat theft accusation — that a humane society violated state law by adopting out a Salem family’s cat that it mistakenly thought was a stray — prompted many animal shelters and cat rescue operations across the state to reconsider their policies for accepting and rehoming stray cats. It also led the Oregon Humane Society, the largest cat adoption organization in the state, to halt adoptions for many stray cats found in Marion and Clackamas counties

All that has left many members of the public who’ve chanced across the growing “tsunami” of homeless cats, as one volunteer put it, stunned.

Now a bill before the state Legislature aims to solve at least part of the problem by alleviating animal shelters’ worries they’ll be accused of stealing family pets. The bill gained significant traction by passing the House last month and is now on its way tor a vote of the full Senate.

“I call it fear of being accused of ‘cat-napping,’” said Rep. Tom Andersen, a Salem Democrat and chief sponsor of House Bill 3604.

The bill would clarify Oregon law to say that animal shelters and rescue operations need only to hold stray cats for three to five business days before putting them up for adoption.

The bill is designed to mirror Oregon law for stray dogs, which states that they must be held for three days if they don’t have an identifying collar or microchip and five days if they do.

Landmark lawsuit

Cat advocates say it became painfully apparent there was a problem in 2018, when a well-meaning stranger encountered Squeakers, a 4-year-old black tom cat, roaming through a Salem neighborhood. The stranger scooped up Squeakers, who was wearing a collar but had no microchip, and dropped him off at what was then known as the Willamette Humane Society. Five days later, Squeakers — who had been renamed Melvin — was adopted by new owners, according to court records.

That same day, however, Squeakers’ owners, who’d plastered at least 45 lost pet fliers across their neighborhood, learned where Squeakers had been taken. But by the time they arrived, the humane society told them it was too late.

Squeakers’ original owners sued and, after two months of legal wrangling and attorneys fees, won him back.

The experience left an indelible scar on animal adoptions agencies across the state, and particularly, the Oregon Humane Society in Portland, which in 2022 merged with the Willamette Humane Society in Salem. After reviewing Oregon law, the Oregon Humane Society ended the practice of taking in stray cats from Marion and Clackamas counties and putting them up for adoption in three to five days.

Instead, the nonprofit determined that the state’s lost property law likely applied. Under that interpretation, stray cats must be held for at least 90 days before any animal shelter can assume ownership and find them new homes.

That didn’t affect cat adoptions much in counties with local ordinances specifying that cats need only be held for a short period, usually a week or less. Those places include Oregon’s most populous counties, Multnomah and Washington.

But it did have a significant impact on counties such as Marion and Clackamas, where there are no ordinances addressing cat hold times.

Once the Oregon Humane Society began to turn away many stray cats, smaller cat rescue organizations, particularly those serving cats in Marion and Clackamas counties, were almost immediately overwhelmed.

Turning away cats

Cat advocates say the public soon began to feel the impact.

Lora Meisner, executive director of the Salem-based cat welfare nonprofit Coalition Advocating For Animals, told the House Judiciary Committee that a couple who in late 2022 found a kitten sitting next to a shoebox in a Marion County park were shocked to be turned away by the Oregon Humane Society in Salem.

“Over the past 2 ½ years, I can’t even begin to tell you the tear-filled and distressed calls I’ve received from residents upon finding moms and litters, hungry emaciated cats or simply recently dumped friendly cats that need rescuing,” Meisner said.

Some cat rescue organizations say they’ve become so inundated with cats that they’ve had to turn them away, even if that means sending stray cats back to where they were found.

Meisner told lawmakers that cat rescues have been “stepping up to the plate to the best of their ability” to help thousands of stray cats, but now they “are burned out and worn out and the situation needs to be resolved.”

Meisner doesn’t blame the Oregon Humane Society, where spokesperson Laura Klink says they can’t accept most stray cats because they don’t have the capacity to hold each one for 90 days. Nor is it healthy for the animal to live in a shelter for so long, Klink says.

“This is why we want this statewide solution,” Klink said, “because right now it’s basically a patchwork and there are a lot of counties in Oregon that do not have ordinances that specifically address cats.”

If House Bill 3604 becomes law, Klink said, the Oregon Humane Society will return to its practice of holding stray cats for three to five days before rehoming them — and that would free up valuable shelter space.

Thousands and thousands of cats

Cat advocates say the bill is needed now more than ever because the stray cat population in Oregon has risen exponentially. The surge was brought on after the onset of the COVID pandemic prompted Oregon to pause spaying and neutering, and cat advocates say veterinarians haven’t been able to catch up.

“There are just so many more cats in the community — stray cats, abandoned cats and in homes,” said Veronica Broadley, a support services manager at the Oregon Humane Society. “Prior to the pandemic, if we had seen someone with 30 cats in their home, we would have found that they were most likely someone who was experiencing hoarding syndrome. … Nowadays, it’s pretty common for someone to have 20, 30 cats in their home but they’re looking for solutions. They’re looking to surrender their pets. They’re looking for spay and neuter resources.”

Frustrations have reached a boiling point.

Chelsey Marks, executive director of Friends of Felines in Marion County, said after doing its due diligence to try to identify any owners, her agency has been willing to weather the potential liability by adopting out stray cats after several days, not 90.

“The cats come to us clearly unowned. They’ve been abandoned, they look skinny, they’re not being fed,” Marks said. “There’s just no reasonable way to hold an animal 90 days and be able to help more. We have to be able to fix them up, get them vaccinated, make them healthy and get them out the door to a loving home so we can get more off the streets.”

But even with the shorter hold times, Friends of Felines’ capacity to take in more cats has been maxed out at times, forcing the organization to turn away people who’ve come to them with stray cats that they’ve found.

Marks said some members of the public have become hostile — even threatening to throw the cats in a river if her organization doesn’t take them. So last summer, Friends of Felines instituted a new policy: voicemails and emails only, Marks said.

“It’s such a problem that we had to stop answering the phone so we don’t have to hear those awful things that people were saying,” Marks said.

Meisner, at Coalition Advocating for Animals, said her organization became so overwhelmed by the sheer numbers that it decided to stop accepting cats for adoption earlier this year. Instead, she said her organization is now focused solely on spaying and neutering.

“You can’t imagine what a mess it’s been,” Meisner said. “It’s like a 100-car pile-up.”

The bill unanimously passed the House 45-8 in April. Monday, it won unanimous approval in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It’s now headed for a vote on the Senate floor, the last step before landing on Gov. Tina Kotek’s desk for approval.

Supporters of the bill say legislators who voted against it on the House floor worried that holding a cat for a maximum of five days wouldn’t give a lost cat’s owners enough time to find and claim them.

In the Portland area, Karen Green, executive director of the cat rescue Cat Adoption Team, said the bill would come as a relief . She said the bill would lessen the risk her organization faces of being accused of cat theft — either in civil or criminal courts — for many of the roughly 3,000 felines it finds homes for each year.

“We think the legal ground is muddy,” Green said. “We want it to be really clear, and for there not to be any risk of prosecution.”

— Aimee Green is covering the Oregon Legislature this session. Reach her at 503-294-5119, agreen@oregonian.com or on Bluesky.

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