Most students attending Cal State Long Beach spend their days on campus rushing along the grounds in a flurry of motion. With this regular stream of activity, it can be easy to miss the fact that all of the people who occupy CSULB on the daily are in fact sharing it with other living creatures.
No, I’m not just referring to CSULB’s remarkably plump squirrel population that will bug you for a bit of that cookie you picked up at the Beach Hut. Rather, there’s another animal population that most students know almost nothing about: a shrinking colony of feral cats.
If you’re surprised, well that makes sense. The cats don’t come out in the day, but the night. They are mostly nocturnal animals after all.
When CSULB was built in 1949, it was constructed over what used to be the Bixby family ranch. The Bixby ranch once had a decent sized group of cats to catch mice, and even though classrooms went up over their prior owners’ land, they never left. By 2008, there were estimates that the total population of feral cats numbered past 200, according to Dorothy Burstein, a retired teacher who comes to CSULB every day to feed and care for the remaining colonies of kitties.
“I have a feeling that the cats that live on campus are smarter than your average domestic cat,” Burstein says. “Their ability to survive is amazing.”
Burstein knows a lot about the oft-invisible colonies of cats on campus. Burstein drives to CSULB every day of the week, doing her rounds filling up several hidden feeding stations on campus, one of the last members of the now defunct Beach Cats club.
While there have been community and campus clubs that have existed on campus since the 1980’s, it wasn’t until 2008 that the Beach Cats club was officially formalized to feed, water and manage the campus cat population.
“I just enjoy it,” says Burstein. “It’s a charity, a volunteer thing. I don’t get any tax deduction for it, and the cats don’t call me up. It’s a totally giving thing, that nobody thanks you for. But I get a great pleasure taking care of these creatures that just as soon wouldn’t have me around.”
Burstein started volunteering her time in 2007 and had a route of tending to numerous stations that fed and watered 100 cats when she first started. These days, she attends five stations which take care of around 20 cats — roughly half the current population of 40 cats on campus by her estimation.
“There used to be complaints, in part because the cats would pee in or near air vents,” said Mary Stephens, the Vice President of Administration and Finance at CSULB. “Now, the population is down to such a manageable level that these problems have ceased.”
In 2010, the Beach Cats club started a “Trap-Neuter-Return” program that effectively began managing the then exploding growth of the kitty population. It’s been shrinking ever since.
But even though the feral cat colonies are smaller and the volunteers make a concerted effort to spay and neuter them, the colony can grow due to students and neighbors abandoning them.
“I think there will always be cats because irresponsible people abandon their cats here,” Burstein said. “They couldn’t bear the idea of euthanizing their cats, couldn’t find homes for them and they thought they’d be safe here. But it’s very unsafe for a tame cat, because of the coyotes.”
When this happens, Burstein and the other volunteers work hard to find homes for the felines. Though they haven’t had to do this in a while, Burstein herself still has three cats she rescued from CSULB.
“We don’t want the cat community getting any larger,” Stephens said. “But we have to be humane. The volunteers are doing the right thing in keeping the population manageable. And in that we [at CSULB] support them.”
While CSULB doesn’t spend any money to aid Burstein and the five other volunteers that keep up a vigil of care for these stray animals, they don’t need to. Folks like Dorothy Burstein spend their time, and even if you can’t see them, for the remaining cats on campus that’s more than enough.