A story in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution describes how feral cats are helping police stations stay free of rodents.
The Working Cats program of Voice for the Animals, a Los Angeles-based animal advocacy and rescue group, has placed feral cats in a handful of police stations with rodent problems, just as the group placed cats in the rat-plagued downtown flower district several years ago — to great effect.
Six feral cats recently were installed as ratters in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Southeast Division, and another group will be housed at the Central Division early this year.
Their reputation as furtive and successful exterminators grew after feral cats were introduced to the parking lot of the Wilshire Division nearly six years ago. Rats had been burrowing into the equipment bags that bicycle officers stored in outside cages; inside the facility, mice sometimes scurried across people’s desks.
“Once we got the cats, problem solved,” said Cmdr. Kirk Albanese, a captain at the Wilshire station at the time. “I was almost an immediate believer.”
After Albanese moved to the Foothill Division in the northern San Fernando Valley, he introduced feral cats to the building’s mice-infested basement in 2004.
“I think it’s a very humane way to deal with a very stubborn problem,” said Albanese, now assistant to the director in the office of operations at downtown’s Parker Center, which has its own rat problem.
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