One-man meals-on-wheels sustains San Francisco’s homeless cats

by Natascha Bruckner

From time to time, FETCH highlights a person who exemplifies what it means to "make a difference" in the lives of our pets. Get to know these inspiring individuals though their own words. Know someone who is making a difference in their own way? Tell FETCH, and we’ll consider them for a future issue. Send an email to editors@fetchthepaper.com.

Every night, J.R. Yeager goes into places most people won’t: dark alleys, gutted buildings, trash-strewn empty lots, and the homeless encampments of San Francisco. He’s keeping appointments with dozens of feral cats who rely on him for their daily meal. Yeager is a friendly, energetic man with a playful sense of humor and a no-nonsense approach to caring for cats. He recently took a FETCH reporter on his feeding rounds. Car neatly loaded with 25 pounds of dry food, stacks of canned food, and water jugs, we drove a three-hour circuit, visiting forsaken places where homeless cats somehow manage to survive. “This is my reward,” he said, pointing to a thin tabby eating from a bowl he had pushed under a chain link fence.

How did you develop a love for animals?

As a kid I was always fascinated by animals and on top of that I grew up in rural Pennsylvania where a lot of strays were dumped. My parents wouldn’t allow us to feed them because of the very real fear that they would “hang around.” Who wouldn’t if you were homeless and hungry? Anyhow I knew these poor bony animals were going from one door to another, looking for their home or a meal. I used to secretly drop lunch meat out of my bedroom window for them.

How did you get into the volunteer work you’re doing now

About five years ago I was in Pacifica, sitting on the rocks looking at the ocean. I looked down between my feet and saw a lump of fur. It turned out to be a kitten. I reached down to pick it up, and it just took off . That was the first time I thought about homeless animals in decades.

Soon thereafter I had to go home to Pennsylvania to be with my father during an illness. In this isolated mountain town, I discovered an area teeming with emaciated homeless cats. I ended up feeding 35 cats and kittens that winter. I made a deal with a woman there that if she allowed me access to her property to feed the cats (she had no tolerance for them) that I would trap them and take them away as time allowed. The cats lived under her mobile home to escape the two-foot snow drifts and survived the nightly temperatures in the teens using the radiant heat from above. It wasn’t easy to witness. In mid-February when I had to return to San Francisco I had to trap them all or leave them there to freeze and starve to death. It was a clear choice. I trapped every one of them. They were all feral. I took them to the local humane society and I know they were all euthanized. It was hard. But not as hard as imagining that I left them to suffer a terrible death.

When I returned to San Francisco, I discovered and embraced the whole feral cat trap-neuter-return (known as TNR) concept that is practiced here. I dove in head first trapping literally hundreds of homeless and often emaciated, sick, injured, one-eyed (even blind) cats from the San Francisco waterfront, literally hundreds. In retrospect I realize I was working off some of the angst from my Pennsylvania experience, but nonetheless, I was making a difference in the cats’ lives here.

At the same time I was under the impression that the TNR program in San Francisco had a safety net for these animals that were returned to the streets and piers, that once they were identified and sterilized they would be cared for. Unfortunately that is not the case and I found that every time I returned a cat to the street I had another mouth to feed. It has become a very expensive mission.

How does it feel to know they’re waiting for you?

I have very mixed feelings about it at this point. I do still feel personally rewarded that I am doing one small thing to reduce the suffering of animals on the streets in San Francisco, and on the other hand I am imprisoned by it. TNR is a wonderful concept at first glance, but how many people do you think actually live up the commitment to care for these animals for the remainder of their lives once they are “returned?” There are some, but not many. In fact in my work I have come across more than one location where the cats were put back and ultimately re-abandoned, left to try to make it on their own on a pier or in a industrial parking lot. In one location alone 14 cats were just left on the street. What is compassionate about that?

At the same time I have grown to understand the impact that that these cats have on San Francisco’s wildlife. They kill things; it’s in their DNA, and I find dead birds in their feeding dishes often. A gift back to me I suppose, but not one that I want.

Have you ever missed a night?

No. I’ve been away a couple times in the past five years, and I’ve had friends help in my absence. In one area I paid a homeless guy, and gave him the food to do it.

What is one memorable experience you’ve had with a cat?

I made friends with one particular old grey guy. At the time he had two good eyes. One night he showed up and one of his eyes was almost hanging out of his head. He had a puncture scab on his eyeball and essentially the eyeball died. But the cat lived two more years. I had to have him euthanized this past winter because he stopped eating. He was literally starving to death and losing critical weight before my eyes. I had a little box for him with a blanket in it, under a mobile trailer. I trailed tuna to it, and he found it and learned to sleep in it. I finally got him by crawling under there myself. He was so weak, and he was a feisty big old mean feral hissing thing. I took him to the vet, and the vet opened up the box, and he was just sitting there, looking out with one eye that was crystal clear, like he was content, because he was warm and dry. It was an awful time of year to have him out there dying. The vet said, “He’s got kidney failure, his mouth is full of abscesses.” He was so weak, he probably would’ve been dead in 24 hours. I touched him. His back was like a rock, so much tension and soreness. It felt like the spine was three inches wide. All the vet techs were crying.

How has this work changed you?

It’s made me think about life and death a lot. Seeing these animals suffer slowly or be violently killed is hard. I think TNR definitely has a role in helping to control (and hopefully end) the overpopulation problem, but it has limits. The program needs guidelines around where these cats can be placed and a guarantee that they will be provided for. And the effort needs wider financial support. That is my hope, that the City will begin to see this as the City’s problem to address and resolve, and that with volunteer support it can be resolved. I think if we were dealing with packs of wild and starving dogs running in the City’s parks and through the streets, the issue would get the attention it deserves. Unfortunately for these cats, they are an invisible problem for most people.