The Willets Point plan aims to revitalize a blighted area in central Queens, but activists say the developers are failing to address a key community with squatter rights: the so-called “Shea Stadium strays.”
Just steps from Citi Field, in the dusty grounds of the Iron Triangle, a colony of filthy, malnourished cats have called the area home for nearly a century.
Already, as many as 100 cats have been chased off the fields and funneled into a shrinking auto body division that is expected to be the next area cleared for a football stadium, retail complex and housing developments.
Animal rights activists warn that further evictions would ensure their doom.
“They have nowhere to go except to die. They have nowhere to go,” said Regina Massaro, founder of the Spay-Neuter-Intervention Project (SNIP) in New York City.
Massaro, holding a 48-pack of Friskies cans in one hand and a gallon of water in the other, guided The Washington Post on a tour of the devastation Wednesday afternoon, just hours after thousands of baseball fans munched on hot dogs and beer while watching the Mets beat the Red Sox, 8-3.
Massaro said this contrast best illustrates the dire situation: As multi-million dollar developments continue to eat away at the animals' homes, they will soon be forced into polluted Flushing Creek and residential areas.
“Nobody cares. I'm the only one who can speak for these animals,” Massaro, 74, of Maspeth, said as he picked up a discarded slice of Sicilian pizza, tore it into bite-sized pieces and tossed it back to the cats.
“I need to get out of here and go home. These cats need to stay here.”
Stray cats have run rampant in Willets Point for nearly 100 years, even making a refuge at Shea Stadium, which was built in 1964. One stray cat famously scurried through the Cubs dugout during a 1969 game and taunted the Chicago team, helping lead the Mets to their first World Series victory.
Since then, the cat population has boomed, but activists say a lack of resources and shrinking land are putting the cats' lives at risk, with many already dying of starvation or disease.
Now, many of the auto repair shop's employees help feed the litter of cats but don't pay for their veterinary care, which SNIP NYC covers by about $2,000 a month.
Massaro, known in car dealership circles as “Cat Girl,” has been visiting the Iron Triangle at midnight five times a week for 17 years to feed and trap cats.
Over the years, she has trapped as many as 300 cats and brought them to North Shore Animal Hospital for sterilization. Only 50 of the friendly felines have been able to find new homes, but most are strays who must be released back into Massaro, a rural town in Willett Point that has been likened to a Third World country.
As activists were feeding the cats, The Post witnessed a frantic employee pleading with her boss to adopt and neuter a new cat that was sleeping in his office – the pet had been “abandoned” on the storefront just hours earlier.
“I come to work in the morning and there are 25 cats outside,” said Paul Cohen, owner of the Roosevelt Auto Wrecking Office, adding that he spends $200 a month on food for his countless cats. “It's a terrible situation.”
“She's doing the best she can but she can't keep up. It's getting bigger and bigger every day.”
A block away, Felix Lara told The Post that the cats' plight is a frequent topic of conversation in the neighborhood.
When the shop eventually closes, he plans to take home one unnamed, 8-year-old white and brown short-haired stray cat that has been coming to the shop since it was a kitten, but he worries about the dozens of other cats who will never be adopted.
“What will happen to the cats? We can't adopt them. It's so hard,” Lara said.
Massaro's work has included soliciting support from city and state agencies and private developers, and she plans to intensify those efforts as construction continues on the New York City Football Club's stadium and surrounding buildings.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Housing Preservation and Development Corporation both told The Post they were working with partners to monitor the situation but did not say whether they had plans to do anything about the cats. The New York City Economic Development Corporation declined to comment, and the Queens Development Corporation did not respond.
Assemblywoman Grace Meng and the mayor's office did not respond to requests for comment. The Queens borough president's office has no record of complaints about the cats, and a representative for City Councilman Francisco Moya said the issue is being investigated.
While the situation looks grim, Brian Cortis of Neighborhood Cats stressed that hope is not lost yet, but someone needs to act before the cats go off on their own and spread the problem elsewhere.
“With these kinds of displacements, there's no strategy, there's no management, so what's going to happen is what's going to happen. They don't stay there and wait to be killed by a bulldozer, they disperse. And they disperse to wherever they can find the nearest source of food and shelter,” Cortis told the Post.
“They may have to cross a busy road. They may try to go back into dangerous situations because cats are very territorial. They may not be able to find a food source. There is a risk of rabies for cats… so the risk is great,” he said, adding that without mass sterilization the animals will continue to breed and only perpetuate the problem.
Cortis suggested a managed withdrawal, where feral cats are slowly guided to safety or transported to a sanctuary.
Ideally, cats should have been neutered decades ago to avoid this problem altogether, he noted.
“If they had followed our advice in 2008 and trapped and neutered the cats in the area, they wouldn't be having this problem today. There would be a lot fewer cats and it would be a lot easier to deal with,” Cortis said.
“It's out of control. There are a lot fewer options. The city has not taken any responsibility for the feral cat situation…This has been a chronic problem for years and it leads to situations like Willett Point.”
Massaro hopes that with support from the government, the developer of Willets Point and neighbour Steve Cohen, the Mets' owner, the cats will be able to live out the rest of their lives freely in the neighbourhood.
She argues that the cats, “descendants of the feral cats at Shea Stadium,” have squatter rights and says she hopes Willets Point Development will create a safe space in the 23-acre project for the cats to live out the rest of their lives.
“Only one of two things can happen here: they stay here and get proper shelter and care, or they get kicked out, which means death,” she said.
