Stray Cats Still Riling Residents in Baldwin Township

'Why Can't They Just Get Euthanized?'

A stray cats issue has dogged the Baldwin Township Board of Commissioners ever since a Donaldson Drive resident made  at a township meeting in early June.

Two months later, the issue remains just as topical, as evidenced by comments from Jean Colaizzi, of Highview Road, at another meeting on Tuesday night.

Colaizzi asked the township's leaders on Tuesday to enact an ordinance prohibiting cats from being allowed to roam Baldwin without a leash. She said that cats found as such should be rounded up by animal control officers and killed.

"Why can't they just get euthanized?" Colaizzi asked the board while suggesting that a would not lessen the cat population enough. "That would be the best thing; wouldn't it?"

Colaizzi said that she is frustrated by how cats have affected her property.

"I have about a dozen cats that are in my back yard, crapping in my yard, in my flowers, in my vegetables. It stinks so bad in my back yard that I cannot sit out there and enjoy the summer evenings."

She also expressed worry that some of the cats may be carrying diseases.

"One cat ... has hissed at me," she said. "Now, if I get bitten by one of these cats, and they're rabid, what is going to happen?

"There's a whole slew of people down there (on Highview). Their kids go out to play. They can't go in the house with their clothes 'cause it's covered in cat pee and whatever."

Board President Eileen Frisoli said that the township does have an ordinance in place restricting dogs to leashes but not cats.

Colaizzi also complained that some of her neighbors have been feeding the cats, but there is no ordinance in place in Baldwin Township disallowing that activity, either.

"If we were to enact an ordinance banning the feeding of stray cats, that becomes a neighbor-against-neighbor type of situation," board member Nick Pellegrino said. "You would have to report a neighbor for feeding the cats and violating the ordinance, and when they get a ticket, if they appeal it, you would then have to show up at the magistrate's office to be the witness against them.

"There could be good coming out of an ordinance like that, and there could be the issue of now having a neighborly dispute, a contentious relationship, whatever you want to call it."

Fellow board member John Paravati assured Colaizzi that her complaints were not falling on deaf ears.

"We are looking into some options," Paravati said. "Just so you know, we're not ignoring the problem."

In the meantime, if Colaizzi wanted to have a stray cat removed from her property and euthanized, she would have to trap it and contact animal control officers to have it taken away, Pellegrino said.

Regardless of no ordinance being in effect, Frisoli encouraged Colaizzi and all township residents to ask each other to please not feed stray cats.

Will Old Bus Stop Signs Be Removed?

With Port Authority service stops , township resident Gary J. Moeller, of Highview, asked township leaders on Tuesday to have out-of-service bus stop signs removed.

Moeller called the no-longer-applicable signs "an eyesore" for the township.

Frisoli said that Port Authority of Allegheny County is responsible for removing those signs and that the authority will be contacted about that.

Sportsmen's Ca$h Ba$h

The Castle Shannon Volunteer Fire Department, which serves Baldwin Township, will hold its next Sportsmen's Ca$h Ba$h fundraiser at the fire station along Route 88 in Castle Shannon Borough on Sunday, Oct. 28.

Snyder Absent

Commissioner Susan V. Snyder did not attend Tuesday night's meeting.

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