DETROIT – If you live in the city of Detroit, you will likely see stray cats wandering in your neighborhood and maybe popping up in your bushes or showing up on your porch.
When you walk into Lauren Latocki’s home in Morningside, which is on Detroit’s east side, you are quickly greeted by her welcoming committee.
“I’ve always loved cats,” Latocki said on Friday. “They’re just great to be around, and I feel like we have a really big community of other people who really love cats as well.”
She currently has seven cats – five foster kittens, along with two of her own. And she isn’t your typical cat lady.
You see, Lauren goes around the neighborhood catching stray and feral cats.
She calls it Morningside TNR – which stands for “trap-neuter-release.”
It’s something she started doing when she lived in Oregon and has continued since she moved to Detroit two years ago.
“One female cat and its offspring can produce, I believe, up to like 1,000 kittens within a year,” she said. “We just want to kind of keep the population to a reasonable amount and get kittens out and into homes.”
She gets in her car and drives around her neighborhood, going to spots that are frequently teeming with felines – she calls them “colonies.” She lures the cats out with food and eventually befriends them.
“When I work on trapping them, I’ll come out here and just have a schedule, so they know I’m coming,” she said. And so, when I come out with the cage, they just kind of go right in it with the food to eat it.”
She sets up small cages with food as bait, eventually catching them and taking them to an animal rescue – such as All About Animals in Detroit – or to a veterinarian.
They get spayed or neutered, along with other medical procedures, before being released back into the proverbial wild. When she catches kittens, she usually fosters them and tries to get them adopted.
Lauren normally goes out trapping at night, when they’re more likely to roam around.
“We have a lot about a block over, and there was a colony there that didn’t have any cats that were fixed,” she said. “I got seven of them fixed, and just a half a block down the road, there’s a wonderful woman who’s taking care of another colony.”
“All the kittens that I have right now are from that colony,” she added. “There’s probably about eight adult cats, and three litters of four were born at the same time. So, it quickly went from eight to 20.”
Lauren says cats that repeatedly have litters can live shorter lives, as multiple pregnancies lead to several health issues.
One neighborhood stray cat she found on Friday named “Grandma” has had four litters.
She intends to get her spayed soon.
She pays for the food mostly out of her own pocket but does get donations from neighbors, such as cat food and toys.
For her, the key to all of this is consistency. This is all a labor of love for her.
“Just create a routine for them, so I bring my food at the same time every night,” she said. “I have appointments for two to be fixed on Monday, so Sunday night I’ll be out trapping, making sure I get two.
“With feral kittens, usually only 25 percent of them make it to six months of age,” she said. “We just want to save some cats.”