Nonprofit animal rescue organizations are stepping forward to help corral a colony of stray cats near the Port Authority busway extension project in Swissvale. Representatives of Adopt A Cat of Western Pennsylvania and the Pittsburgh-based Homeless Cat Management Team are setting up meetings with borough officials and residents, and plan to trap and neuter as many of the felines as possible. Some cats might be adopted while others might be returned to the neighborhood to feast on rats in the area, officials said. Doris Litman, president of Adopt A Cat, said her organization is getting involved to ensure the cats will not be euthanized. Borough officials and residents seem to be working together to avoid that scenario, Litman said. "It could have been a wholesale bad trip for the kitties," Litman said. Litman said she's spoken with some borough officials and plans meetings with residents. "We don't know how many cats there are, we'll have to set up a meeting to see what the size of the population is," Litman said.

To help Residents who want to find out more about humane programs available to help control feral cats may contact: Homeless Cat Management Team, (412) 321-4060. Adopt a Cat of Western Pennsylvania (412) 621-2287.

The Homeless Cat Team plans to neuter 10 to 15 of the cats at a North Side clinic on Sept. 8, Litman said. The organization plans to employ a program in which stray cats are neutered and returned to the neighborhoods in which they were found, Chris Whyle, a clinic coordinator and the organization's vice president, said. Adopt A Cat also will have some cats spayed or neutered by area veterinarians, Litman said. Once neutered, some cats might be adopted, although some will prove too feral for the adoption process, Litman said. Some residents believe the large population of cats is attributable to the 2.3-mile Martin Luther King Jr. busway extension, stretching from Wilkinsburg to the Rankin-Swissvale border. They believe the project has left cats stuck on the eastern side of the tracks. Rats might be the prime attraction for the cats. Mail carrier Mary Roberta said that since busway work got under way, she's noticed a large number of rats on the western side of the project, and has seen few rats on the eastern side. Others blame the problem on a large number of unneutered female cats in the neighborhood. Whyle said she has talked to code enforcement officer Fred Kuhn and borough Manager Warren Cicconi about lending humane traps to Swissvale residents to capture the feral cats. Whyle added the cat problem in Swissvale is not unique. Feral cats are "all over the place," she said. She said feral cats should be valued for the role they play in rodent control. "They are a very valuable resource that takes care of the rodent population," she said. Whyle said that after feral cats have been neutered or spayed, they make much better neighbors because they don't spray, yowl or fight loudly in the dead of night as mating cats notoriously do.

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