There’s a house on 20th Street in Covington’s Peaselburg neighborhood. No one lives there, or rather, no people live there. But that doesn’t mean it’s not occupied. Passers-by will notice the house’s occupants if they look close enough. They’re often clustered together, like tangles of ghosts, in the shade of the house’s shadow: cats.
The property belongs to a nonprofit animal service organization called the Tristate Noah Project, which purchased the house late in 2022, according to Kenton County property records.
The house has become the site of a conflict between the organization, the city and some of the street’s neighbors, who view the house as a nuisance. The situation prompts deeper questions about animal welfare practices, urban ecology and related public policy in the NKY region, one where both the lives of the animals and humans are affected.
Laura Beth Bamberger, the Tristate Noah Project’s founder, described when she first started taking animal service work seriously.
“When I decided to start the rescue, it started with a cat that was severely beat,” Bamberger said.
Bamberger said the cat belonged to a woman she knew whose boyfriend had abused and kicked the cat out of the house. The animal’s jaw was broken, and its skull was crushed. Animal control had come to take the cat to be euthanized, but Bamberger volunteered to care for the cat instead.
“I called the cat’s name,” Baumberger said. “He literally jumped out of the officer’s arms in that horrible state, and he kind of crawled to me. I took the cat, and it took months–I think four months and over $5,000, easily over 5 grand, maybe 6 grand [in care]–but it was the first time that I actually asked for donations online.”
Although cats are an outsized part of the organization’s focus, they work with other animals, too, including dogs. If you go to the organization’s social media pages, you’ll see numerous photos and ads of the animals in the project’s care, asking people to adopt or foster them. The posts are frequently accompanied by donation solicitations.
Bamberger said the organization also performs community educational events, offers help for pet-owning veterans, and at times even provides veterinary and charitable help for families who can’t otherwise afford pet care. They’ve sometimes provided community meals and have performed other charitable efforts. Much of the project’s work draws upon volunteer labor.
Still, Bamberger said, “essentially, the care of homeless cats is our primary focus.”
To that end, one of the primary services the organization provides is called trap, neuter and return, often shortened to TNR. It refers to the practice of trapping free-roaming cats, spaying or neutering them, and then returning them to where they were picked up. Kenton County classifies cats that have undergone TNR as community cats. You can tell if a cat on the street has undergone TNR through the county by its tipped ear.
The term ‘community cat’ frequently appears in literature about the management of cat populations in urban environments, where it is used more loosely than in the county. It can refer to stray cats, which were often formerly owned before getting lost or abandoned, and feral cats, which refers to cats who have spent long periods of time outside and, thus, aren’t socialized to humans. An individual cat can sometimes straddle definitions, as well. For instance, a cat born in a human home could get out and become a stray, live outside for years becoming essentially feral before warming up to a community member again, who takes it in as a pet.
TNR is considered best practice among most public animal control agencies as well as professional advocacy groups. The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the American Association of Feline Practitioners, The Humane Society, the Association of Shelter Veterinarians and Alley Cat Allies all swear by TNR as a means of controlling community cat populations. Moreover, it’s considered a more humane option than trapping and euthanizing community cats outright, which most advocacy groups agree isn’t even effective at controlling populations.
Compared to free-roaming dogs, which tend not to be prevalent in large numbers in the United States, free-roaming, owner-less cats are common in urban environments. Some are born outside, some get lost or separated from their owners, and others are abandoned, either deliberately or through circumstance. The Feline Research Council estimates there are about 32 million feral cats alone in the United States, but this estimate is rough given there’s no centralized way of tracking populations.
Sometimes, cats can be abandoned in large numbers.
“I was contacted by a man who bought a property, and these people [the former owners] left 15, I think, plus cats behind,” Bamberger said.
There are numerous animal welfare laws in place at the state, county and city level. They sometimes vary in the details, but they broadly prohibit acts of cruelty, abandonment, torture and neglect against animals.
In fact, a new Kentucky law called Ethan’s Law, which makes torturing cats and dogs a first-degree felony, went into effect this month. Many jurisdictions also have licensing and micro-chipping requirements in place to better track pet populations.
Kentucky counties are also legally required to have publicly funded animal shelters. Boone, Kenton and Campbell Counties’ animal shelters all have no-kill status, which, in spite of its name, doesn’t actually mean they refrain completely from euthanasia. A shelter achieves no-kill status when it has a 90% or greater live outcome rate, meaning the animals within are either adopted out, returned to their owners or transferred to other facilities. Euthanasia that does occur is often done so for health reasons, age or if the animal is deemed dangerous (the last point is more relevant for dogs than cats). These days, most shelters view euthanasia as a last resort.
In spite of the legal groundwork, Bamberger expressed frustration at what she characterized as the lack of practical resources resources available, especially for homeless cats.
"The reality is shelters are full," Bamberger said.
Much of the Tristate Noah Project's work aims to bring help to animals who would otherwise be left to fend for themselves. It's undeniable that the people involved are driven by a deep sense of compassion and mission for the animals.
So, what's the problem?
Criticisms against the project fall into two general complaints.
The first is the Peaselburg house itself: It's falling apart. Code enforcement records from the city cite damage throughout the house--missing gutters, damaged windows, holes in the roof. The outside wall on the second floor has collapsed.
The second, which relates to the house, is the project's practice of leaving food out for cats for extended periods. In addition to the services related above, the project also deposits food at sites throughout the region. Although leaving food and water out for recently TNR'd cats is considered best practice among advocacy and policy groups, there's disagreement about the details.
Kenton County ordinance, which has a whole section on the management of community cats, prohibits leaving uneaten food out for more than an hour. Alley Cat Allies, one of the more prominent cat advocacy groups, recommends removing uneaten food even sooner, within 30 minutes.
The project has circulated an online petition, which has about 2,200 signatures at the time of this article's appearance, to revoke the county ordinance mandating food be removed within an hour, arguing it violates state law against animal cruelty. Bamberger maintains this would bring Kenton County ordinance more in line with Boone and Campbell Counties, which lack such a stipulation. The petition also asks for the county to revoke two other ordinances: one encouraging people not to feed cats in public areas and one forbidding the use of public property by community cat caretakers without a permit.
"If cats who’ve become dependent on the food provided to them do not eat, that is neglect and cruelty," the petition reads.
Leaving food out was a common complaint among the neighbors on 20th Street who spoke to LINK nky. One neighbor, Darcie Joyce, described the house as a "nuisance" and said that the food attracted not only cats but also vermin and other wild life.
Another neighbor, Paul Brautigan, said that some of the cats were aggressive and had even scratched one of his kids. He also said that the cats' presence agitated the dogs on the street, causing them to bark more often.
"I know it's costing people their sleep," Brautigan said.
Brautigan said that at one point he and some of the other neighbors had gathered up the food that had been left on the porch and redistributed it to the neighbors' cats throughout the street. He said that in response, the project put plywood up around the porch, an act that landed the organization one among many code enforcement violations from the city.
Joyce, Brautigan and another neighbor, Danny Morris, attested to something else as well: the presence of vultures. By Morris' account, vultures had in the past alighted onto some of the neighboring properties. From there they would slip into one of the openings in the roof to snatch what he believed to be the kittens that had come to populate the interior.
LINK nky did not observe any vultures when it viewed the house from the street. However, a photo taken in May of last year by city code enforcement clearly shows a black vulture perching in one of the house's open windows.
One particularly grim episode attested to in city documents occurred in July last year. A neighbor, whose name is redacted in the records LINK requested, had made a complaint that the house "had the smell of death coming from it," in the city's report.
Covington Code Enforcement Officer Jeff Volter, whose name appears frequently throughout the complaint documents, writes in the report that a project volunteer had found dead cats that had been hit by cars and dropped them on the house's porch for five days, where they conceivably began rotting in the heat. At code enforcement's behest, another volunteer came, bagged the carcasses and removed them.
In January, when the snow from a storm began melting, code enforcement located the skeletal remains of an animal on the walkway leading up to the house.
All in all, the city has fined the project over $2,000 since they purchased the property. As of the end of June, none of the fines have been paid, according to the city. In a scenario where the project remains delinquent on its violations, the city could put a lien on the house.
Not all of the neighbors who spoke with LINK nky took issue with the house. Two neighbors, both of whom declined to give their names, said they didn't have a problem with it. Bamberger also furnished correspondence suggesting that at least one neighbor had agreed to accept help from the project in caring for their own cats.
The organization offered other rebuttals in the face of complaints. Firstly, it said that many of the structural problems in the house predated their purchase of the property. Moreover, Bamberger said they've actually made some improvements to the house since they bought it and are planning on doing a full rehab through a contractor, Velazco Renovations. Velazco confirmed with LINK nky that they were planning such renovations but were waiting for building permits from the city.
Bamberger offered other rebuttals as well. The skeleton in the yard likely didn't belong to a cat but to another animal—she furnished a letter from a local vet arguing that it likely belonged to a possum or a raccoon. Both the project and other animal welfare organizations argue that the problems apparent at the house are, in fact, downstream from broader socioeconomic problems.
Housing shortages and economic disparity, Bamberger argues, have led to a situation where more and more people are abandoning their cats. Finally, the cats were already living there when they purchased the house, Bamberger said, and all of the cats currently on the property have been spayed or neutered. She also disputes the suspicion among the neighbors and the city that the project intends to turn the property into a private shelter or rescue.
Stephanie Weddle, the founder of another animal welfare organization, Furgotten Dog Rescue, came to the project's defense, echoing many of Bamberger's arguments.
"Yes, there is a cat overpopulation crisis. This is not an isolated incident specific to the one property. The cats were there (on the property) prior to the rescue purchase," Weddle said in an email.
"Cat overpopulation is not a consequence of feeding and housing homeless cats," Weddle said later in the email.
As to why the project invested in the house at all, it argues that the cats there have become dependent on humans. Thus, it was necessary to ensure their welfare.
Amanda Karrick, a volunteer with the project, drove home this point when she said that even after several neighbors agreed to help care for the cats at the property, it wasn't enough.
"It was clear the cats needed to be cared for at the location they were living," Karrick said.
Bamberger reiterated that the existing system around animal welfare is inadequate.
"Something needs to be created that is sustainable, that is aesthetically pleasing but ultimately helps to correct the problem because, ultimately, there are neighborhoods with a large number of homeless cats," Bamberger said. "I didn't put them there."
