Activists accuse MTA of starving feral cat colony in subway stop

brooklyn feral cats — When reached for comment, other feral cats yawned and licked themselves. via Flickr user Anthony Fine

The MTA isn’t exactly on what anyone would call a winning streak. There’s the frequent train breakdowns and delays during rush hour, the weekend L train shutdowns, the fare hike and the sense that they’re an enormous faceless government entity that doesn’t care about puny human existence. Now on top of all that, the Brooklyn Daily reports that cat-lovers in Bensonhurst are claiming that the MTA constructed a wall in front of a feral cat colony, blocking the animal lovers’ attempts to feed and rescue the cats.

The Bay Parkway N stop in Bensonhurst is apparently home to a feral cat colony that lives on a platform next to the stairs. A trio of cat lovers, Jose Hidalgo, Austin Torres and Mary Ann Torres, claim to have been leaving food for the colony by slipping cat food through a gap between the stairs and platform. Now though, the MTA has blocked off the opening with wire mesh, making it impossible to feed the cats, and bringing the animal cruelty charge from the feline fellow travelers.

The trio also claims that they’ve asked the MTA to allow them access to the platform to put down cat traps and rescue the cats, only to be ignored, although the MTA claims they’ve received no such requests. The transit authority also claims they didn’t have cat murder on their mind when they installed the mesh, telling the paper that it was an effort to prevent litter from piling up on the platform. However this saga eventually ends, it’s weird to see that everyone’s missing the real story going on here, because if this is how the MTA is dealing with cat problems now, Joe Lhota must have seized power in a bloody City Hall coup.