Cats found dead – and one other in pest control cage – on Fresno church property
Two cats were found dead, their bodies flattened, at a Fresno church property on Saturday about a month after another was found alive in a pest control cage in the sun outside a building there.
The report was made by Kandice Tapfer, 29, of Fresno.
“It was the worst thing that I’ve had to see,” she said tearfully about picking up fragments of a bloodied kitten’s skull that she had been feeding.
It was recently killed and looked to have been stomped, she said. That same day, Tapfer found a second dead cat outside Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church. It appeared to have been dead longer, its body decomposing.
Tapfer’s photos and videos of the dead and caged cats have been shared by hundreds of people online.
The images led to picketing outside the church in central Fresno, newly-created Facebook groups against the church, and a public announcement about the incident by Fresno Humane Animal Services.
Church deletes Facebook posts about cats
The church near Belmont Avenue and Fresno Street wrote about the cats in Facebook posts this weekend that have since been deleted.
Screenshots of those posts reveal that the church said someone was feeding the cats who was asked to stop and didn’t, leading to an “infestation.” The church said it hired a company to remove them: “We have no control on the method used to capture the animals and we have no idea what was done with them.”
Tapfer said there was only a handful of cats recently, and a few others previously disappeared.
The owner of the pest control company hired – who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, stating he has received death threats – said he does not kill cats.
He said when the church contacted him, “there was no discussion about what to do with the cats” and that the church just asked if “there is a way to take care of the situation.”
The owner said he checked his cages once a day with the intent of taking the cats elsewhere, but never saw one in his cages, which he removed July 13, about a week after Tapfer said she found a cat in one of them and called him repeatedly. The owner said he catches and releases other animals, too, and wasn’t involved with the deaths of cats at the church.
Another now-deleted church post this weekend expressed frustration about the situation: “There are people dying all around us from a terrible virus and we’re spending too much time and energy on a box of cats. … I will no longer be focused on cats at the church … The cat issue is complete and over.”
The church also wrote it “does not condone the mistreatment of animals but we are responsible for the health and safety of the church property.”
In a statement shared with The Bee on Tuesday afternoon, church leaders said they reached out to the SPCA for help, which “recommended we hire an exterminator to help us, which we did.”
The church said the exterminator safely removed two cats from the property without injuring them. (The pest control owner told The Bee on Monday that he never found any cats in his cages.)
SPCA responded by saying its most recent requests for service from the Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church address are from 2017.
“We recommend the church leadership reach out to us regarding their stray cat issue,” a SPCA administrator said.
Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church said it is now working with nonprofit Chasing Tails to safely remove remaining cats. “They have assured us that the cats will be cared for on a 20 acre ranch managed by the Hope Foundation.”
The church statement does not address the two dead cats Tapfer said she found on their property. A follow-up question about that was not answered.
Church leaders also apologized to anyone who “may have been offended” by verbal exchanges with volunteers or “posts deemed insensitive” on the church’s social media pages, which were being managed by multiple people. “New processes are being implemented to avoid this happening again.”
Some community members have mistakenly directed complaints to a church with a similar name, First Missionary Baptist Church of Fresno. Pastor Nicholas Lewis of First Missionary said his north Fresno church is getting “attacked” online and over the phone regarding the situation. It has the same acronym as Fellowship Missionary, FMBC.
Lewis said he’s never met the pastor at Fellowship Missionary and is not affiliated with that church. First Missionary does “not approve of the abuse of animals in any way,” Lewis said.
Woman who feeds them talks about finding dead cats
Tapfer started feeding the church cats a year ago by slipping food through a hole in a fence from an adjacent parking lot.
It started with caring for a three-legged mother cat and her four kittens. She said she asked church staff months ago if she could come onto the church property to catch them, but was told no. Then two of the kittens grew up and had babies, too.
Tapfer had hoped to gain enough trust to catch the cats and bring them to an animal rescue group once the kittens – which were being weaned on the church property – were big enough.
She said she found the caged kitten July 6 after a neighbor alerted her of hearing a cat in distress on a side of the church property she never saw, far from the hole in the fence where she fed the cats.
“He was half dead,” Tapfer said of the caged kitten she found. “He could barely move. He was sitting there whimpering.”
She said she jumped the fence to rescue the cat after calling for help and finding no one at the church. She said the caged cat was in direct sun and locked to a post, without any shade nearby.
“He drank water for so long after we got him out of the trap.”
On Aug. 8, Tapfer said her daily trip to feed the cats was eerily different. Unlike normal, she didn’t see the cats when she arrived, and the food and water bowls were scattered in the parking lot on the other side of the fence, instead of where she left them at the church. She then took a video of seeing a dead black-and-white kitten on the church property. After that, she said she found a second dead cat decomposed on a church walkway.
Tapfer said she managed to catch the three-legged cat on Monday morning, which is going to be adopted.
SPCA, Animal Services, comment
Central California Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did not share information about the incident, aside from confirming they received reports about it. Central California SPCA handles animal control services for the city.
Central California SPCA spokesman Walter Salvari said Monday afternoon that dispatch had received information, “but I cannot confirm a true investigation as of yet.”
On Tuesday, Salvari added, “At this point in time we are in the preliminary stages of possibly opening a case. It is my understanding that this involves gathering facts.”
Tapfer said a SPCA supervisor spoke with her on Monday morning, and Fresno police spoke with her on Sunday.
California has laws against killing and harming animals.
Fresno Humane Animal Services – which provides animal control services for different, unincorporated parts of the county – posted about the reported incident on its Facebook page.
“Whatever happened to them is still not clear, but all the cats are gone,” the group wrote. “We can only assume no spay/neuter was being provided, considering there were kittens found dead.”
Brenda Mitchell, board president of Fresno Humane Animal Services, is an advocate for “TNR” – which stands for trapping, neutering, and then returning feral cats to where they were found. She said feeding stray cats without fixing them is just “killing them with kindness.”
Mitchell said people can learn more by emailing info@fresnohumane.org. Fresno Humane Animal Services has a form people can fill out to report feral cat populations in Fresno, also available by texting TNR to 559-600-PETS (7387).
Salvari said SPCA doesn’t do TNR as an agency, but that its shelter accepts stray animals within the city jurisdiction.
“Some do come in traps from the public, and they are held the legal stray hold of five days, not including the day of intake,” Salvari said. “If feral cats are contained, or trapped at a residence, we will send an officer during business hours to pick them up. We will not run around the property collecting cats as they have free roam in the City of Fresno.”
On Tuesday, a SPCA administrator added that picking up “healthy confined stray cats” has been suspended due to COVID-19, “however, we are still accepting cats from the public by appointment and are picking up stray animals from businesses when requested.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 8:10 AM.
