The Brownwood City Council met Tuesday morning and the topic of feral cats took up the majority of the meeting time.  Extra seating was brought in for a large crowd that gathered for Item 9B on the agenda which read – Tami Rodgers with TNR Brownwood will present a petition that was circulated regarding the cat colony in Riverside Park.

Concerning the feral cats at Riverside Park,  Rodgers presented a petition with 1,278 signatures, including 543 current Brownwood residents, in favor that the cat colony remain as is at Riverside Park.

Several passionate, cat loving citizens stood up for the felines.  Along with Rodgers, 11 others spoke in favor of the cat colony at Riverside Park.

Rodgers said, “What we would like to propose as a result of that petition is that TNR Brownwood would respectfully request permission to seize removal of the remaining Riverside Park colony cats. We would like to propose that we be allowed to continue to feed and maintain the colony according to the following: the cats currently at the park will be cataloged and vaccination records would be readily available; any newcomers to the park would be immediately trapped and vaccinated and returned to the park as long as the numbers are acceptable; the colony size would be maintained to at or less than 25 cats; friendly cats would immediately be put up for adoption through the shelter or TNR Brownwood’s Facebook page; ferals will be made available as working cats to anyone who needs pest control; we will continue to offer barn cats even if the colony size is acceptable; we would like the complaints about the cats to be passed on to us and we could work to resolve those. If one cat is singled out as a nuisance and we can’t resolve it that cat would be removed from the colony. We would ask this plan of action be extended to the other city parks as well.”

The discussion was contentious at times. The most heated moment of the meeting came later as the conversation meandered toward cats in other parks around the city.

Terry Igou stated to Haynes that no cats were at Festival Park near Gordon Wood Stadium. “They’re not in Festival Park,” Igou said. “Stop saying they’re in Festival Park, they’re not.”

Haynes replied, “There are cats in Festival Park.”

Igou interrupted by stating, “Bull****.”

Haynes replied saying, “Mr. Igou, you’ll speak with a proper tone or I’ll have the police remove you.”

Igou said, “Good bye. You can’t even talk regularly,” as he exited the council chambers.

Council member Draco Miller – who openly stated he was against cat colonies is all city parks – later stated, “This morning I sat back and I heard anger, vulgarity, cursing, and that is no way in shape to create a solution and get to a point where we solve this issue. We need to respect the council, we need to respect the chambers and we need to respect one another when we talk one another. We can’t get there with a lot of bickering and arguing to the point of our solution is better than your solution. We have to come up for one common solution and that’s for the citizens of Brownwood, not the cat colony.”

No action on the matter was taken, and the feral cat topic is again expected to appear on a future Brownwood City Council agenda.

You can read more from the meeting at this link to Brownwoodnews.com.