SYCAMORE, Illinois: A woman, Teresa Damm, owns a house at 330 Terence Drive, Sycamore. She has a severe allergy to cats. When she arrived to live in the area they were feral cats. She wanted to fix the problem and decided to fund and work with a local non-profit, Fixin’ Feral Felines. The organisation trapped neutered and released feral cats partly funded by Damm.
She was doing her bit to eliminate feral cats from her neighbourhood. Meanwhile, she was being heavily criticised by her neighbours on Facebook for feeding feral cats. They thought she was feeding feral cats or they regarded her as someone who was keeping the cats on the streets because TNR works slowly and a lot of people who dislike cats don’t like the slowness of the process.
We are told that as she was unfairly and heavily criticised on Facebook (daily-chronicle.com) she decided to put four very prominent signs outside her house. One of them is a For Sale By Owner sign. It says that she is selling her house for $220,000. The other three are heavily critical of her neighbours. The signs strongly indicate that some neighbours are killing feral cats. For example, one of them reads (verbatim):
“Beware, this neighbourhood are all cat killers and haters”.
Another sign reads:
“We are watching you HICKS… (I can’t read the remainder)”.
Not all the neighbours dislike her it seems. Some people think that Damm has done the neighborhood a service (which is true). She has donated more than $700 over time to TNR the cats. Jane Kosek of Fixin’ Feral Felines said that she has trapped, fixed and released 400 feral cats in Sycamore. In the area where Damm lives 43 feral cats have been neutered and released.
Damm’s sign saying that she is going to sell her house indicates that she is fed up with the area and her neighbours and wants to move away. However, she said that her house is not really for sale but she has no plans to remove the signs.
In addition, she said that if somebody wants to buy her out ‘so be it’. I’m exactly not sure what that means but it seems to mean that she would leave if her neighbours or an neighbor bought her out.
Classic TNR story
The story is not uncommon in respect of one person feeding feral cat or operating a TNR program while others learn to dislike the person because they dislike feral cats. It seems to me that there is quite a lot of hostility towards some volunteers who operate TNR programs in America.
Lady moves home to a more civilized place after her neighbor shoots her cat
I have more than once considered using the pictures of my in-laws animals on signage in my own yard or tounge in cheek starting a page called MY In-Laws Pets. Bully to this woman who put animal abusers on notice in her neighborhood.