In 2014, Cathy Liu noticed an issue with the cats on Temple’s campus. During her daily commute, she observed a steadfast growth of felines roaming the grounds in poor conditions.
“People can’t even see how bad the problem is,” said Liu, a professor at the Boyer College of Music and Dance. “These cats are dying in hidden spaces and no one even knows.”
Since then, Liu has been committed to ensuring the cats in Temple’s neighborhood are well taken care of, and she has worked to control the cat population through the Temple Cats Facebook group. Liu, who earned her graduate degree from Temple in 1999, remains loyal to her alma mater by teaching piano in Boyer. When she is not in the classroom, her free time is devoted to Temple Cats.
Philadelphia has roughly 400,000 stray or feral cats, according to Animal Care and Control Service Provider, one of Philadelphia’s city shelters. Many cats take shelter in vacant lots and quiet corners, tactfully avoiding the buzzing city. In their hidden colonies, it does not take long for the cat population to grow out of control.
“A female cat can start giving birth at four months old,” Liu said. “Cat pregnancies only last two months and there is no waiting period between birth and another pregnancy. Each female cat can have 20 to 30 kittens a year. And then if half of those kittens are females, it’s an endless cycle.”
Under the expert eye of Temple Graduate Schools’ former assistant dean Margaret Pippet, Liu was taught everything she needed to know about operating Temple Cats. Pippet took control of the Temple Cats Facebook page in 2014 from its founder, Terri Martin, a former Temple faculty member who retired the same year.
Pippet was a leading member of Temple Cats until she retired in 2019. Under her guidance, Liu learned the method of trap, neuter and return, a widely used framework to reduce growing cat populations.
Anita Szoke, a 2024 biology alumna and Temple Cats volunteer, assisted Liu with the TNR method and was taught how to aid the process.
Temple Cats volunteers safely trap the cats and take them to ACCT, where veterinarians will neuter or spay them, and then release the strays back to where the volunteer found them. ACCT also administers the rabies vaccine and removes a corner of their ear to symbolize they were cared for.
“It prevents them from having more cats or kittens to kind of keep the population level down, and then also prevents them from getting rabies,” Szoke said.
Liu has essentially turned Temple Cats from just a Facebook page to a full-fledged non-profit organization. She recruits dozens of student volunteers each year and typically finds only one or two a year who are interested in assisting with TNR.
Jennifer Keller, a 2024 early child education alumna and Temple Cats volunteer, devoted the majority of her semesters as a student to caring for stray cats around campus. Around 12 feeding stations were set up around campus when she started in 2021. A key component of Keller’s role was to decipher which cats were adoptable and which ones could be neutered and remain outdoors, she said.
“Feral cats, you can’t socialize,” Keller said. “It’d be like trying to socialize a squirrel, it’s just not really possible. So they have to stay on the street.”
Under Liu’s guidance, Keller learned the ropes of TNR and worked closely with street cats. One of the hardest moments of her time volunteering with Temple Cats was when she trapped an extremely ill cat that needed to be put down, she said.
“The rewarding part of it is that you could get to put them out of their misery of dying alone on the street,” Keller said. “And he gets to pass with people in a pain-free kind of way.”
Liu reiterates a similar sentiment when describing the importance of their work. When the cat populations grow out of control, diseases can spread to not just cats — but humans too. Rabies is a common disease in feral cats, so by limiting the population, volunteers can more easily track new cats in the neighborhood to evaluate them for the disease.
Temple community members can post on the Temple Cats Facebook page about lost cats on their street, injured cats that need assistance, report their own missing cat and support the non-profit by donating food and supplies.
Temple Cats has been able to decrease the number of active feeding stations. By conducting TNR and finding homes for the adoptable cats, the stray population has decreased to primarily the same feral cat population feeding at their stations. Keller claims there is close to a 20% decrease in stray cats at Temple because of the work done by Temple Cats.
“The less cats, the better,” Liu said. “It’s just proving that what we’re doing is working.”
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