20++ YEAR CAT COLONY BEING DESTRYED BY NEW ADMIN AT PINEBROOK CARE CENTER

The new administrator at the Pinebrook Care Center in Manalapan, NJ filed a complaint with Dave Richarson of the Manalapan Health Department.  No actual evidence was offered at the time yet he insists on the removal of a managed cat colony that has resided in the woods for more than 2o years.  There have been no complaints in 20 years yet all of a sudden the cats must be killed because they sometimes walk on the driveway. 

The real reason the Adminsitrator wants the cats removed is so that their caretakers and others will not see, then report their multiple HEALTH CODE violations which are unrelated to the cats. He is of the misguided belief that if the cats are removed 1) they will not return 2) Manalapan residents will stop dumping their unwanted pets 3) that another cat colony won't take over.

Everyone who lives in the area or visits know of the cats.  Visitors and Pinebrook Care employees leave food and have also adopted them as pets over the years. One Pinebrook worker even helped shovel a snow path in the winters and helped build shelters for them.

The kitties are sweet, well fed cats.  However, the new adminstrator wants them gone even though they are part of the community.  In fact, the cats have resided in the area for more than 20 years and the new administrator is only on board 2 months! Two months you say??  We do not even know how long he will be around yet he wants the cats removed. With the high turnover rate at Pinebrook we can only hope him part of that equation. Each of his calls to animal control is a waste of Manalapan's financial resources, your tax dollars.  Animal Control has better things to do with their time like locate and respond to dog fighters, rescue bait animals, animal abusers, and capture run away farm animals.  Animal control sits waiting in the parking lot for hours at a time while the new administrator hires a maintenance person to remove cinder block debris dumped there more than a dozen years ago.  The unfornunate part of the equation is that many of the cas birth their kitten in that "igloo" of rock and the Administrator named Aaron could care less.  His guy is diggin up their homes, causing the cats to run away in fear, squelching the efforts to safely remove them.  In addition, rock debris can potentially fatally kll a mother and her nursing babies.  This is a tragedy.

If the beautiful cats of Manalapan/Pinebrook are forced off the property, they will be taken to the overcrowded, filty, Helmetta Animal Shelter, as per the Manalapan Health Officer,  then be killed. Helmetta is a concentration camp for feral cats who wait the fate of death.  100% of feral cats are killed within 7 days, if they last that long.  While they await their fate, they are trapped in wire cells scared out of their minds, struggling to get free, hurting themselves in the process, separated from their babies and feline friends, torn from their homes, panting in fear. They are accustomed to roaming free and become depressed. They are not treated well.
We also do not know how many beautiful pets are being sold for animal experiementation.  The veil of secrecy is so acute and they are never reported to the general public and are accounted for only through internal reports, you never see.

It costs Manalapan Township thousands and thosands of dollars to inhumanely trap helpless, otherwise happy, cats and kittens.  They are ripped away from their families, mothers, and the only home they know, all because a new administrator is trying to prove himself.  What do you think?  Will you pay for the trapping of kittens and cats to be killed at Helmetta?  Do you support killing healthy animals?

Are you aware of the conditions at Helmetta Animal Shelter? Please take a quick drive there, just past Monroe, on Main Street, on the right.  After you view the horrific conditions, putrid stench when you enter the building, take a look at the starving kittens in the crowded, sick kitten room. Past that room is the feral cat room, the one you will never see or enter. Then look into your hearts and write to Manalapan officials to stop trapping and killing healthy pets.  Call the the administrator at Pinebrook Care Center (732) 446-3600 and demand humane treatment options and allow the cats to continue living in the woods.

Please voice your concerns about the cost to the community and taxpayers, and  change Manalapan's shameful, archaic policies.  Thank you.