NYC Cats After 9-11

#322: Tracie talks with filmmaker Cathe Neukum about Feral, her deeply moving documentary chronicling the rescue of cats left trapped and abandoned in lower Manhattan after 9/11. Cathe explains how an earlier career making wildlife films—and an unexpected encounter with feral cats in her own Midtown neighborhood—led her to join forces with Urban Cat League’s Mike Phillips just before the 9-11 attacks. Armed with a small camera, she followed Mike into the devastated area, where they searched toxic, smoke-filled buildings for frightened cats and created a makeshift refuge where the rescued animals could recover. Tracie and Cathe reflect on how radical that trap-neuter-return and community cat rescue seemed at the time, how attitudes toward feral cats have changed, and why helping these vulnerable animals offered a small island of hope amid unimaginable devastation. Feral will be featured in the 9th Annual New York Cat Film Festival, premiering September 26th in New York City.