She circulated the below petition just before the Beverly Hills Council meeting. Can you believe Council takes her seriously?
Just before the Council meeting, she claims she saw a coyote eating food left by Varjian, and that at least one person has been bitten by a coyote recently in her neighborhood.
Here is her petition. Maybe you want to sign it too and call her.
Dear Neighbors,
Dear Neighbors,
Please sign the attached petition to help us keep coyotes, rodents, and roaches, out of our neighborhood.
This year, coyotes were sighted in our neighborhood more than a dozen times.
Many of us signed petitions to stop a woman, Katherine Varjian, from littering our alleys with cat food which has drawn coyotes, rodents, raccoons, roaches, and other pests and diseases into our neighborhood.
Many of us signed petitions to stop a woman, Katherine Varjian, from littering our alleys with cat food which has drawn coyotes, rodents, raccoons, roaches, and other pests and diseases into our neighborhood.
Ms. Varjian, who does not live in our neighborhood, was given citations by Beverly Hills Code Enforcement many times for littering our alleys with cat food, but she has refused to stop.
She claims she must feed a large feral cat colony, but we believe she is mistaking our pets for feral cats, and we do not have a (oral cat problem here.
Many of our neighbors have to clean up uneaten cat food; two residents reported that Ms. Varjian tried to run them down with her vehicle; one neighbor claims to have once been bitten by a coyote; and some neighbors have lost their pet cats to coyotes.
Also, If possible, please attend the City Council Meeting this Tuesday night, July 7, 2009, at 7:00 p.m, at 455 North Rexford Drive, City Council Chambers. At that time our City Council will hopefully adopt a law which will prevent Ms. Varjian from continuing her feeding/tittering activities. We believe this meeting will be attended by animal activists who do not live in our neighborhood, who support Ms. Varjian, and who believe that coyotes, etc., are God's creatures and that we should learn to peacefully co-exist with them in our neighborhood.
We do not wish to harm coyotes, but they have been known to attack children, eat cats and small dogs, can carry/spread rabies, and we feel it is unsafe and unhealthy to have them in our neighborhood.
So our City Council needs our attendance and support. Please do your best to attend, and please return signed petitions to my mailbox at 123 North Palm Drive, or fax them to (310) 273-1284, or call and I will pick them up to present them at Tuesday night's City Council Meeting. if you have any questions, please feel free to call.
Thank you.
Darien Bojeaux, 123 N. Palm Drive, B.H., (310) 276-6847, t
Petition
Petition
A woman has been littering our alleys with cat food for years, despite the fact that the food brings cockroaches, rodents, raccoons, coyotes, etc., as a result. Many have asked her to stop, but she refuses.
We have been advised that the woman is Katherine Varjian and that she has been cited by the City of Beverly. Hills Code Enforcement on numerous occasions, but she prefers to continue to create unhealthy conditions and risk of death to our pets.
Additionally, it is possible that a coyote could attack a child.
Coyotes continue to be sighted in our neighborhood, and we are therefore requesting that the City Council of Beverly Hills and the City Attorney of Beverly Hills take all necessary steps, including criminal prosecution if necessary, to stop Katherine Varjian from continuing her unlawful, unhealthful conduct.
Signature, Name, Address, Telephone
I'd like to note that 102 people spoke against the ordinance, and 3 for; her petition does not seem to have motivated many people.
Darien's email to me:
Dear Ed,
Prohibiting the littering of our alleys with open containers of pest drawing food, or food on the ground, has nothing to do with TNR, and it is not a "feral ban".
Yes, there are cats near where Varjian has left food--cats which are being fed by others (properly) or are owned by others as pets and properly fed. You might have something there with your comment which begins, "No sane person would...."
If the alley feeding stopped, I do not believe there would be any starving cats, but even if there were, which I doubt, there certainly would not be anything close to 20 to 30. We, including animal interest activists friends, have yet to locate feral cats which were not already being fed by others than Varjian.
You don't want to believe anything I say because you choose to believe what you want to believe. And that is why people like yourself lack credibility. Here is a subject matter which you have absolutely no personal knowledge about, and yet you are sure that the facts are this, that, and the other, and that my husband and I did not see a coyote eating out of one of Ms. Varjian's black plastic food containers, which happened about three weeks ago now, no longer ten days ago. However, if you lived in our area you would have seen coyotes yourself and/or you would know about the numerous sightings of coyotes here.
Maybe you would get along better with your neighbors if you had some respect for their rights and interests. I have found that many people are cat lovers and are only to happy to feed feral cats. However, we don't do well with those who are disrespectful and hostile, and who feel that it is fine to strew cat food all over our alleys for no good reason.
12 comments:
This is very misleading.
First, coyotes have been around there for decades.
Second, TNR reduces the cat population and, therefore, reduces the food supply for coyotes.
TNR doesn't reduce cat populations in the real world. It increases it as people dump more animals, more animals are attracted to the food.
Coyotes have been there for decades but more will be attracted to the cat food and cats. My neighbor had outdoor cats that he fed. More and more ended up there eating. Then the coyotes came and ate them all within three weeks. A human lured the cats to a place to be killed by coyotes. The coyotes came back to the same place to eat more cats.
You should go down to the alley and see what's happening. The neighbors have been feeding those cats in their enclosed yards for years. They don't need someone else dumping food in the alley luring the cats to be killed. Go and see for yourself. The feeder thinks she is needed there. She isn't. She should go feed other cats that need to be fed.
So, your neighbor fed outdoor cats in his enclosed yard, it attracted more cats, then coyotes came and ended the feral cat problem?
Cats could not go from the alley to the protection of an enclosed yard just a few feet away?
This sounds like a Bojeaux-type illogical argument.
Darien Bojeaux, ringleader of the anti-feral cat feeding ordinance, claims there are no feral cats in Beverly Hills...."
Let's get those biologists now. Beverly Hills is perhaps the only town with no feral cats and there has been no violence. It's amazing and they should allow scientists to determine how they achieved such a situation.
Was Darien Bojeaux lying then or is she lying now or is she just a habitual liar?
Please pass the Advil....
Take a look at this:
"SB 250 states that if a cat is on your property (your home) you will be required to spay and neuter if you keep them outdoors. If you want your cat unaltered, you are required to bring them inside. However, the enforcement mechanism is complaint driven, so chances are AC will not be at your door to require you to spay and neuter.
As we see in Santa Cruz and other places with spay and neuter laws voluntary compliance is much greater than what most people assume, more people will spay and neuter. There are low cost and free s/n services right now that are grossly underutilized. This was true in parts of South LA. Now with their s/n bill, those services are 100% utilized and in some cases have a waiting list…why…because people want to be law abiding and voluntarily comply. This is true success. It's not about the heavy hand of the law, it's about people doing the right thing.
This bill gets to the root of why stray and feral cats exists, owned cats unaltered propagating in the neighborhood. The fines are set by the local jurisdictions; they need to go before their city councils or county supervisors just like they do for every other fine or fee.
Here is a current example of how our bill could help if passed into law:
There is a trailer park in Southern California where residents were compelled to feed the stray cats, "feed them" but not necessarily take full ownership and spay and neuter them. Well, now because of them focusing on food and not spay and neuter there are 400 cats. The owners of the trailer park facility now want the people to stop feeding them and to round up the cats and kill them. And under current law they can do this. Our law is written to prevent this tragic situation from arising.
****The bill does *not* apply to feral cat colonies on public property; if you have cats you are feeding on **your owned property** more than 30 days, then you do need to s/n them or keep them inside.
-- Feral cat colonies usually are not in your backyard, and if you have a colony in your backyard and are feeding them, you need to s/n them. Feral cat colonies elsewhere are not included in this bill.
The reason we use the term "Custodian" is to include the "it's not my cat but I feed it" people; and if you're feeding cats on your property, you should be s/n-ing them. *****Spay and neuter is equally as important as the food. ******
(1) "Custodian" means any person who undertakes the personal care and control of a cat, or any person who intentionally provides care, security, or sustenance for a cat on the person's property for any period exceeding 30 days. "Custodian" does not include a licensing agency.
****-- SB 250 will NOT lead to "animal controls confiscating/ killing feral cats". *****
-- Animal Control *already* has all the tools they would need to round up and kill feral cats; and mostly they aren't using them! We're not giving them anything new. Many ACs are working with TNR volunteers and helping TNR happen in their areas.
__And it absolutely DOES NOT make feral cat caregivers criminals – this is the most dishonest and disingenuous statement I have heard.
Thanks, Judie"
My neighbor didn't enclose his yard. He fed them in the driveway. He attracted more cats. The coyotes ended up eating them, end of outdoor cats there.
The cats in the alley can easily be fed in the back yards. They don't need the feeder.
Sheesh!! Darien's such a drama queen. Does she really believe BH is the only place in all of CA where there's been an increase in coyote sightings? News flash Darien, its not because of the friggin cat food. And if you're seeing coyotes eating leftover cat food then think about it this way, maybe those coyotes won't be stalking and killing someone's pet that day.
Brad Jensen
Cypress, CA
Poster two is wrong. The person states that the stray cat population increases because people dump cats. Well, duh!!!
What does that have to do with TNR?
TNR does not advocate animal abandonment. That's an apples and oranges argument. It doesn't apply.
Animals have been abandoned since the dawn of time. These strays have existed for decades. TNR is a humane approach to reducing the stray numbers. In my experience, feral caretakers go out of their way to remove tame strays from colonies that were abandoned by an uncaring human population-one that is not part of the TNR efforts or those who oppose TNR, which is why it's an apples and oranges argument.
Stray cats and uneaten (by cats) cat food does draw coyotes. The coyote will return to a tried and true food source. It is because of that, that makes TNR a humane solution to this.
The same applies to the abandonment issue. People often dump unaltered pets. Thank goodness there are feral cat caretakers out there "fixing" the problem.
Dear Anon Poster #2: Dumping a cat in an alley does not increase the population, it redistributes it. Feral caretakers S/Ning the cats living in the alley will decrease the population by keeping new ones from being born. Somebody needs to go back to the sandbox and take some basic math and maybe some biology.
I spent several years feeding ferals. Being eaten by coyotes is the lesser of the evils that can befall them. Believe me, I have seen what PEOPLE do to cats, both feral and non-feral alike.
I can things far worse than being eaten by a coyote. Mange, lice, ticks, and mites on the feral cats can lead to a very uncomfortable existence.
All those folks in Beverly Hills should not be keeping their well fed pet cats outdoors. Domestic housecats as outdoor pets do not fare so well. Get a life and put the kitty back inside or have it euthanized and take some responsibility.
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