The Willets Point project aims to revitalize a deprived area of central Queens, but activists say developers have neglected to address a key community with squatters' rights: the so-called “Shea Stadium vagrants.”
Living in the Dust of the Iron Triangle Just steps from Citi FieldFor nearly a century, a colony of filthy and malnourished cats has made this neighborhood their home.
About 100 cats have already been moved out of fields and into a shrinking auto body area, which is expected to be the next piece of land to be leveled to make room for cars. Upcoming football stadium, retailers and residential space.
Animal rights activists have warned that further displacement would mean they are sure to head towards extermination.
“They have no choice but to die. Nowhere else to go,” said Regina Massaro, founder of New York City's Spay Neuter Intervention Project (SNIP).
With a 48-pack of Friskies in one hand and a gallon of water in the other, Massaro took The Post on a tour of the dirt Wednesday afternoon, just hours before thousands of baseball fans were munching on hot dogs and beer as they watched the game. The Mets beat the Red Sox, 8–3.
Massaro said the contrast could not better illustrate the devastation — the animals will soon be pushed into polluted Flushing Creek or residential blocks as billion-dollar development swallows up their homes.
“Nobody cares. There's nobody to speak up for these animals but me,” said Massaro, 74, of Maspeth, as she picked up a discarded slice of Sicilian pizza, tore it into tiny pieces and threw it back to the cats.
“I have to leave this place and go home. These cats have to stay here.”
Stray cats have been causing havoc in Willets Point for nearly 100 years and even took up shelter there when Shea Stadium was built in 1964 — one cat famously ran into the Cubs dugout during a 1969 game, cursing at the Chicago team and giving the Mets their first World Series title.
According to activists, the cat population has since boomed, but a lack of resources and shrinking land put their lives at risk. Many cats have already died of starvation or disease.
Today, many auto shop workers help feed the egg-laying cats but don’t pay for vet bills, costing SNIP NYC about $2,000 a month.
Massaro, known in the auto shop community as “Cat Girl,” has been coming to the Iron Triangle five times a week for 17 years at midnight to feed and trap the cats.
Over the past few years, she has captured more than 300 cats and brought them to North Shore Animal Hospital for sterilization. She has only been able to rehome about 50 friendly cats, but most of them are feral and are to be released back into the small neighborhood of Willets Point, Massaro, which is compared to a third-world country.
The worker was feeding a cat when Post saw a distraught employee begging her to take in and neuter a new cat that was sleeping in her boss's office. She said the pet had been “dumped” at the storefront just hours earlier.
“When I come to work in the morning, there's 25 cats outside,” said Paul Cohen, owner of Roosevelt Auto Wrecking Office, adding that he spends $200 a month for his cats. “It's nasty.”
“She does what she can, but she can't keep it up. There's more every day.”
A block away, Felix Lara told The Post that the cats’ plight is a frequent topic of discussion in the community.
He plans to bring one stray cat — an unnamed 8-year-old white and gray shorthair cat who has been coming to his shop since she was a kitten — home with him when the shop finally closes, but he worries about the dozens of other cats who have no hope of ever being a pet.
“What about the cats? We can't take them. It's bad,” Lara said.
Massaro’s campaign includes help from city and state agencies, as well as private developers, which she plans to pursue. Construction of the NYCFC stadium And surrounding buildings continue to burn.
Both the NYC Economic Development Corporation and Housing Preservation and Development told the Post they would monitor the situation in collaboration with their partners, but could not say whether they had any plans to deal with the cats. NYCFC declined to comment and the Queens Development Corporation did not respond to messages.
Requests for comment from Representative Grace Meng and the mayor's office were not returned. The Queens borough president's office had no record of complaints about the cats, and representatives for City Councilman Francisco Moya said they were investigating the issue.
While the situation appears hopeless, Brian Cortese from Neighbourhood Cats stressed that hope is not lost yet – but he said someone needs to take action before the cats go off on their own and spread the problem elsewhere.
“When you have this kind of displacement, and there’s no strategy, there’s no management, whatever happens is what happens to them. They’re not going to stick around and wait for the bulldozers to kill them; they’ll disperse. And they’ll disperse to wherever they can find the nearest food source and shelter,” Cortese told the Post.
“They might have to cross a busy road. Cats are very territorial, so they might try to get back into a situation that is dangerous. They might not be able to find food sources. Cats carry rabies … so there is a lot of risk,” he said, adding that if a large number of animals are not sterilised they will continue to breed and worsen the problem.
Cortese suggested a managed return, which would involve slowly moving the feral cats into a safe area, or taking them to a sanctuary.
He said ideally, the cats should have been fixed decades ago to avoid this problem.
“If they had taken our advice in 2008 and captured and sterilized the cats in those areas, we wouldn't have this problem today. There would be far fewer cats and it would be much easier to deal with them,” Cortese said.
“It's out of control. You have very few options. The city has never taken any responsibility for the situation of cats roaming around freely … This has been a chronic problem for many years, and it leads to situations like Willets Point.”
Massaro wants the cats to be allowed to live freely in his neighborhood, with the support of the government, Willets Point developers and neighbor Steve Cohen, who owns the Mets.
She claims that as “descendants of the stray dogs of Shea Stadium,” the cats have a right to the illegal occupation. She said she wants the Willets Point development to include a space in the 23-acre project so the cats can live out the rest of their lives safely.
“Only one of two things can happen here: either they will stay here and get proper shelter, they will be taken care of. Or they will be forcibly evicted – and that will be death,” he said.
