This Former Sanitation Worker is Photographing Brooklyn's Adorable Feral Cats

Thomas, a feral kitten, atop an NYC snow plow. The cats live in an industrial area near a NY Sanitation garage in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The facility welcomes the cats' presence as a natural combatants against the rat population, a strategy once deployed by the city at large under Mayor Bloomberg.

Joe Tortora, 62, feeds a colony of feral cats under his care in Sunset Park, Brooklyn which totals nearly 40 cats. Joe is a former NY Sanitation employee who now spends his retirement savings on cat food and veterinarian bills to help the cats survive. As Joe says, "I can no longer afford to do this. The non-profits can get donations, I cannot. For people like me in the street everyday with the cats we are not getting any type of financial help, food alone is costing me $500 a month. The NY state legislation currently on the table could help with medical costs and that would be great...Bloomberg funded TNR programs to help stop the rat population and back then we had a grant to help pay for medical costs. Now all ~5000 colonies are on their own."

$Joe feeds one of his feral colonies as John Kaper watches. John feeds the cats on weekends when Joe is busy walking dogs on the Upper West Side for wealthy families, his main source of income since retiring from driving garbage trucks in NYC. \"I've spent about $33,000 on the cats in the last 3 years. I love the cats. I actually do. And they need my help. The medical costs a fortune…the vet has mercy on me sometimes and gives me a discount. The cats would be dead without the shelters and food. They'd freeze to death. Saddest time was when we lost 11 cats after Hurricane Sandy...the worst loss was Cowboy. Took me forever to get close to that cat."$ $Joe watches as feral cats roll in a catnip induced high. Catnip is a shrub in the mint family that basically gets cats "high" when the plant\'s chemicals bind to receptors in their noses, stimulating brain neurons.$ Feral kittens watch as an older cat slinks by near one of the colonies.

Feral kittens watch as an older cat slinks by near one of the colonies.

Clowney Face peers out from heavy machinery at an industrial site near the NY Sanitation garage in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Joe has named almost all the cats in his colonies, including Smokey, Potato, Hunter, The Half, The Lip, The Hiss, The Cryer, Trouble, White Foot, Smudge, Fussy, Tough Guy, Vine, Ears, Teddy, Mackenzie, Drool, and Tiger.

White Foot, one of Joe's feral cats, exchanges glances with a young Orthodox Jew praying at a Tashlich ceremony during Yom Kippur in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Joe waits as ferals eat and groom themselves near one of his colonies. "Feral cat caretakers are territorial like their cats. It's total madness. Nobody really talks to each other. They're all nuts."

Feral cats at dusk near a warehouse storing salt to treat city roads during snowstorms.

Brooklyn based former Department of Sanitation worker and photographer Elijah Hurwitz spent 18 months on a photography project called Feral Friends where he captured photographs of hundreds of wild cats living in Sunset Park.

As he photographed the cats at dusk, boats would blow their horns on the water, and dump trucks dropped off steaming hauls. The scent could be gnarly. “A block away, you would know where you were,” Hurwitz recalls. And with dozens of cats chowing down nearby, he adds, “in some ways, it was like a giant litterbox.”

Check out Feral Friends or the accompanying article on City Lab for more.

via City Lab

Matt Coneybeare

Editor in Chief

Matt enjoys exploring the City's with his partner and son. He is an avid marathon runner, and spends most of his time eating, running, and working on cool stuff.

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