Texas Walmart Is Evicting 3 Feral Cats Who Have Been ….

TEXAS - Three feral cats who had been living on the grounds of a Walmart in Atascocita, Texas, for more than five years will not get their lease renewed.

According to the Houston Chronicle, the management team at the store stated that these felines simply need to go.

Walmart spokesman Charles Crowson released the following statement regarding the three female cats who had been living around the store’s garden center: “We are committed to providing our customers and associates with a clean, pleasant shopping and working experience. We are working with a third party animal rescue team to safely relocate the cats.”

Local animal advocate Sandy Murray, who has been feeding the cats for some time and had them all spayed, is working on trapping the felines so she can take them home and work on socialization.

Murray is hoping that with some love and persistence, she can get the kitties, whom she has named Cute Face, Funny Face, and Pretty Face, domesticated just enough to be put up for adoption.

While the eviction of the animals seems quite imminent, several fans of the cats have gone to social media to fight the store’s decision and to help encourage others to do the same.

“I have been shopping at this Walmart since I moved to Atascocita in 2001 and they opened their doors,” Lisa Perry, one the cats’ supporters, stated. “I first noticed the cats about two and a half years ago while shopping in the garden center. I have at times bought them a can of food or some treats to leave behind … as do the employees and other customers.”

Murray explained that this trio of kitty crashers is far from the only feral cat community. She travels around the area and helps feed and also TNR (trap, neuter, return) several other cat colonies, to help ensure the animals stay alive and don’t reproduce.

One of the other communities includes a total of five to six cats who live near a local barbecue restaurant. Unlike Walmart, management of this particular restaurant welcomes the felines on its grounds in the belief that the cats help keep rodents and snakes away. The restaurant even went so as far as getting the official OK from the health department to allow the cats to stay on the property, something it agreed to as long as the animals would not be allowed to go inside the restaurant.

Unfortunately, this same courtesy has not been extended to the Walmart cats. So far Murray has been able to trap one cat but is still working to bring the other two home. If she is unsuccessful at socializing the felines for adoption, they will be taken to a friend’s farm to live out their wild lives on the open land.

Photo credit: Scott Olson/Getty │ Via: people.com