In the wake of an incident in which Palm Beach Police said a man abused and abandoned a cat on the island , animal advocates said it’s an unfortunate truth that cats get dumped here.
Why? They can only speculate.
The issue has become so pervasive since the COVID-19 pandemic that the island’s feral cat population rose from 230 in 2022 to 350 in 2023, a 50% increase, said David Leavitt, president of Palm Beach Island Cats, which was founded by a group of island residents in 2010, when the freely roaming cat population was estimated above 1,000 and feral felines disrupted Palm Beachers’ way of life.
Many of those new cats are pets that are left here, officials have said. Why has the number of abandoned pets increased since COVID-19?
“During COVID, shelters adopted out more than their usual amount of animals, and as COVID waned, we’ve seen the number of dumped cats go up radically,” Leavitt said.
Read more: A cat was adopted, then abused, Palm Beach Police say. Some call for background checks.