A cat I saw on Stone Mountain, 8/19/14
The first time I saw a cat on Stone Mountain several years ago, I regarded it as an anomaly and quite a curiosity. I even posted a photo to social media with the quip “Stone Meowtain.” The more I hiked the walk-up trail and the 5-mile loop around the base, though, the more cats and kittens I saw, particularly in the spring and summer. Sometimes a cat makes a brief but striking appearance on top of the mountain, but they mostly scamper away from humans in the surrounding woods and keep to themselves. As a cat lover (with two feline overlords), I naturally wondered where they came from and mostly dissuaded myself of the notion that some irresponsible people might abandon them in the park. I imagined the cats fending for themselves in the wild during the worst weather but consoled myself that there are a lot worse places than a park for feral cats to be born and live out their days.
Stone Mountain, 3/12/14
So it really caught my attention the other day when I saw a rare public comment noted in the (I imagine intentionally) spare minutes from the Stone Mountain Memorial Association’s (SMMA) last board meeting related to cats. For the past several years, a compassionate service has been performed for the cats at Stone Mountain Park by some devoted volunteers, and they're now being told by park officials that they must remove their hand-crafted feeding stations and cat shelters — and, worse, relocate the cats. The following comment suggests that Hershend Family Entertainment (HFE), which manages the park’s attractions, will no longer communicate with the volunteers until they comply:
PUBLIC COMMENT*
Joyce Henke made a request to address the board. Ms. Henke said she lived in Lilburn and that herself and a group of concerned individuals had trapped, neutered, vaccinated and returned feral cats that live in the park. They have been doing this since 2015. They have shelters and feeding stations for the cats in the woods. They were given permission from Chris Mabey* with HFE to take care of the cats. They have been told by Dan Schmidt* with HFE that they have to remove the shelters and feeding stations and until they comply he will not speak to them. They are requesting for HFE to communicate and have an open dialog concerning the cats.
*Members of the public are limited to three minutes to speak and must request to appear beforehand.
*Chris Mabey no longer works at SMP (as of 12/31/17), and the park’s new Safety Director is Moses Bruno.
*Dan Schmidt is the facilities maintenance and construction manager at Stone Mountain Park.
Inky was born at Stone Mountain Park and has been lovingly cared for by volunteers at HH Woods cat colony in the park ever since.
Joyce Henke, 65, a retired Lilburn homeowner and mountain regular, has always been involved in animal advocacy, but for the past four years she and a small group of volunteers have been maintaining a discreet, well-maintained cat colony at their own expense in the woods near the Railroad Pavillion close to the Crossroads Parking Lot. Her husband of twenty years even made the insulated, wooden shelters and feeding stations and wrapped them in camouflage tarp. Until yesterday, they had not disclosed the location of the modest colony, which they named HH Woods Community for its proximity to the Old Hugh Howell Rd., but they’re so deeply concerned about the traumatic consequences of trapping and relocating the cats — and futility of, well, herding cats! — that they shared the location on Instagram with their followers. HFE has suggested they move their small operation to a much less acceptable area far away on the other side of the mountain near the old Wild West town and the rail shop, a restricted area accessible by gravel road that's strewn with industrial debris.
The basic pressure and doublespeak from HFE and SMP officials to the HH Woods Community amounts to “we want to work with you, but the cats have to go.” HFE has alleged that tourists have been feeding the cats inside the attractions area at Crossroads. They have even gone so far as to insinuate that the cats are to blame for E. coli contamination in a nearby stream (never mind the opossums, raccoons, deer, or the multiple Dekalb County sewage leaks resulting in a federal consent decree in the county that might well be responsible — if it's even true). On Monday, this week, Moses Bruno, SMP's new Safety Director, even climbed a fence to intercept Henke as she administered a feeding, not realizing there's a footpath. Prior to that they had only had phone contact with her following her appearance at the February SMMA board meeting. In February, Dan Schmidt, facilities maintenance and construction manager, told her that everything had to be removed and offered many far-fetched excuses, such as those referenced above, and claimed that the cats could interfere with the adjacent lift station, even telling her something smelled funny, like moth balls, in the area, which is officially referred to as Land Management Area #20. So, Herchend Family Entertainment (HFE) officials like Moses Bruno Dan Schmidt have been communicating with some of the volunteers and their husbands in person or by phone, but HH Woods volunteers do not really believe that Stone Mountain Park or HFE really want to work with them or that they have the best interests of the cats in mind.
Many people may not be aware that Stone Mountain Park is broken up into 76 Land Management Areas, and according to the SMMA website, "Each LMA has a monitor who walks the entire LMA twice a year to note changes, report problems, or provide additional data for a management plan." When Joyce Henke requested the notes for LMA #20 following the likely bogus E. coli allegation, she was told they would have to get the notes and get back to her, but Henke did not hear back. The LMA the park wants to relocate the cats to is LMA #50. As for getting in the way of the lift station in the woods, Henke just can’t understand how that would be possible. “We have never bothered [lift station workers] or they us. Mostly when we go to feed no one is around in the woods. Sure, we do not stay there that long, and we do go different days and times, but there’s usually no one in the woods. I usually stay half an hour if I am working on something longer like changing wheat straw in the shelters or something like that,” she said. Many may also not be aware that the last "Master Plan" for the park was done in 1992 and most recently amended in 2005.
I met with Joyce Henke (and Inky!) at the HH Woods cat colony to see her humane work for myself and to offer her more than three minutes to speak about her concerns, and here are some video clips of our conversation, where she explains what would be the ideal situation moving forward. She and the HH Woods volunteers would simply like to be left alone to continue their compassionate service and for the colony to be left right where it is for the cats' sakes, and they are certainly open to more volunteers and continue to be grateful for the many generous people that have found their Amazon wishlist and donated food, flea medication, and more to the cats. Sadly, their story reminds me of how Stone Mountain Park frowned upon the wonderful, years-long environmental volunteerism of the Mayer brothers, who they told to stop recycling on the mountain's walk-up trail a couple of years ago, even though they offered to indemnify themselves. The park sees millions of visitors a year but doesn't have a park-wide recycling program, despite selling 853,000 ounces of Coca-Cola on just July 4th 2013 alone (as boasted on a former park employee's T-shirt).
