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Coast's felines get a housing upgrade Photo by Barbara Semack Allen Stevens puts a final coat of paint on the new cat condos he built for the jetty cats of Gold Beach. Bird-loving Ashland couple build cat condos By MARK FREEMAN Felines' friends Jetty Cats Plus is the non-profit group run by Ursula Elliott and Janis Heuser to care for Gold Beach's jetty cats as well as other stray felines of Curry County. Donations are also accepted. Write to Jetty Cats Plus, 94013 Wedderburn Loop Road, Gold Beach, OR 97444. The howling winds, relentless rains and shrouding fog that make winter on the Southern Oregon coast colder than Mark Twain's summer in San Francisco will no longer pummel Gold Beach's most famous feline transients. The jetty cats, a colony of feral cats living among the rocks and sand of the Rogue River estuary's north jetty, now have a trio of weather-tight condos thanks to the hands and hearts of an Ashland couple bent on easing the harsh life at the jetty. Allen Stevens and Barbara Semack built the three two-story cat houses from pressure-treated lumber to house some of the 15 cats that live year-round on the jetty under the watchful eyes of Ursula Elliott and her fellow cat-crusaders in Gold Beach. The condos are well-painted, have interior lofts with commercial carpet for warmth and protection, and pet doors that keep out wind, rain and cold. They also sport front porches, chimneys and clever decors so the cats can feel good about their ocean-view neighborhood. The houses replace a series of old, crudely built structures that have housed the jetty cats since Elliott and pal Janis Heuser began caring for them full-time in 1992. Stevens, a house remodeler, and Semack, a wild-bird buff with no love lost for cats, say they took on this project because it fills their need for doing charity work and the animals' need for help surviving. "We're bird-lovers, and cats and birds don't mix," Semack says. "But it's not about the cats. It's the fact that they are helpless animals who cannot talk for themselves. "We can't watch any animal suffer," she says. Since the couple erected the condos on the jetty last month, the dumped strays and other cats too wild to be adopted into human homes have taken a real liking to their new digs. "It's definitely making life easier for our kittens here in the winter," Elliott says. "The cats have lots of friends." The jetty cats are the latest in a long string of felines that have been abandoned over the years on the rocky jetty north of Gold Beach overlooking the mouth of the Rogue. In 1992, Elliott and Heuser agreed to use their Christmas gift money for that year to help neuter a few jetty strays instead of buying presents. Elliott, a retired Sacramento bike-shop owner, and Heuser, a preacher's wife, then began an intense devotion to the misfit ragamuffins from the jetty. The pair have since given up comfortable lives in Gold Beach to devote themselves to saving these riverside critters and the hundreds of other felines dumped at the jetty over the years. Since beginning their project, they've caught, medically treated, tamed and adopted out almost 1,000 cats abandoned at the jetty and other places around Curry County. But 15 cats too wild and wary for adoptions live full-time at the jetty. In the past, the animals lived in makeshift hovels built by the townspeople, and they are fed daily by Elliott and other volunteers. Elliott and Heuser then formed a non-profit group called Jetty Cats Plus. Elliott oversees the daily care for the jetty cats, while Heuser handles all the adoptions -- which they call their "Plus" part. Along the way, Elliott, Heuser and their jetty cats have become something of media darlings, with newspaper and magazine stories helping bring in regular donations for feeding and caring for the cats. On one trip to the coast this summer, Semack stumbled upon one of those newspaper articles. Fresh transplants from Virginia looking for a charitable outlet, Semack and Stevens latched on. "I told Allen, `Look. You want to work for the needy and not the greedy? Well, here's your needy,"' Semack says. Since moving to Ashland, Stevens and Semack have rescued stray cats and even a goldfish from a vacant Medford home. But this project seemed bigger. Stevens telephoned Elliott and was impressed with her dedication. He pledged to help, and said he would make some new cat houses. "I obligated myself," says Stevens, who emigrated from England in the early 1970s. "I had to get it done." They built the three condos all on one large, heavy platform that is too sturdy to topple in the jetty's 90 mph winter winds -- as well as making it tough to pilfer. The couple disassembled the houses, hauled them to Gold Beach in a van, and re-assembled them early last month. With bright paint and doll house-like decor, the new condos are far nicer than the old houses, Elliott says. "We never wanted them to look too good," Elliott says. "We were afraid someone would steal them and use them for dog houses. But these new ones are so heavy, no one would try taking them away." Semack continues to collect food and buy a special milk the cats can digest, and she sends a care package to Elliott monthly. Stevens is already planning on his next jetty project -- a special feeding station that shields the cats' food from the elements and the swarms of Friskies-stealing gulls that try and swoop down on cat meals. "It's nice what Ursula has done," Stevens says. "Those people have changed their entire lives for those cats. "It makes me feel good to help them," he says. "So that's why I did it." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA