08/05/2026
I have met many unhoused pet owners and helped their much-loved pets get spay/neuter, parasite treatments, good food and vet care. I like to “adopt” an unhoused neighbor or family with a pet for the holidays, and spoil them all with warm clothes, toys and beds and extra-good pet food. Often all they ask for is things their pets need.
People in the encampments are often extremely happy to have someone come in to TNR the “community” or feral encampment animals, because they see the suffering and short lives those born in the elements experience.
Sometimes, a pet is the only thing an unhoused person still has from the life they were stripped of through circumstances beyond their control or “choices” that led them down a tragic path.
💬 Someone recently commented that the animals in homeless encampments must be stolen.
I have been sitting with this comment for a few days, mulling it over in my mind. And I think what bothers me most about it is what it reveals about how some people see our unhoused neighbors.
It sits in the same family as another comment we hear a lot: "they shouldn't have pets." As if unhoused people are categorically incapable of loving and caring for an animal. Incapable of acquiring one through any normal, legitimate means. As if the only explanation for a homeless person having a cat is that they must have taken it from someone else.
It is, at its core, an assumption of the worst. And our clients deserve better than that. WE deserve better than that. As a community we deserve to see the good in people. The best in people.
We want to assume positive intent with the person who left that comment. They may genuinely be concerned about animal welfare. That concern is not wrong. We share that concern! But concern for animals and respect for the humans who love them are not in conflict.
So how do cats end up in encampments? After all, we are in the camps every single week and we have a pretty good idea.
🐾 They had them before they lost their housing.
This is the most common story we hear. Someone had a cat - it could have been their cat for YEARS - and then life fell apart. A job loss, an eviction, a medical crisis, a relationship ending. The housing went away. The cat stayed. Because when everything else is gone, you do not abandon your family. And we have heard more times than we can count from our clients - CATS ARE FAMILY.
🐾 Kittens are born in the camps.
We have seen this with our own eyes. Mama cats, litters of kittens, the whole cycle playing out in real time. We have picked up kittens directly from The Jungle. We have spayed mama cats at encampment sites across Olympia. The cats are not arriving from somewhere else. They are being born there, because unspayed cats do what unspayed cats do. At 4 months old a cat can procreate. YES! Four months old!
🐾 Community cats find the camps.
Stray and feral cats are drawn to encampments for the same reason they are drawn to any place where humans are - food, warmth, shelter, and people who will care for them. They show up. People feed them. A bond forms. Suddenly someone has a cat. "They chose me" is something we also hear a lot!
And it is not just the people inside the encampment who feed and care for community cats. The THC shop on the Martin Way side of The Jungle, for example, feeds and cares for four cats who have gravitated to that area. Cats don't recognize property lines or encampment boundaries. They go where they are fed and where they feel safe, and that is often wherever humans are showing them kindness.
🐾 People take in strays they find.
We hear this constantly - "I found her injured on the side of the road." "He showed up at my tent in the rain." "She was abandoned and nobody else was going to help her." Our clients rescue cats. Regularly. Often from situations worse than their own.
🐾 Cats are gifted or rehomed informally.
Someone can no longer care for their cat and gives them to a friend who happens to be unhoused. This is not so different from how housed people acquire animals.
What we have never encountered:
In all of our years doing this work - visiting encampments, building relationships with clients, transporting their cats to surgery and back - we have never had a reason to believe an animal was stolen. What we have encountered, over and over, is people who love their animals with a depth and dedication that would put many of us to shame.
Our clients know their cats' names. They know their personalities. They tell us how they rescued them - how they saw an animal that needed help and they stepped up, even from a position of profound instability. They tell us how their cat comes to them and no one else. How their cat chose them.
That is not the behavior of someone who stole an animal. That is the behavior of a devoted pet owner doing their best in an impossibly hard situation.
We understand that people have concerns about animal welfare in encampments. Those concerns need to be taken seriously, and we do take them seriously. But concern for animals and contempt for the humans who love them cannot coexist if we actually want to help. The answer is showing up, building trust, offering services, and believing - unless evidence speaks to the contrary - that the person in front of us loves their cat just as much as you love yours. 🐾
