Kevin Headrick flips through the photos in his phone, stopping to tell stories about each picture.
It’s like a proud father or grandfather with an endless photo stream of children or grandchildren. Except these photos are of cats.
Jim Gatlin posts photos of cats on Facebook and writes catchy descriptions that sometimes have a literary ring to them. Recent posts played on words from “A Tale of Two Cities” and “The Grapes of Wrath.”
Together, Headrick and Gatlin founded the McGangster’s, a partnership formed about ten years ago when the two men were introduced by a mutual friend as they fed feral cat colonies across Paducah. Headrick fed cats at a couple of locations in downtown Paducah, while Gatlin fed a colony behind a gas station in the western part of town. Together, they began feeding cats behind the McDonald’s on Lone Oak Road and adopted the name McGangster’s.
Their first cat colony featured a polydactyl cat or one that has extra toes on one or more of its paws.
Cat colonies typically live where they have a supply of food, water, and shelter, and the group usually consists of female cats and their offspring, according to PetPlace.com. Stray cats might become accepted after several interactions. Cats who live in feral cat colonies that do not have any human caretakers may survive two years, but those who have caretakers, like the McGangster’s, may live to be ten years old.
“There have been cats at McDonald’s for years and years and years,” Gatlin said. “Some of them have been deserted. You’d be surprised how some people will simply move or leave town and leave their pets. Just walk flat off and leave them. It’s very cold, very cruel.”
For Headrick and Gatlin, caring for their feral cat colonies across Paducah is a labor of love.
Headrick typically takes the evening shift to travel around Paducah to feed cats, while Gatlin prefers the pre-dawn early shift. When they pull into parking lots where feral cats live, an observer might think they’ve exaggerated about the cat colony living in the woods. Not a cat to be seen. Headrick calls out to the cats in a high-pitched tone, almost like he’s talking to babies.
“Come on, little mama. Come on, sweet baby,” Headrick calls out to cats in a wooded area behind a business. “Come on, mama calico. Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
But then, as Headrick peels back the top of the wet food can or rattles the dry food in a cup, the cats start popping out from behind small trees and tall grass. They run down the sidewalks and find the pile of food that Headrick has put out. Some cats roll over for a quick tummy rub or nuzzle him around the legs.
“Everybody knows their spot in line,” Headrick said. “Everybody always keeps their spot in line. It is so sweet.”
Feeding their cat colonies comes with a heavy price tag. They go through cases of food quickly, but thankfully, they get donations of food and money from the community. They recently held a fundraiser with Papa Murphy’s Pizza.
Besides feeding the cats, they also help some people who can’t afford to feed their pets. “Definitely, a lot of them contact us,” Gatlin said. “They tell us their story. They started with two cats, which was fine. Now they have 15 cats, and we can’t afford the food and need help. I’ve probably given away 15-20 bags of donated food to people who need help. We don’t want to keep the population growing. We only help them with food if they let us spay and neuter.”
While much of their time is spent feeding the cats, they also trap cats to get them spayed or neutered to control the size of the cat colonies and to prolong the cats’ lives. Since they began the McGangsters, they estimate that they’ve sent about 1,000 cats to get spayed or neutered.
The men began catching the feral cats to get them spayed or neutered in an effort to control cat colonies. Feral cats who have been spayed or neutered will have a notch cut in an ear so that people can recognize that they have been fixed and released back into the wild.
Until the pandemic last year, the men worked with the free spay and neuter program through the McCracken County Humane Society. COVID restrictions changed the program, and now the men work with several vet clinics that give them a reduced rate of $35. Now that they have to pay for spaying and neutering, the men have begun fundraising again. They estimate they’ve raised $45,000 since last year, but the money leaves as quickly as it comes in because of the feeding and vet care.
“My garage is part nursery at times,” Headrick said. “I’ve nursed animals and given them medicine.”
Some cats end up needing expensive veterinary care beyond their spay or neuter. One of their success stories is Pollo Loco, a gray kitten that was found with his leg ripped off and infested with maggots. The kitten had his leg amputated. Ten months later, Pollo Loco has a happy and safe home with a family.
Some cats and kittens do find good homes, with some of those as far away as Florida or Connecticut. The men require potential adoptive families to submit an application, and then they are thoroughly investigated.
“This is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it’s easier to adopt a child out of Russia than it is to get a cat out of me because I check into that person,” Headrick said. “When someone tells me that they want an outdoor cat or a barn cat, that’s the wrong
