Cats are known for their sensitive hearing, but the feral cat colony living at Santa Clara County's Reid-Hillview Airport must have been wearing earplugs.
"Pilots were feeding stray cats in the hangar," remembers Rosemary Mirko, director of Town Cats, a no-kill shelter in nearby Morgan Hill, Calif. When her staff arrived at the airport to help with the colony last summer, they found more than 20 feral cats and kittens frolicking amid the constant growl of private airplanes. Employing trap-neuter-return method, they were able to sterilize and find homes for the animals, many of which were adopted by the pilots themselves. There was one cat, however, that no one wanted to bring home.