There are so many stray cats on Isle Madame in Cape Breton, some say it's almost like the island's being taken over by them.
Members of the Forget Me Not Animal Rescue Society have been working tirelessly to help the animals, but they say they are at their wits' end because you can find them almost anywhere.
Members of Forget Me Not have been trapping the cats, sometimes simply wading into a colony and grabbing one if they can.
“We have more than $55,000 put into cats right now,” says Cheryl Skinner of the group. “We have colonies everywhere. Every second house seems to have a colony.”
They congregate six or seven at a time on someone's back step -- hoping to be fed.
Others huddle under cars, looking for protection from the elements.
In some of the worst spots, they say they'll find as many as 30 and they're often in poor health.
“They're inbred, they're sick, and they have feline leukemia,” says Jamie Forgeron, a member of Forget Me Not Animal Rescue Society.“Some of them are in really bad shape.”
Skinner says the problem is so bad because “people just dump their cats.”
“We have one right now that somebody dumped,” she said. “He got hit by a car. He's got a broken pelvis and a broken jaw.”
It’s a problem that doesn't have one simple solution, but they've been trying everything.
They’ve reached out to municipal and provincial politicians for help, and to their local SPCA, which has a mobile spay & neuter clinic.
“We need more volunteers,” says Skinner. “We need more spay & neuter programs. We need more education.”
The Municipality of Richmond County says that while they have a trapping system in place for dogs, they don't have anything similar that would apply to cats.
“You feel hopeless,” says Skinner. “There's so many times I've wanted to quit, but you can't. Because the next one shows up on your doorstep, and you have to help it."
Skinner and her colleagues are fighting the good fight for feral felines, even though sometimes it feels like a losing battle.
With files from CTV Atlantic’s Ryan MacDonald.
