GALVESTON — About two years ago, a feral cat had a litter of kittens under Brenda Lee’s island house. Lee waited for the kittens to mature and took them and their mother to the animal shelter, she said.

“About a week later, I saw the mother back again,” Lee said.

Lee, who had heard stories about cats that walked thousands of miles to return home, thought the feline had escaped and instinctively returned to its territory.

She captured the hostile creature and returned it to the Galveston Island Humane Society. That’s when shelter staff informed her that the cat likely would return again.

Jennifer Reynolds / The Daily News

Kathi Richardson, a member of St. Francis Gulf Coast Feline Rescue, releases a feral cat that the organization had trapped and neutered.

The flea-ridden, black-and-white cat with a crooked mustache, which Lee has since named “Frightful,” is one of thousands that have been sterilized, earmarked and returned to colonies on the island through a controversial and little-known trap-neuter-release program going by the name of St. Francis Gulf Coast Feline Rescue.

Proponents of such programs, which animal rescue groups operate all across the world, say they’re the only effective and compassionate way to reduce the population and suffering of feral cats, which unlike abandoned or lost pets, are unsocialized and, in most cases, unadoptable.

But critics argue the system prolongs the lives of brutal predators, which at the very least are garden-destroying nuisances and, at worst, decimate indigenous wildlife, especially birds.

Even some animal rescue groups oppose trap-neuter-release programs, asserting that feral cats deserve supervised sanctuary, a proposition that would require a lot more money than most rescue groups have.

While groups can’t find accord on a solution, most everyone agrees that feral cats are a huge problem in the county, particularly on the island, where they have formed colonies in alleys, backyards, on front porches, along the seawall, under bridges and in coastal habitats, where they damage delicate ecosystems.

The island’s homeless cat problem generated international interest and furious debate in November last year when bird enthusiast Jim Stevenson, wielding. 22-caliber rifle, capped a feral cat that lived near the San Luis Pass toll bridge on Galveston’s western tip.

Stevenson said he had tried to capture the cat, which he accused of stalking snowy and piping plovers and sanderlings. He said he feared for the lives of endangered and threatened birds whose habitat lies near the bridge.

Whether Stevenson’s unfortunate target was feral is subject of debate. A toll-booth worker claimed he was feeding and caring for the cat. Stevenson, president of the Galveston Ornithological Society, was charged with animal cruelty and faced up to two years in jail. On Nov. 16, a judge declared a mistrial when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict.

But furor over the shooting and what to do about feral cats hasn’t subsided.

Of the nearly 4,000 cats that arrive yearly at the Galveston County Animal Services in Texas City, as many as 40 percent are feral, said Kim Schoolcraft, animal services manager.

There’s a difference between feral and stray cats. Feral cats often live their whole lives never coming in contact with humans. Others are strays for so long they revert to a wild state, observers say. Cats that start out, or end up, feral tend to stay that way, say those who know them.

Schoolcraft adopted a feral cat five years ago.

“Today, it’s just as wild,” she said. “It lives in my home, but I can’t touch the cat.”

One of the most important things people can do to reduce the feral cat population is preventing their births, Schoolcraft said.

“If I had my way, I’d make it mandatory that an animal be spayed or neutered unless it belonged to a licensed breeder,” she said. “And in a few years from now, you wouldn’t have this problem anymore, and we could all go home.”

But no such laws exist, keeping people like Mildred Manion, president of St. Francis Gulf Coast Feline Rescue, busy. The rescue group has trapped, neutered and returned almost 7,000 cats since 2000, Manion said.

The nonprofit group has less than a dozen volunteers and works through a network of veterinarians who provide services at discount rates.

In some cases, the volunteers set up feeding stations near colonies, including on Pelican Island. In the beginning, the rescue group was able to conduct mass trappings and was able to enlist the help of veterinarians and students of veterinary medicine at Texas A&M University at College Station.

The rescue group, named for St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and the environment, works in cooperation with Galveston’s animal shelter.

While no hard statistics exist, Manion said the program, which also provides care to sick or wounded cats, has succeeded in reducing the number of feral felines in local shelters.

Cats kill birds, it’s true, Manion said. But that doesn’t mean they should be condemned to death or hunted by humans, she said.

“Well, there’s all kinds of predators and all kinds of prey, and you don’t always like it when the prey gets it, and I guess that’s the way nature works,” Manion said. “It’s not horrible. Cats are just doing what comes natural to them. I don’t think they ought to suffer death for it.”

But conservationists and some wildlife experts argue that feral cats are an invasive and destructive species and must be stopped.

Cat lovers and bird enthusiasts have for years clawed and pecked at the ethical conundrum of which species most deserves protection.

No one knows with certainty about how many free-ranging cats populate the United States, but competing national estimates are between 30 million and 90 million.

By some accounts, domestic cats arrived in North America with European colonists several hundreds years ago. They are descendants of the European and African wild cat, multiplying into a massive population of house cats, strays or feral animals. The problem, some conservationists say, is that indigenous wildlife isn’t evolutionarily equipped to evade an invasive species such as cats.

Free-roaming cats each year kill hundreds of millions of birds, and more than a billion small mammals such as rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks, according to a National Geographic Society report.

Wild cats should be removed from the environment, taken to shelters and euthanized, argues Clark E. Adams, a professor in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences at Texas A&M University at College Station.

“Jim Stevenson made a bad decision,” said Adams, who attended the trial. “He shouldn’t have gone out there on his own and arbitrarily carried out a conservation plan in his own mind.”

Still, Stevenson’s act of vigilantism and the debate that ensued should have brought all stakeholders in the issue together to discuss solutions, said Adams, a wildlife biologist and co-author of the textbook “Urban Wildlife Management.”

Ecosystems can’t afford for each side to point fingers from their particular perches, he said.

Islands are hit particularly hard by feral cats, Adams said.

“They are death on islands because the wildlife has no place to go,” Adams said. “So they’re standing targets for the predatory species on the island.

“There’s case after case after case of instances where cats have decimated wildlife populations. Galveston Island fits the mold.”

Urban dwellers, generations removed from farm life and rural settings and accustomed to cats as pets, are mostly horrified by the notion of capturing and killing thousands of them, he said. But if the question is controlling an animal that doesn’t belong in the environment, then that’s the solution, he said.

“I’m a hunter,” he said. “Farm life gives you a different perspective about wildlife around urban society.”

Adams said he doesn’t buy the argument that feeding feral cats keeps them satiated and from attacking prey for dinner.

“Cats kill because they feel like it,” he said. “That’s what they’re bred and born to do — to kill. Unless their numbers are reduced or eradicated altogether, the only choices are: You want natural, endemic fauna, or you want cats.”

But Adams’ colleague, a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University, said humans and their activities destroy far more habitat and wildlife than cats.

“The No. 1 cause of bird declines is not cats but habitat loss, which is much harder than it is to say ‘cats are causing the problem, let’s get rid of cats,’” Margaret Slater said.

Wild cats can be beneficial to communities and ecosystems by keeping the rodent population down, she said. An opportunistic predator, cats are more likely to kill rodents than birds.

“Rats are predators of eggs and nestlings,” she said.

Slater oversees a trap-neuter-release project called The Aggie Feral Cat Alliance in College Station. At one time, hundreds of feral cats abandoned by students or dumped by town residents roamed the campus, Slater said. Since 1998, the program has humanely trapped about 300 cats, releasing about 120 neutered ferals. Homes were found for many of the others. Like the island’s St. Francis program, the cats are marked by a notch in the ear so project workers can identify them.

Some stray cats are adopted by families, while ferals are returned to where they were caught. Slater said the program is successful in controlling College Station’s cat population.

Trying to find homes for all the feral cats is difficult, she said. It could take years to socialize them, taking away time and resources from cats that are adoptable.

Providing permanent sanctuary and shelter also is not financially viable, she said.

“I can afford a trap-and-neuter program,” Slater said. “But I could never afford to put 120 cats in a sanctuary and house them there for the rest of their lives.”

Meanwhile, Frightful is a familiar fixture around Lee’s home. She and her husband would consider adopting the cat if it weren’t so wild. She said she doesn’t think the trap-neuter-release is the best idea.

“It seemed like an alternative,” she said. “Now that I’m a recipient of releases, I feel like it’s cruel to the animal; this is not a good habitat for it. It’s subject to weather, disease, insects, fleas and ticks. I don’t think it’s the right thing do.

How To Help

To volunteer, donate money or report a colony of feral cats to St. Francis Gulf Coast Feline Rescue, call Mildred Manion at 409-744-5029 or the Galveston Island Humane Society at 409-740-1919.