LANAI CITY - Before she can even make it through the interior gate of the Lanai Animal Rescue Center, Alberta de Jetley is mobbed by cats.
Cats wind around her legs and trail her to a nearby bench, cats climb into her arms and stake out territory on her lap as soon as she sits down. Skittish cats peer out at her from the security of dark crates, and aloof cats look down on her from the branches of trees.
The no-kill center has about 140 cats at its new shelter location, from wild-born strays to abandoned pets, to family cats given up by owners who had to move away from Lanai to find work. The animals aren't kept in cages but instead live in a fenced-in outdoor sanctuary featuring volunteer-built "kitty condos," and "pallet palaces" with lots of nooks and crannies where the animals can seek shelter, and plenty of trees to climb and plants to hide in.
"You can see, they're really at home," de Jetley said as one cat made herself comfortable on a bed of hay in a nearby cubbie.
Rescue center founder Kathy Carroll said that was the idea behind the new shelter.
"They're not in little cages," she said. "There's trees. It's a natural setting for them."
She said the goal was for the center to be a "model" for humane feral cat management.
"A lot of strays were just abandoned, and we want to be able to provide them refuge and a safe place where they can live out their days," she said.
The Lanai Animal Rescue Center was founded about six years ago, starting with a spay/neuter program. About 2-1/2 years ago, the group got permission from the Four Seasons Resort to open a temporary shelter facility at the hotel's old horse stable at Koele.
Last summer, center officials got a lease for 3.4 acres from Castle & Cooke Resorts to open a permanent outdoor animal shelter at their current location on Kaunolu Road, just off Kaumalapau Highway below Lanai City.
The facility was entirely built with donated materials and plants, and volunteer labor.
"Our donations have been so generous," de Jetley said.
Volunteers come daily to feed the cats, and many stay to cuddle them and play, she said.
The nonprofit's next project will be to open a thrift store in Lanai City, with sales to benefit the shelter. The store is scheduled to open next month.
Before the shelter opened, stray animals and homeless pets had to be sent off island to be cared for at the Maui Humane Society, de Jetley said.
The group is also hoping to expand to provide more shelter services for dogs. Currently they have some kennels they can use to hold dogs temporarily, before placing the animals with local "foster families" until they can be adopted.
The group helped six dogs last quarter, all of which were eventually placed in permanent adoption.
"We have an adopt-and-place program that is quite successful," de Jetley said.
Long term, the group hopes to expand to provide a more formal shelter for dogs, building large enclosed dog yards that would each house a "pack" of four or five animals, she said.
Carroll said a driving force behind the center was to get the island's feral cat problem in check. Environmentalists and naturalists who work with endangered bird species helped the shelter design fencing that would keep the cats in.
"The whole community wants to help keep it under control," she said.
She estimated that the program had spayed or neutered around 820 cats since its inception six years ago.
"If we hadn't spayed and neutered those, we'd probably have at least 10,000 more cats running around today," she said.
The group was still reeling from the death last month of Oahu veterinarian Nicholas Palumbo, who for years had been the main vet for Lanai pet owners, seeing animals on his weekend visits to the island.
Palumbo, 81, and his 20-year-old son, Tim, were killed when the single-engine Piper Cherokee he was piloting crashed into an Oahu mountainside Jan. 10, as he was flying back from a weekend visit to Lanai.
"We took a lot of cats to Dr. Palumbo over the years," Carroll said. "We're really devastated by his loss. It's a blow to everybody in the community, whether they dealt with strays or owned pets. We're struggling."
But she said spay/neuter clinics on Lanai would continue, because the service had been provided by volunteer vets from Maui, so that Palumbo could concentrate on caring for individual animals while on the island.
Carroll said she and other animal lovers were worried about who would take on the role of island vet now that Palumbo is gone.
"Animals don't know," she said. "I had one call last night about a dog that was run over, and another about a cat with a bad sore. We're hoping that veterinarians from other islands will help fill the gap."
* Ilima Loomis can be reached at iloomis@mauinews.com.
