Sunday afternoon, Gisela Schultz, 75, stands outside her West Seattle home with a bag of cat food and jug of water. She starts her daily ritual of leaving food and water for the four feral cats she has fed for almost six years. All will let her pet them, but shy away from strangers. None would make a good housecat.

Tommy, a large Maine Coon, suns himself while Smokey, a long-haired Russian Blue-mix diligently eats his kibble. Peeper, another Maine Coon, delicately laps up the water. Misty, a long-haired silver tabby, orbits Schultz's legs. She and her husband Richard, 82, trapped all of them long enough to have them vaccinated and spayed or neutered at Lein Animal Clinic, one of the few veterinary hospitals in the area that will handle feral cats.

"Six years ago, I noticed several cats that had been abandoned by neighbors who moved away," she said. "I wanted to do the right thing, so I began taking care of them."

While the cats are obviously not their children, the Schultzes, married 54 years, care for them, spend money on them, and worry about them as if they were.

And right now, the Schultzes are doing a lot of worrying.

Health problems have forced the couple to relocate in June to The Kenney, a West Seattle nursing home. Mrs. Schultz said the facility does not accept companion animals, and she fears a home will not be found for the cats by the time to move. The buyers of the Schultz home are uninterested in caring for the cats.

Cats born outdoors to stray cats are considered feral. According to DVM Magazine, a veterinarian publication, one female cat and her offspring can exponentially produce more than 400,000 kittens during a seven-year period. When surrendered to public animal facilities, feral cats are often euthanized immediately due to limited resources to care for them.

For Gisela, relinquishing the cats to a municipal shelter is simply not an option.

"These cats were already abandoned once," she said, shaking her head. "I don't want to abandon them too."

Feral Care, a West Seattle group, traps and neuters approximately 100 adult cats monthly and returns them to their old colonies, finds a new colony or places them in a feral refuge. Socialized kittens born to feral mothers are placed in homes through Friends of the Animals Foundation. Pamela Staeheli and Nancy Howard, founders of Feral Care, said that the group has a critical need for more urban feral habitats like the Schultz's.

"We need residential and business landowners willing to relocate feral cats to their property. An urban habitat can have as few as two feral cats and they just need a small doghouse or some other weather-resistant shelter to keep them out of the elements," Staeheli says.

Upon relocation, feral cats must be confined for about a month, allowing them to adjust to the environment in safety and to accept their new home. Feral Care lends relocation pens with instructions to landowners.

"If we just set the cats free as soon as we relocated them, they would take off and attempt to return to their former home. In addition to being dangerous for the cats, who are now lost in unfamiliar territory, it can be traumatic for the volunteers who put a lot of energy, money and hope into the effort," said Staeheli.

Howard recommends landowners notify neighbors before starting an urban habitat. Among the misgivings neighbors may have are the potential effects on other animals. She notes that feral colonies with spayed and neutered cats are highly unlikely to be aggressive toward domesticated cats. Howard also dispels the myth that feral cat colonies deplete other wildlife.

"Responsibility for the decline in bird and wildlife population falls squarely on the shoulders of the human species. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service reports that humans have overtaken vast areas of natural habitat, forcing the nesting songbirds and other forms of wildlife onto the endangered species lists. Drought, pollution, and pesticides have also contributed to the toll on wildlife," Howard said.

In addition to feral relocation work, Staeheli and other volunteers trap feral cats so they can be spayed or neutered, examined and vaccinated. The effort, known as Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), assures that a managed colony's population does not explode. Alley Cat Allies, which is a national resource organization for these programs, estimates that 2,000 groups and 6,000 people practice TNR.

The Schultzes are interested in hearing from potential adopters of their feral cats. They note that will supply doghouses and food dishes and the colony can be broken into groups of two. If interested, please call 321-4729.

Feral Care seeks volunteers to help with trapping, relocation, fostering, kitten socialization, cleaning, computer programming, grant writing, data entry and clerical duties. To volunteer or donate, visit www.feralcare.org or call (206) 459-7202.