Community rallies to safeguard stray cats months after kitten strangled at Southwest Side complex

SAN ANTONIO – After a kitten was strangled and killed at a Southwest Side apartment complex this past fall, neighbors there are now taking action.

They’ve created Project Mission Creek with the help of the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition. The project aims to Trap-Neuter-Return stray cats roaming the Artisan at Mission Creek Apartments off Yarrow Boulevard. So far, they’ve fixed and vaccinated 15 cats, and three of them have been taken to foster homes.

In November, Mission Creek is where San Antonio police said a man allegedly strangled a kitten to death. Police arrested Ryan Berlanga, 31, in connection with the case.

Crystal Brown lives at that complex. She said she couldn’t sit back knowing what had happened.

“When that cat got strangled, I was like, ‘I’m going to try to help the community,’” Brown said. “It was horrible for somebody to hurt an animal like that.”

David Vallejo, the assistant manager of Mission Creek, said the complex felt the same.

“We really wanted to take action from there,” Vallejo said.

The apartment reached out to the San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition. Yvonne Saldivar is a volunteer with the coalition and manages this project.

“Once you get the cats fixed, then they can no longer reproduce,” she said. “If they can’t reproduce, you don’t have any unwanted kittens that are prone to things like animal cruelty cases that happened here back in November.”

Volunteers with Project Mission Creek will continue TNR through the end of this month.

“It’s a service that’s deeply needed for the community,” volunteer Vicente Escobedo said.

The coalition provides traps and instructions for volunteers to get started. If you’d like to participate in TNR for your community, click here.

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