There’s one good thing about feral cats.

“They’d probably be good mousers,” Julia Franklin said.

Franklin, who is involved with Animal Outreach of Kansas, is helping lead a hunt for a new home for seven or eight feral cats who live at Kansas University.

The cats live near the 1887 Powerhouse slated for partial demolition to make way for the new Hall Center for the Humanities. KU officials and animal lovers are concerned that the cats would be harmed during the construction.

If trapped by the Douglas County Humane Society, the cats likely would be euthanized. Humane Society policy doesn’t allow feral cats to be adopted.

“They have a right to live, in my opinion,” Franklin said.

Judy Carman, president of Animal Outreach of Kansas, said the group needed one or two people living in the country to take the cats. Packs of feral cats do best when adopted out in groups of three or more, she said.

Feral cats must be kept in a cage for a month after they’re trapped and moved because they always try to return to the place where they received their food. A maintenance worker at KU feeds the cats.

Wild cats lie in the afternoon sun on the Kansas University campus. A group of seven or eight of the cats is being displaced by a construction project, and Animal Outreach of Kansas is seeking someone who lives in the country to adopt the cats.

“They’d probably get killed trying to go back,” Carman said.

People for Animal Rights in Kansas City, Mo., has offered to help pay for the cats to be spayed and neutered.

Jeff Weinberg, assistant to Chancellor Robert Hemenway, said KU welcomed the actions.

“If the right group could find homes for them, then absolutely, positively,” Weinberg said Thursday.

“That would be wonderful. Sounds perfect.”

Anyone interested in adopting the cats can contact the group at aok@animaloutreach-ks.org.

¢ 6News video: Demolition of old Powerhouse will displace cats¢ Hall humanities center to have Powerhouse home (10-2-03)¢ 6News video: KU puts new humanities center in old building (9-5-03)¢ New humanities center design builds on site’s 100-year history (9-5-03)