Washington ? The cats stay.

That is what officials at the Army Navy Country Club have decided after club members and animal welfare activists from across the country protested a plan to evict a colony of strays that has lived on the Arlington, Va., grounds since Lyndon B. Johnson was president.

Last year, club officials decided that the cats posed a risk of spreading rabies to children and needed to be removed. But some members who had been feeding and caring for the cats for years said it would be more dangerous to remove them.

Most of the cats had been spayed, neutered and vaccinated against rabies, they said, and removing them would only create space for other cats to move in. A veterinarian who had been treating the cats agreed.

Club officials had planned to start trapping the cats as early as Jan. 1 and send them to a shelter that would euthanize them, said Al Baker, vice president of the club. But after a Dec. 24 article in The Washington Post, the club received calls from members – some living as far away as California, Florida and Texas – opposing the plan.

Last week, Baker and the cats’ caregivers met at the club with representatives from Alley Cat Allies, a national organization that works to reduce the stray and feral cat population. The group proposed moving the cats from three locations on the property to a more remote spot, and the club agreed.

“The cats have essentially been spared that ultimate indignity, as a funeral director would say,” said Tom Evans, a club member who with his wife, Dottie, has fed the cats. “We’re thrilled to death.”