WINTER HARBOR – Certain prowlers running loose around town have residents worried, and officials are looking into extraordinary means to deal with the problem.

These prowlers are not humans looking to steal from or harm their fellow man, however. They are feral cats, and officials are worried that they may be susceptible to rabies, four cases of which were confirmed here last summer.

Officials aren’t necessarily concerned with finding out who the cats used to belong to, but believe it is not only buildings that will have been left behind next summer when the Navy vacates the base at Schoodic Point and its personnel housing units in Winter Harbor’s village. Roger Barto, Winter Harbor’s town manager, said some of the animals have been pushed out the door by Navy personnel being transferred overseas.

“We know a certain amount of the cats come from them,” Barto said. He said that there has been no official estimate of the number of felines that are roaming around in the village.

“Some people put it in the hundreds, but I don’t know what it is,” Barto said. None of the cats have been determined to be rabid, Barto said, but one local woman did get preventative treatment after her cat came into contact with a rabid skunk.

Warren Ahrens, the local chief of police and the town’s animal control officer, estimates there are maybe “a couple dozen” feral cats in Winter Harbor. Some animals, including dogs, have been known to be left behind by Navy personnel, he said, though not recently. One woman not connected with the Navy abandoned 15 cats when she moved out of town last year, he said.

The selectmen in Winter Harbor, with Ahrens’ support, are considering hiring someone outside the department to deal with the cats and other animals. Ahrens said that his officers would have to be provided certain protective gear for them to try to capture the creatures.

“I’m quite concerned with the officers handling the animals,” Ahrens said. “You have to equip each man, and that would be fairly expensive.”

Each of the four officers with the department would need coveralls, boots, gloves and protective equipment for the officer’s eyes, ears and face, Ahrens said. The cost and time involved in capturing and taking an animal to Ellsworth are not conducive to other police duties, he said.

“I’m tired of transporting animals in the cruiser,” Ahrens said. Some dogs have urinated or vomited in the police car, he said.

The local police will continue to respond to animals calls, such as one earlier this year when dogs that had been left in their owners’ garage escaped and chased some children riding on bikes, Ahrens said. But capturing the feral cats and transporting them to the clinic in Ellsworth that takes stray animals should be done by someone else, Ahrens said.

There is more to the issue than just catching the cats, according to Ahrens. Whoever is given the task will have to try to determine which ones are wild and which ones have owners, he said.

“How do you identify them?” Ahrens said. “That’s one of the major problems.”

Ahrens predicted that eventually cats, in and out of Winter Harbor, will have to be regulated the same way that dogs are, complete with leash laws and immunization requirements.

There has been discussion about tagging the animals in some way, Barto said, but no decision on what specifically should be done. Collars could be one possible solution but some owners – and perhaps some cats – might have issues with using them, Barto said.

“They do hang up,” Barto said about the collars. “Cats get into some tight spots.”

Catching every single cat in town would not be cheap, Barto said. The Ellsworth clinic charges for each night they board an animal, he said, and additional money for each animal that is euthanized.

Still, Winter Harbor has to do something about its feral cat population, he said.

“We can’t just ignore it,” Barto said.

Selectmen are expected to make a decision about hiring a cat catcher when they next meet in January 2002, according to Ahrens.