COEUR d'ALENE - Just as soon as Lynne Doria tosses a few pieces of tunafish, they come running.

They emerge from the brush and bushes that looked so barren just a few minutes earlier. Three, four, five, then more until there are eight snatching up what is likely their first meal of the day.

Doria continues throwing the food until it is gone.

The cats, still hungry, sniff and search the ground, sometimes swiping at each other for the last morsel.

"If we didn't take care of them, myself and others, they would die," Doria said.

"They suffer," added Irene Donak, who joined Doria Monday to check on a handful of wild cats in an unkept lot down an alley off Government Way.

The two women are on a twofold mission: To rescue as many cats as possible, and keep the population from increasing.

So they also trap cats and kittens, pay to have them neutered or spayed at a local veterinarian or the Kootenai Humane Society, then release them again. Since June of last year, they estimate they've followed their plan with around 60 cats, and try to find homes for kittens.

Both said they've spent at least $1,000 each, and both say it's something that must be done.

"It's an epidemic out there," said Donak, a longtime rescuer of cats and dogs. "It was just a matter of seeing these animals in distress. You have to do something about it. You just can't let the problem go."

But the problem, they said, is not that there are too many cats. It's that there are too many people who are not responsible pet owners.

Doria said she has made a few enemies with her kindness to cats. Some have told her to stop feeding the felines so they'll go somewhere else instead of hanging around their apartment building.

"Tell me where somewhere else is," she responds.

Donak, who owns three cats and a dog, said the wild cat population is a problem in Coeur d'Alene.

"This is just one area," she said. "There's many, many areas."

Rondi Renaldo, executive director of the Kootenai Humane Society, agreed feral cats are a concern. She couldn't guess how many are roaming about, but did say people like Doria and Donak are making a difference.

"Irene and Lynne have been fantastic," she said. "They just love the animals, and this is their way of giving back."

She said there are several "feral colony managers" who feed, fix and release wild cats.

"It's a way to control the cat population," Renaldo said.

It's not cheap.

The spay or neuter procedure runs about $40, and vaccines are another $20.

"I wish we could do it for free," Renaldo said.

KHS rolled out a "Feral Friday" program last spring offering low-cost spay and neuter for trapped feral cats. It will lend out traps, too.

It also launched the FBI program, "Feline Barn Investigators," that tries to find country homes with barns for wild cats.

But trapping feral cats can also be a bit risky, too. They're not afraid to use teeth and claws, so don't get too close should you feel inclined to befriend one.

"We don't encourage a lot of people to go near these cats because they can be dangerous," Renaldo said.

Doria said the cats she has been feeding daily are not that ferocious.

"They'll come up and eat and look and not run," she said. "They're stray cats. They're not what I would call feral wild cats."

Either way, they deserve some type of care, she said.

Doria said cats are routinely abandoned. They're dumped in the woods where coyotes can get them, left in fields somewhere or tossed out of cars in neighborhoods by people who assume others will take them in.

The Coeur d'Alene woman said that this winter, many cats - especially the young ones - will not survive.

"They are going to starve to death," Doria said.

She has set up two small shelters where cats can take refuge from rain and find water. She plans to trap two today.

"I've saved several cats that have been poisoned from antifreeze," Doria said. "A terrible way to die."