The Roosevelt Island Princess YinYang Project (RIPYY) was formed in 2005 to help cats abandoned on Roosevelt Island find homes or live in managed Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) colonies on the Island. Ann Hallowell and Rossana Ceruzzi have agreed to act as consultants.

Photo of YinYang/Princess by Núria Olivé-Bellés.

RIPYY was formed after the death of the small black-and-white cat – to some “Princess” and to others “Yin Yang” – who lived for years in bushes near the subway and enchanted passersby with her curiosity and delight in everything from her own bowl of Costco dry food to tumbling in high snowdrifts. She died in September 2004 when a marauding stray finally drove her into the path of a truck.

In 1976, four Roosevelt Islanders began to feed and gain the trust of the Island’s abandoned cats and eventually trap and neuter them and try to find the best solutions for their futures. TNR is the only effective way to reduce populations of abandoned cats.

These cats have been abandoned by off-Islanders or by Island families who let their cats run wild or leave them behind when they move away. Domestic animals, they are left to cope with a terrifyingly unfamiliar world in which many freeze to death, starve or die slowly from untreated illnesses or injuries. Those that survive breed, often, and their kittens have kittens.