Westwego Mayor Joe Peoples has had it with felines in his town.
"On Third Street, there's times when the smell will just knock ya out," Mayor Peoples told WWL-TV.
Peoples says residents are feeding cats and not caring or cleaning up for the feral felines.
"They feed these cats, and then they go in the neighbors yard and dig in the gardens," Peoples describes. "They defecate on their porches, throw up on their porches."
Peoples wants the feeding to stop and he's proposing an ordinance with a stiff fine of $500.
Peoples is looking to break the dependence the cats have on the those looking out for them.
He says if they stop feeding the cats, the felines will go somewhere else to find food—or revert back to their instincts of hunting vermin.
But not everybody is on board with this. Anita Hemeter, a volunteer cat trapper involved in catching cats so they can be spayed or neutered and then returned to the community.
She penned a letter in support of feeding cats: "It has been shown that feeding bans don't work and actually cause more cats to be born on the streets.
When feeding stops and cats disperse it is harder to find them to trap and fix them. The breeding continues, more cats are born. When there is a dedicated feeder the cats are in one location and trappers can come and trap out the entire colony so every cat is fixed and not reproducing."
Peoples responded by saying he loves the animals and doesn't want them euthanized. But he wants them picked up by the TNR cat trappers, fixed, then adopted out.